MassTech has lost every adjudicated records and Open Meeting Law matter on its record in 2025-26. The state technology agency keeps appearing, and keeps not winning.
A quasi-public state agency administering, among other things, the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. In the past year, five adjudicated rounds — one before the Attorney General's Division of Open Government, four before the Supervisor of Records — have produced findings against MassTech on every single matter, including a §23(c) caution that future similar Open Meeting Law violations may be considered evidence of intent. Outside counsel from Greenberg Traurig (Bob Ross, of counsel, $750 per hour; an associate at $450 per hour) appears on every adversarial filing. The Attorney General's office, the Supervisor of Records, and the Department's own internal record have all converged on the same finding.
5 / 5
Appeal rounds adjudicated in 2025-26 · MassTech lost every one of them
Outside-counsel rate (Bob Ross, Greenberg Traurig) the agency sought to bill back to records requesters · the Supervisor denied · funding source for the work being done now is not on the public record · SPR26/0172
Hosting + license fee MassTech sought to charge requesters for a document-review platform its own counsel elsewhere described as "free" · SPR26/0172 + SPR26/0234
Intent-caution issued in OML 2025-184 · the only AG OML determination on MassTech's record · two violations found
Section · 01 · The losing record
Five adjudicated matters. Five losses.
Each spotlight below is a discrete matter that reached adjudication during 2025 and 2026. The body that ruled is identified. The records, the determination, and the agency's filings can be requested directly through the Supervisor of Records, the Division of Open Government, or — for active matters — through this project.
Spotlight 01 · OML 2025-184 · AG Division of Open Government · Two violations + §23(c) caution
The only Open Meeting Law complaint against MassTech that reached adjudication found two violations at one meeting — including that the state technology agency could not honor its own promised remote-meeting access.
On November 7, 2025, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Lindberg of the Division of Open Government issued OML 2025-184, finding that the MassTech Board of Directors violated the Open Meeting Law at its March 12, 2025 meeting. The notice topic — "Review of memo and discussion: NEMC Hub Sustainability" — was not sufficiently specific; the "NEMC Hub" acronym had no widely understood public meaning. And the Board failed to provide promised remote access: a member of the public emailed the address listed on the amended notice asking for the Teams/Zoom link, and got no response. The determination ordered "immediate and future compliance" and added a §23(c) caution that "future similar violations may be considered evidence of intent to violate the law."
When MassTech argued that disclosing broadband-grant records would aid terrorists, the Supervisor of Records replied that the agency had "not provided sufficient factual heft."The Supervisor was "uncertain how the responsive records are the type that 'a terrorist would find useful to maximize damage.'"
On December 31, 2025, Supervisor Manza Arthur ruled in SPR25/3719 that MassTech had failed to meet its burden under Exemption (n) — the cybersecurity exemption — in the appeal of a Broadband Equity Access and Deployment / "BOB" production. The Supervisor used the phrases above verbatim. MassTech was ordered to respond consistent with the determination within ten business days. The matter was renumbered SPR26/1414 on follow-on appeal; on April 30, 2026 the Supervisor ordered in-camera review of the disputed records — meaning she will read the records herself rather than take MassTech's word on Exemption (n) or the agency's parallel G.L. c. 40J trade-secret theory. In-camera review is the procedural posture the Supervisor uses when she has heard the agency's exemption claims and is not persuaded on the paper record.
MassTech asked the Supervisor of Records to authorize fees above the $25-per-hour statutory cap. The Supervisor's response: she has no authority to permit any agency to exceed that rate.
In two parallel petitions on the BEAD and GAP records productions, MassTech sought permission to charge requesters at rates above the statutory $25/hour cap on segregation labor — and separately argued the requests should be denied as "harassment." The Supervisor of Records denied both grounds: the $25/hour cap is statutory and not waivable at SOR's discretion, and MassTech had not shown that the requests met the standard for relief from the obligation to respond. The records sought were broadband-grant program records administering $147 million in federal infrastructure funding across eleven applicants.
MassTech billed requesters $23,800 to host a document-review platform. Seventeen days later, the agency's outside counsel described the same install as "a free file-sharing resource."
In its BEAD and GAP fee petitions (SPR26/0172 and SPR26/0234), MassTech sought $23,800 in hosting and user-license charges for a Relativity document-review platform installed for the requesters' use. The line items: $5,000 + $16,400 in hosting, $1,200 in user licenses. On April 28, 2026 — seventeen days after the fee petitions were still live before the Supervisor — MassTech's outside counsel submitted a brief to Supervisor Manza Arthur in SPR26/1414 describing the same Relativity install as "a free file-sharing resource offered by its outside counsel." Either the hosting infrastructure is being paid for, or it isn't.
MassTech's counsel asked the Supervisor to dismiss an appeal because the requester's expert declarations were "unsworn."One page earlier, the same brief refused to put any MassTech representative under oath.
In MassTech's April 28, 2026 submission to the Supervisor of Records in SPR26/1414, outside counsel from Greenberg Traurig moved the Supervisor to dismiss the requester's appeal on the grounds that the expert declarations attached to it were "unsworn." On the same brief, at page 8, counsel wrote: "Nor could such statements be required when the records access officer (here, Ms. Saubermann) provides explanations of her reasoned judgment." The unsworn-evidence standard was claimed as dispositive against the requester and unavailable to apply to the agency.
MassTech's General Counsel also serves as Board Secretary. She drafts the minutes, certifies them as accurate, and then authors the Board's response to complaints about what the minutes did or did not record.
Jennifer M. Saubermann is identified in MassTech's filings as General Counsel and Director of Government Affairs; the agency's organizational record also identifies her as Board Secretary. In that combined capacity she drafts the minutes of Board meetings, certifies their accuracy, and signs the Department's responses to Open Meeting Law complaints alleging the minutes are incomplete. On September 3, 2025, Saubermann's written representation to a requester that her records production was "the full set of materials sent to the board in advance" was followed seven months later by MassTech's voluntary production of seventeen previously-withheld "chair procedures" used at every Board and Executive Committee meeting since January 2025. The Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct contemplate witness/advocate and dual-loyalty conflicts in MRPC 3.7 and 1.7.
The state technology collaborative cited the Massachusetts wiretap statute — G.L. c. 272 § 99 — against a member of the public who recorded a public Board meeting.
Use of a criminal-eavesdropping statute against a citizen attending and recording a public meeting is the kind of agency response the Open Meeting Law was written to make impossible. The invocation appears across roughly six MassTech response letters to records and Open Meeting Law complainants and is documented in the December 10, 2025 Board meeting transcript at approximately the 46-minute mark.
The state technology collaborative is, by its own documented record, repeatedly unable to operate the technology its mandate covers:
Failed to provide promised remote-meeting access. Adjudicated as a violation in OML 2025-184. The agency listed a Teams/Zoom request address on the amended notice for the March 12, 2025 Board meeting and did not respond to a member of the public who emailed it.
Used an undefined acronym ("NEMC Hub") in a public meeting notice. Adjudicated as not sufficiently specific in OML 2025-184. A technology agency failed the AG's own acronym-specificity standard.
Internal contradiction on the document-review platform. Same Relativity install billed at $23,800 in two pending fee petitions and described as "free" in a contemporaneous submission to the Supervisor of Records.
Cybersecurity rationale rejected for lack of factual heft. Supervisor of Records, SPR25/3719, December 2025: a technology agency was unable to articulate to SOR how disclosure of broadband-grant network-design records would jeopardize cybersecurity.
The Massachusetts Broadband Institute publishes on its own public website the same broadband data MassTech redacts as "trade secret" and "internal layout" in the appeal. Eight documented instances with Wayback snapshots; the public version pre-dates the redaction.
If you cover MassTech
This page reflects the documented record as of May 13, 2026. The MassTech case file under this project's review includes: the September 3, 2025 completeness-certification correspondence, the seventeen "chair procedures" produced in April 2026, the April 28, 2026 Greenberg Traurig submission to the Supervisor of Records in SPR26/1414, the Greenberg Traurig outside-counsel rate disclosure in the SPR26/0172 fee petition, the Wayback evidence on the MBI public-data contradiction, and the procedural history of the BEAD and GAP appeals from December 2025 through April 2026.
Reporters and researchers covering MassTech, the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, the BEAD program, the federal pass-through grant structure, or quasi-public-agency accountability generally are welcome to reach the editors directly.