If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

We newsies try to keep an eye on the government and on the rest of the population. News crops up in the public and in the private sector.

The private sector can limit our access. Obviously we can’t demand admittance to people’s homes, but sometimes receive or seek invitations to come by for special occasions.

Businesses that are open to the public are open to us in the newsbiz, ordinarily. In fact, most of them seem quite eager to have us come around, especially when they are planning a special event, a grand opening, an expansion or other gala you should know about.

Occasionally some business will get all mysterious or downright forbidding. Press and public experienced some of that when the Fox production company was in the area in connection with filming “Unstoppable.” Naturally locals were interested, but the crew and their security got quite pushy. It is a private company, but it’s our community, and we, press and other members of the public, have our rights too, including the right to photograph anything that we can get into our camera’s viewer from any vantage point where we may be lawfully. Fox and their St. Moritz Security minions eventually got that message, but not until after they had trampled on the rights of some  of us community members to observe what is going on around us.

It’s usually government that makes it hard for us to keep track of activities of interest to us in our community. Our public servants sometimes get the Open Government rules wrong. I keep talking about it because I have a column. When I start blogging in earnest, I’ll talk about it then too. It isn’t just because I’m a reporter and inappropriate government secrecy makes it difficult for me to do my job. It’s because the government is not serving US, that is, YOU and ME, all of us, correctly when it does not govern openly.

It’s our government. It is here to serve us. We are entitled to know how they do it. In detail. As much as we want to know, each of us with his or her individual degree and kind of interest in what government is doing. With very few exceptions. Far fewer than some persons in government seem to realize.

When we find ourselves seeing less and less government, even though government is as big and active as before, we have a reason, and maybe an obligation, to wonder and to ask why. Usually the government  isn’t demonstrating willful determination to break the law or to put something over on the public. At least, so it appears to me, when I see the many instances of Open Government Law violations.

It’s ignorance of the actual law and how “agency members” of local governments are supposed to comply. Also, I detect a certain lack of confidence, an unwillingness to be seen wrestling with thorny problems or decisions, a reluctance to disagree with one another in public view or, in some cases, to reveal their individual gaps in knowledge, their uncertainties.

Those feelings are understandable, but not acceptable excuses for going behind closed doors.

Most Open Government violations have to do with Executive Sessions, or those times when agency members are meeting together while excluding the public. Other kinds of violations have to do with handling of records, and notice of meetings.

Meetings occur when a quorum of the agency or body in question is present—enough people to take action, even if no action is taken. For a school board that would be five members. For a borough council, four. For county commissioners or township supervisors, that’s two!

If there are two of those people talking to each other or where they could do so, is that a meeting, and a potential violation of Open Government/Sunshine law? Well, maybe not. They could run into each other at a wedding or after church or in the store or at a restaurant, accidentally or fleetingly or strictly socially or at lodge or Rotary. But if they discuss “agency business,” that’s where the violation occurs. They should not exercise their governmental authority or wear their agency hats on those occasions.

We can all agree that it would be awfully easy to forget the restrictions, and to bring up some matter of interest to them which happens to be “agency business.” But they swore to uphold our laws. That takes some mindfulness.

The Open Government exception most frequently cited as a reason for a body going into executive (closed) session is “personnel.” Whenever any official cites that one with just one word, there is a violation of law. Perhaps holding the closed meeting was proper, but we don’t know that, when no specific personnel matter was mentioned. The specific  “personnel” exception must be stated when the public is told about the closed session.

MOST personnel matters are NOT proper exceptions—only those where labor negotiations or contract talks are being held, or in which  one or more named individuals’ job performance or personal behavior or health or similarly private matters are discussed, or disciplinary action or other career harm is a possible result.

Whether to create a new position, or to change its scope, or to eliminate a position, or to expand or contract the work force, is not a personnel matter of the kind that constitutes a Sunshine or Open Government exception to the requirement to meet in public.

An announcement that an executive session was held to discuss a .personnel matter should state WHAT personnel matter. If it was for negotiations, the announcement should state what was being negotiations, or with what person or group the negotiations were conducted.

Also, appointing someone to fill a vacancy on the board or commission or in an elective office is NOT an allowable exception to the requirement to meet in public.

The fact that the officials doing the appointment wanted to discuss the merits of the potential appointee or the candidates or applicants for the position “freely” does not alter the fact that the public is entitled to be present for that discussion. The officials have no right to inquire beyond the personal facts we would be entitled to know and consider when voting to fill that office. When they substitute their judgment for ours, we are entitled to watch the process and hear their reasoning.

Is it okay just because the chairman called for the executive session, or because the majority thought it was appropriate? No. And each member of the agency who participated in an improper executive session committed an Open Government violation, whenever that kind of secrecy was practiced, against us. It violated our rights: yours to be there, and also to have the press there; the press’s right to be there and report to you.

Peace.