If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

Way back when, it was assumed that once people got into government office, especially local government office, the rest of us were supposed to stay out of the way and leave them to it.

Well, the regular meetings of the whole body—the board, the council—were supposed to be open to the public. But regular meetings could just be like the hanky with the lace insets: for show, not for blow. And most of us who have attended meetings of public bodies have noticed that some of those sessions seem so pro forma, clearly the officials who are making decisions at those meetings already are familiar with the background of the items being discussed, and are satisfied as to the reasons for the actions they are taking, and the likely outcomes, or they would not be approving them in such a ho-hum, zip-zap fashion, with no details, no discussions, no need for assurances.

Would we, in their place? Would we, once or twice a month, gather in a room and decide on matters where tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money are in play, or restructuring of government is happening, or positions are created or eliminated, or grants are applied for, or taxes are levied or raised, and other weighty matters are decided by vote, all in a matter of an hour or so?

Maybe a topic has been broached at an earlier meeting, in a general way, but the next time we hear or see the matter addressed, it is in a resolution or motion in a meeting and the board or council votes on it in a perfunctory way. Moved, seconded, all-in-favor-aye-opposed-nay-carried.

Used to be we would see this happening and might ask when the officials had decided this matter. Why, it was at a committee meeting! Those didn’t count as real meetings. If no standing or special committee of that body existed, which would have met to thrash that matter thoroughly, maybe the matter was one of a smorgasbord of matters dealt with by a committee-of-the-whole. Meetings of those were not regular meetings of the body, the board, the agency, the council, the commission. They were just committee meetings, see, and could be private.

Which would beg the question, why was it better for them to be private? For whom was it better? For the individuals who were wielding power? Or for those they served, assuming they are serving the public?

But those puzzlements became moot, in time, as it became more and more obvious that the committee and work-session loopholes were ways of excluding the public from observing, never mind participating in, the governmental process. The Sunshine Law was amended. Committee meetings and work sessions would be open to the public, just as regular sessions were.

All along the way there were various attempts to mess with these rules, which we might see as fairly clear but which those bent on secrecy seem just as bent on bending. Um, it wasn’t actually a meeting. They didn’t meet, they were just having coffee together. They didn’t meet, they ran into each other at the township office or barn. The school board (of a neighboring school district) was having a retreat, basically just a getting-to-know-each-other kind of thing, Friday night and Saturday, at the Canoe Place in Port.

Sunshine Law amendments codified what reasonable people “on the outside,” members of the public, knew all along. If the government body has an intention of doing its governing openly, in public view, it is willing to be seen at work at every stage of the process, including the deliberative stage, which should be the longest one in most instances.

When you ask a question where the issue of Open Government or Sunshine Law or Right to Know is involved, you may hear some such explanation as this—“We talked about it [outside a meeting] but we didn’t vote on it. We always vote on stuff at public meetings.”

But that isn’t what makes government open. We are entitled to see the whole process. We are supposed to be able to see our officials working toward decisions that will be formalized eventually in resolutions or motions they vote on. What was their reasoning? How did they reach their conclusions? Did they cover all the bases and consider all eventualities?

That “just discussing but not deciding” loophole that some groups used to drive elephants through, six abreast, was closed when the open government law made it clear, deliberations are to be open to the public. Now a court has opened another loophole, called “information gathering,” and we’ll have to see how that is used and abused and finally corrected. For I do believe it will have to be corrected. Even while the elephants are stampeding through it, though, we can question abuses.

Meanwhile, there are two things often ignored by official bodies as they contemplate government secrecy and how they should or should not participate in it as they serve the public:

#1. Exceptions to open government are NOT for the officials’ convenience! Officials may enjoy the clubby feeling of being insiders, and some of them seem to relish the power and importance, but those defined exceptions to open meetings and records are not about “privacy” for officials, or allowing them to “discuss things freely without having some reporter quote us in the paper”—not at all. They are for other fairness issues and for compliance with other laws (such as labor laws, collective bargaining rights, employees’ rights, protecting the financial or legal position of the municipality and its taxpayers in real estate transactions or specific actual or potential litigation). Any official who does not want to be up front with the public to the very utmost allowed should not hold office.

#2. Even when an exception might allow a body to hold an executive (secret) session, that does not mean the official body must or should do so—unless there is another reason in law, such as employee rights or labor negotiations.

A third point should be considered by individual officials: When they see misuse of secrecy, they are not bound to silence.

Peace.