Today the Seattle Times reported that the city and state attorneys are challenging the decision of the city council to hold private meetings with the Mayor. This story raises a number of issues, but what stands out for me is the whole idea of public debate. One city council member, in referring to the closed door meetings, is quoted as saying, “It’s efficiency. It’s the ability to talk freely and debate issues without being worried about how our comments will be interpreted.” This is a big problem in Seattle politics. Somehow we have arrived at the notion that debate needs to happen privately - all that happens in public is that they emerge from their chambers with a decision in hand, and then they ask for public comment.
We constantly teach our kids the value of having open debate and discussion. When we try to export democracy, we always cite the value of open, public debate. Yet somehow in our city the establishment has agreement that all real debate must happen behind closed doors. I personally felt this two years ago when the roads and transit package (2007 Prop 1) was put to the voters. Despite numerous elected officials having serious reservations about the package, they were not willing to raise any concerns publicly about the problems with that package. Apparently those debates had already taken place behind closed doors around the city and an agreement was reached to sell the package to the public.
As a citizen, I want to know what the debates are. I want to see what arguments each councilmember is making and better understand what values lens they are looking through. I understand that budget cuts are a very difficult decision, but that is no excuse to eliminate transparency - in fact it is the exact time we need full transparency. If elected officials are not comfortable with the public witnessing their thought process evolve, then they should consider a different line of work.
When we see the process and the agonizing trade-offs that often must be considered, the people can engage, and the people need to be part of the process in a meaningful way every day. Not just a ceremonial three minutes per person of testimony before a forgone conclusion is passed. Not just an email address to send comments to to be compiled by a scribe for public record. Real, vigorous, engaging public debate. Isn’t that what this country was founded on? Why is this such a dangerous thing?
What do you think?
One of the first papers I wrote in college touched on this exact issue. In that paper, we examined the functioning of a small-town school board. One of the things we heard from several members thereof was that a strict sunshine law made it harder for them to conduct board business. As one example, the board’s members were prohibited from discussing any board business outside of public session. This meant that if a board member wrote a new proposal for what to do with the middle school, it was impossible for them to sound out other board members (even informally) to gauge possible support before they announced it in board meeting. Several board members felt this had a negative impact on the quality and quantity of new policy coming out of the board; it encouraged conservatism and incrementalism.
On the other hand, you correctly note that having City Council and the Mayor make it regular practice to create policy in closed session and then present it to the public as a “take it or leave it” proposal is also not ideal.
I suppose what it comes down to is that we need leaders who are confident enough to advance the solutions that they think are right, even if they might be the only one advancing them. At the same time, I think it is reasonable for council members to be able to call one another outside public session and say “hey, what do you think of this?”. A sunshine law so restrictive that it prohibits even that seems to me to be too much.
I agree with Mark that there’s some balance needed. I’m not sure that being overly-restrictive helps that much, in that we seem to have a plentiful supply of questionable dealings despite the open-meetings laws.
At least we can comfort ourselves that we’re not doing as badly as Pennsylvania: http://tinyurl.com/cc4d3d
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