Wednesday, February 27, 2002
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Wednesday, February 27, 2002 |
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Why do local officials so often choose secrecy, instead of openness? By CAL BEVERLY You, the people, won a big victory last week. Last week, Superior Court Judge John Langford granted The Citizen's request for a temporary injunction stopping secret meetings involving the governments of Fayette County, Peachtree City, Fayetteville and Tyrone. A hearing on making that a permanent injunction likely will be scheduled within the next month. Arrayed against us in the hearing last week were the taxpayer-paid lawyers from the four governments and an assistant attorney general from the Ga. Attorney General's office. A lot of taxpayer money was spent last week in defense of keeping you from knowing what was going on behind the closed doors of your local governments. The lawyers for the four local governments employed some fanciful arguments why the judge should dismiss our request for an injunction. One of the most ludicrous was the assertion that no "meeting" as defined by the law took place when majorities of all members of all bodies gathered behind closed doors in joint session in December. The judge rightly waved off that assertion. His ruling affirmed that the secrecy of the tax mediation talks ordered by Judge Stephen Boswell conflicted with existing state law embodied in the Open Meetings law and nearly 30 years of case law. The judge also pointed out the case raised state constitutional issues involving separation of powers. What that means is that the judge saw a problem with the judicial branch ordering the legislative branch the local governments to meet together and make joint tax decisions, especially behind closed doors. We agree with the judge and believe that the underlying law mandating judicial supervision of local taxation decisions is constitutionally suspect. There is a more fundamental issue at stake, however, in our advocacy of the Sunshine Law as it relates to our local governments. The law nowhere mandates that local governments must close meetings for any reason. The law just says that in narrow circumstances, local officials MAY close particular portions of meetings. They have the absolute option NOT to close them. So why do our local elected officials almost always choose to push the limits of the Sunshine Law and almost always choose to close meetings that could be left open to scrutiny by the people who elected them? Why is it that the default position of our local elected officials is to close meetings, rather than to open them? Why do the city attorneys and the county attorney (and the school board attorney) routinely recommend closing the doors instead of opening them? We say such a default position, on the side of secrecy, is wrong-headed and inflicts damage to the trust of local residents in their supposedly most representative governmental bodies. We wish our local governments and school board would stop hiding behind the "exceptions" in the Sunshine Law and start leveling with the people who elected them and who pay their salaries. We intend to do more than wish, however. We intend to closely scrutinize the secrecy habits of all our local governments and to challenge them when we think they have crossed the legal line into unwarranted and unlawful secrecy. And we intend to challenge them in the courts of this state if they persist in their secret habits. Our action in winning this extraordinary temporary injunction against local government secrecy should demonstrate to everyone who can read The Citizen's commitment to open government in the sunshine. We ask our local elected officials to join with us and the people of this county in declaring a joint commitment to government as open as the law will allow, rather than as closed as the law can be stretched to permit.
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