Where the First Amendment is respected

By BEN NELMS
bnelms@TheCitizenNews.com

I observed something intriguing, yet unfortunately familiar, at the June 21 meeting of the Union City Council. For the third time in four months a resident asked a series of sticky questions that most of the council could not or would not answer. Council member Helen Turner did offer some response to the questions posed by resident Shirley Dean. Mayor Ralph Moore, saying that he would respond to Dean’s “manifesto” later, countered with a mega-manifesto of his own at the end of the meeting, peppering his statements with far more innuendo and insult than those he claimed Dean had made. But then again, that’s his prerogative just as it was her “right” as a citizen in this Constitutional Republic to surface her concerns. Too bad it took four months to get a response! Question. Is it not still the right under the First Amendment for citizens to “petition the government for a redress of grievances?” And should that response by government be rightfully forthcoming?

But there is a much larger issue at stake here. It is one I’ve witnessed a few times in Union City and in Fayetteville and with a county commission I once covered in Jefferson County nearly 200 miles southeast of here. The issue is two-fold. First is the occasional unwillingness of elected officials to provide a real response to citizens’ questions. This is often accomplished by outright silence or by half-answered questions laden with a kind of subterfuge that only the most politically unaware or the most easily intimidated will buy off on. Secondly, and with perhaps more chilling implications, is the failure of some elected officials, regardless the topic at hand, to provide little more than a whisper of overall participation in the very public meetings in which “We, the People” have elected them to participate on our behalf. This is not a matter of conducting smooth-running meetings by local political entities where the entire board is of one mind. Smooth running or not, and perhaps not fully realized or acknowledged by some in elected office, a growing portion of the public that put them there in the first place expects representatives that are willing to literally exercise their voice on issues that affect their communities. Otherwise, the public could hire a group of acknowledgedly apathetic “yes-men” and be done with it. Silence is no route to take with the public trust, especially when sticky questions arise as a part of the proceedings of a public meeting. The thing is, anybody that runs and/or is elected to public office is naive not to expect occasional public dissent. If they are that thin-skinned they are doing a disservice to the public by serving and should either change their ways or step down.

In the case of the June 21 meeting, the council as a whole (with a brief exception or two) clearly demonstrated their unwillingness for the third time in four months to address questions, nearly all questions, posed by Dean. The fact that then-Interim City Administrator Ski Saxby responded for the mayor and council in a Feb. 18 letter to Dean with partial answers to her questions does not suffice. That technique, one of avoidance designed to side-step having to respond in public, is not a good sign of leadership for “The Progressive City.”

Emotion-driven non-answers, as in the recent side-stepping attempts by the Fayetteville council over the activities and management style of former Police Chief Johnny Roberts, are symptomatic of a woefully, political impotent worldview. First, the questions of a citizen are not contingent on their ongoing attendance at public meetings, as Moore implied. If so, God help the new resident in a community who attends their first meeting and surfaces a concern. Perhaps in our communities they have no right to ask their question unless they can demonstrate long-term involvement with city affairs. Second, since when, with any elected body in this country, did we regress into the realm of absolutism, whereby a citizen can approach the throne to pose only flattering or non-volatile questions in order to get a timely response from those on high?

Our local representatives, including those in Union City, that serve on the various elected and appointed boards are pretty smart folks that nearly always do a good job with the complex responsibilities facing their communities. It’s just that around here, I’ve noticed that a few are accustomed to doing what they want to do and are unaccustomed to being challenged. And when challenged, they strike out at the one/s that dared question their actions or motives. Have these representatives stopped to consider what the situation would be like if they held regional, state or federal office? Have they stopped to consider that maybe things are changing locally?

It is inevitable that, over time, an increasing number of residents will develop an enhanced degree of political awareness and will demand a corresponding level of accountability and transparency on the part of their local representatives. This is the nature of the reality of any progressive community where the First Amendment is respected.