Elected officials are in office for just one reason - to conduct your business with your money. Unfortunately, some of this state’s current laws allow public officials too much leeway in carrying out the public’s business secretly. A bill the state House may vote on this week could remedy this problem.

As it is now, elected bodies like county and town boards are permitted to go into closed session for seven distinct reasons. These exceptions are, for the most part, legitimate. They allow personnel matters to be kept private, allow for attorney-client privilege, let proposed real estate transactions be kept secret, and let public bodies carry out some industrial recruitment activity. What many elected officials forget, however, is that they are never required to go behind closed doors. They always have the option of talking in front of the public.

What is vague in the state’s open meetings law is how those closed sessions should be recorded. For the most part, different elected bodies around the state make their own decisions in this matter. Some keep scant notes that are indecipherable; others keep records that could best be described as useless.

The proposed law, House Bill 514, would require public bodies to record their closed sessions. It has passed the Judiciary I Committee and may come to the floor this week for a vote.

Some argue that the new requirement would permit the public to have access to private information about, say, a sexual assault on a high school student. But the current law clearly states that closed session information shall be released only when it will not “frustrate the reason for the closed session.” Under this scenario, some tapes would never be released. That is the way it should be.

Others fear that taping closed sessions would prevent elected officials from speaking frankly about certain issues. The truth, however, is that closed sessions are not to allow elected officials a private forum in which to discuss issues of importance to taxpayers. Closed sessions are legal in very limited circumstances because lawmakers have decided that it is in the public interest to allow them. If closed sessions are the only venue in which a public official feels free to discuss an issue, that is all the more reason for those discussions to eventually become part of the public record.

Our House delegation, indeed, all of our WNC representatives, have generally shown great support for open meetings. Encourage them to support House Bill 514. It will make local government more accountable to the people.

 

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The Smoky Mountain News