Discussions are open to citizens

Before last year's end, we registered our objections to closing meetings of the Washington County Economic Roundtable, at which allocations of slot machine revenue will be discussed. We relayed the position of counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association that the roundtable will function as a committee advising the county commissioners as well as our own view that secrecy undermines public trust in a process in which trust is essential.
There is another, more basic aspect to the story that deserves comment if only because it is a common misconception about the state Sunshine Law. It concerns the following statement attributed to County Commissioner Diana Irey:
"It is not a meeting where decisions will be made. There will only be discussions and evaluations of the proposals, so that would not fall under the provisions of the Sunshine Act."
The whole point of the Sunshine Act reform of 1987 was to open governmental deliberations to the public. The law contains the declaration that it is "the public policy of this Commonwealth to insure the right of its citizens to have notice of and the right to attend all meetings of agencies at which any agency business is discussed or acted upon ... (italics ours.)"
Prior to the law, school boards and municipal councils would begin their meetings behind closed doors, work out their differences and do nothing in public but rubber stamp decisions they had already made.
The citizens had no way of knowing why their officials were voting as they did, and in practice often did not even know what was being voted on.
The present law opens those deliberations to the public and applies not just to a quorum of public agencies but a quorum of their committees as well. The law provides only six carefully drawn reasons why a meeting could be closed. Deliberations that will not result in immediate decisions are not among them.
As the law states, "the right of the public to be present at all meetings of agencies and to witness the deliberation, policy formulation and decisionmaking of agencies is vital to the enhancement and proper functioning of the democratic process and that secrecy in public affairs undermines the faith of the public in government and the public's effectiveness in fulfilling its role in a democratic society."
If there is any subject that could test public faith, it is in the distribution of gambling revenue. This seems to be the exact kind of thing the law was drawn to cover.
Copyright Observer Publishing Co.