Secrecy breeds distrust

Published Saturday, January 17, 2009

Steve Stewart

The most refreshing change in Franklin city government over the past six months has been the City Council's emphasis on openness, transparency and accessibility.

That collective spirit has begun to restore the broken trust between citizens and City Hall that manifest itself in the May election, when two newcomers running on a platform of greater citizen involvement scored runaway victories.

The City Council's challenge now is to demonstrate that openness is an ongoing commitment, not an election-year show.

A couple of current hot potatoes in city government — a botched school board appointment and the retroactive billing of electricity customers because of a city employee's clerical mistake — illustrate how easy it is to revert to old habits and retreat to secrecy when the political environment heats up.

Unfortunately, Virginia's Freedom of Information Act is vague enough to give elected officials cover when they find the spotlight of public scrutiny uncomfortable. A creative mind can take the list of exceptions to the open-meetings law and justify doing just about anything behind closed doors.

City Attorney Taylor Williams, to his credit, is a stickler Image via Wikipediaabout steering the council clear of obvious violations of the law. With the job of determining whether council members have the right to go into closed session in Williams' capable hands, it's important to note that the council alone must decide whether excluding the citizenry from deliberations is the right decision and whether the council will erode the public trust by choosing secrecy. The latter is the job of elected leadership, not an attorney. Under no circumstance does the FOI law require a closed-door meeting. The law simply says a board "may" meet in secret under certain circumstances.

On the aforementioned controversies, the council blew it Monday night by choosing secrecy over openness.

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