Sen. Lydia Chassaniol considers legislative proposals a good way to get the conversation started on matters of public interest.
Not sure I agree with the Winona Republican. There are way too many bills filed every year by Mississippi lawmakers that are meritless, ill-conceived or just downright idiotic. As a result, too much time is spent killing them, and too little time is spent on getting legislation passed that might move the needle of public well-being a little forward.
If, though, we are going to talk about Chassaniol’s cooperation in an effort to weaken one of the state’s most important sunshine laws, then let’s have at it.
Chassaniol has proposed legalizing a practice that would allow public bodies to more easily hide what they’re up to. She has taken up the cause of the Columbus City Council and the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors, which recently got in trouble with the state Ethics Commission for illegally skirting the Open Meetings Act. The Ethics Commission called the offenders’ hands for orchestrating meetings to which intentionally less than a quorum of voting members were invited so as to discuss in secret matters that are not exempt from the sunshine law’s provisions. The Ethics Commission said that even though a quorum wasn’t present at any one meeting, collectively the meetings constituted a quorum and thus, by law, should have been advertised in advance and open to the public.
Lawyers may differ about whether the Ethics Commission is creating law in these two cases rather than interpreting it. Columbus’ city attorney, Jeff Turnage, argues that the commission is guilty of judicial overreach, that the definitions of “quorum” and “meeting,” as they pertain to the Open Meetings Act, were made intentionally narrow when the law was adopted decades ago. The Ethics Commission’s executive director, Tom Hood, says it’s Turnage who is misinterpreting legislative intent, that the introduction to the law makes it clear that, when in doubt, those interpreting the statute should err on the side of openness.
The courts will end up settling that legal disagreement. Both rulings have been appealed to chancery court, and it would not be surprising if they ultimately wind up being argued before the state Supreme Court.
If, though, there is a loophole in the Open Meetings Act that allows serial, less-than-quorum meetings to be held behind closed-doors, a proponent of honest, open government would be trying to close it. Chassaniol, instead, has proposed making such a loophole permanent.
She defers to Turnage, a family friend, to make the arguments for narrowly defining what constitutes a public meeting. His is that government works more efficiently and wisely if members are allowed to privately discuss outside of full board meetings items that will be coming before them.
It’s not a good argument for several reasons.
First, the Legislature is on historical record — and the Supreme Court has underlined this point — that no matter how inconvenient some public bodies and their employees may think openness is, it is the policy of this state. Democracy, in fact, is designed to be inefficient. Elections constantly shift the balance of power. It takes time and consensus-building to get anything done. Efficiency is the goal of a dictatorship, not a democracy. If the goal was to be efficient, there would be no Legislature and no city council.
Second, there are very few cases — and those are arguable — where secrecy produces better results for the public than would transparency. There are, though, legions of examples of graft, waste and abuse that were made possible by cutting deals in secret.
Third, if an issue is complicated and requires thoughtful deliberation before a vote is taken, there’s already a way to deal with this in open session. It’s called tabling the matter and bringing it up again at a subsequent meeting.
Fourth, if private meetings over public business are a good idea in principle, why even bother with distinctions about quorums? If it makes sense to have these meetings at all, why not just abandon the pretense of artificially breaking them up into small gatherings and let the full boards always discuss in private and only cast their votes in public?
The reason meetings of public bodies are open — except for a narrowly defined list of reasons — is because those in office aren’t the boss. The citizens are. As the boss, the public has a right to observe what its employees are doing, has a right to have input in the decision-making process, has a right to know what thought — or lack of it — went into the final vote. It’s why the courts have said that an “official act” is not just the vote of a public body; so is every stage of the deliberation leading up to the vote.
If Chassaniol’s proposal prevails, it won’t just make the job of the press harder. It will make it harder for every citizen to be sure that those who claim they are acting in his interest actually are.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.