Secrecy

Just about everyone says they support open meetings, transparency, inviting the public to watch what elected and appointed officials are doing.

However, there seems to be an unfortunate tendency among many people who are in position to do so to have closed, secret meetings where they can make decisions without the annoyance of people watching them. I have seen this with all sorts of groups, from homeowner associations to government groups.

What is often worse is the attitude of those in power to the concept of openness. For example, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Maryland's top health official, leads a state board working on health reform. After a journalist filed complaints, Dr. Sharfstein and his board were found to have violated the Maryland open meetings law about 50 times.

But here's the worst part. When Dr. Sharfstein chaired the next meeting after having been found to have violated the open meetings law, he read a statement required by that law before going into another closed session --- and he mocked the law and the members of his board laughed with him at the law.

In MoCo, I have attended meetings of commissions, committees, and boards, where the attitude toward having the public present at meetings was negative, to put it mildly. Information about meetings of these advisory committees are sometimes difficult to find on the county website, when citizens ask to be informed of meetings that request is sometimes ignored, staff informs citizens that subcommittee meetings are closed, and copies of public documents examined by the advisory groups are not shared with the public. This even happened with meetings of the Right to Vote Task Force, which in its recommendations urged open meetings by other groups.

I have also attended meetings of a MoCo commission where in the public session at the start I urged the commission to support a change in a section of County law. Just ten minutes later a member of the commission said no one had ever suggested any change in that section of the County law, proving that he paid no attention to the public comments.

Homeowner associations take similar attitudes, often even worse about trying to take actions in secret. Even though there are state laws requiring that most board and other meeting must be open, association officials sometimes say they are having a "working group" meeting, or something with a different title, so it can be closed -- even though there is nothing in the law that says anything of the sort.

This desire for secrecy seems to exist everywhere. Even those who have argued for openness in the past have a different attitude when they are in a position to vote for closed meetings.

A great example of a group that truly believes in openness in government, and supports that belief, is the MoCo Council. All their meeting are publicly listed in an easy-to-find and understand page on the county website. If the Council will be examining documents at an upcoming meeting, those documents are available ahead of time on the county website. When members of the public appear before the Council they are warmly welcomed and the Council members ask them questions after their testimony, proving they have listened. And Council members are sincere when they smile and thank citizens for taking the time to share their ideas and experiences with the Council.

But what can be done about the Council's advisory groups, commissions, boards, committees, and task forces, that don't have these attitudes and don't act similarly to the Council?

To start, the Council can inform the members of those advisory groups --- and perhaps more importantly, their staff assistants --- that the MoCo Council strongly supports open government and encouragement and welcoming of citizens at all meetings. All members and staff of these advisory groups can be told that this is very important to the Council and advisory groups must follow the example set by the Council. This can be done in writing and with meetings.

MoCo can set up an easy-to-find-and-understand page on the county website where all advisory groups' upcoming meetings must be announced, with links to documents the groups will be considering just as the Council does. If an advisory group meeting is not listed on this page in plenty of time for the public to know about it, the meeting should not be allowed to be held.

Advisory group members and their staffs should be told they must encourage public participation and welcome it. It may sound minor, but smiles and warm welcomes are important.

Next, even if state law does not require subcommittee meetings to be open to the public, the MoCo Council can tell its advisory groups that County policy is the opposite. Unless a meeting meets one of the exceptions such as discussion with a lawyer, meetings of subcommittees any groups with any other name should be open just as advisory committees and the Council itself are.

Advisory group staffs should be informed that they should produce and make available  at meetings to the public copies of documents the advisory groups are considering. If the staff doesn't want to make lots of copies not knowing how many citizens will attend, it's fine if the website announcement of that meeting says members of the public should rsvp if they wish to have copies of documents.

Is this important or a waste of time? One of the reasons the public has a negative view of government at all levels is that when they try to participate in government they often feel, correctly, that the members of groups such as MoCo commissions, boards, etc., don't want them there. This feeling causes problems that could be solved easily, if the members and staffs of these groups truly encourage and welcome public participation. And besides following the law and policy of openness, the members and staffs might very well find that the public gives them good ideas they hadn't thought of themselves.