Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993 TAG: 9304230259
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Elizabeth Obenshain
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Why do members of county boards of supervisors and town councils who campaign publicly on local issues decide after they are elected that they have to go behind closed doors to discuss and decide the public's business?
This state's official policy is that the public's business should be conducted in public. It's also the law. It's called the Freedom of Information Act.
But more and more local groups such as the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors are going into executive sessions - let's be frank and call them secret, closed meetings - to decide major issues that deserve open debate.
The latest example was the supervisors' meeting Wednesday on merging the Montgomery County School Board's finance and purchasing departments with the county's.
The supervisors, frustrated by two years of often contentious budget wrangling with the School Board, want the departments merged so they can have better access to and control over the school's financial information.
The School Board is concerned about giving up this control and about the fate of its finance and purchasing employees.
Wednesday night, the two boards planned to hold their first meeting to discuss this major policy decision. It's the sort of basic governmental issue that deserves a public airing.
Instead, the Board of Supervisors sent out a notice that the whole meeting would be held in closed session, the Freedom of Information Act notwithstanding.
Nuts to you, they were saying to the taxpayers and School Board employees who might want know what was said and better understand the reasons for a merger.
The original reason given to justify an executive session was: "protection of the privacy of individuals in personal matters not related to public business."
Excuse me? How is this not related to public business?
Before the meeting, a revised agenda spelled out that the two boards would meet in executive session to discuss specific information on affected employees, their salaries and reassignments - even though the merger itself had never been discussed between the two boards or voted on by the supervisors.
Keep in mind that it is illegal to have an executive session to discuss a policy decision such as the finance departments' merger.
The session would be legal only if limited to discussing specific employees - their performance, new assignments, etc.
At Wednesday's meeting, the School Board refused to go into executive session. Board members wanted to discuss the general issues involved in the proposed merger and realized an executive session would be illegal.
The supervisors went into closed session anyway, without the School Board.
About 20 minutes later, they grumpily came back into open session and met briefly with the School Board, handing out a 12-page staff report spelling out the general advantages and disadvantages of the proposed merger. The report included one page listing salaries for county and school positions affected - but not the names of the people who were in the jobs.
What is most outrageous of all is that the report's cover stated: "Confidential: prepared for executive session" even though nothing in that report could legally justify an executive session.
Both the supervisors and county executives are required to know and follow the state FOI law. Ignornance is not a legal excuse.
But county officials were either ignorant of the law or they were prepared to willfully disobey it.
The public deserves the chance to hear this issues debated by the two county boards.
The problem is not the merger. Merging these two departments may be greatest idea since sliced bread.
The problem is whether the county is going to try to squeeze an issue into a limited personnel or legal matter that they can take behind closed doors - not to protect county taxpayers or employees, but to protect themselves from having to discuss a hot issue in public.
This is only the latest in the Montgomery supervisors' superhuman efforts to force issues into into executive session.
Let's see, there's also the Bradshaw Valley landfill discussion, the debate over road access to the Blacksburg school site, the regional incinerator proposed for the Radford Army Ammunition Plant.
It's enough to make self-respecting newspaper editors kick trashcans and slam drawers.
The public should be similarly outraged - and encouragingly enough they are!
People are showing up at board meetings irate that they don't have the chance to know about and react to supervisors' actions on school access roads or proposed landfills.
In the long run, this public disenchantment does not spell good news for our elected officials. The voters' doubt and anger may not be expressed right away. But the first time a big tax increase or other divisive issue comes before the electorate, there will be no balance of good will when the supervisors try to make their case.
For the sake of their own hides, if not for the rights of their local constituents, elected officials should pay more than lip service to the state's policy that "the affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy."
So, Dear Elected Official, let's show some of the enthusiasm for the public that you exhibited when you ran for office a few months ago.
Elizabeth Obenshain is editor of the New River Valley bureau of the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB