Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503100032
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
After two months, the board confirmed nothing more than a search for a new site. The residents along Flatwoods and Bradshaw roads had to wait nearly a year for a full, public answer, when the board disclosed its interest in a regional landfill in Pulaski County.
The reason: the board, with the same seven members as today, discussed the Ironto site and other proposals in executive session.
It was only one of the most publicized in a long-standing practice in Montgomery of relying on executive sessions to reach consensus on controversial policy issues - in most cases before the public knows what's afoot.
"If they'd been a little straightforward with us, it would have saved a lot of grief," said Kathy Mills, one of the people who revived the group Save Our Soil and tracked the issue for a year.
Whether it was talk about a garbage incinerator in 1992, forcing a solution to a financial feud with the School Board in 1993, spending millions for a new industrial park last year, or, this year, the feasibility of a sewage plant on Elliott Creek, closed-door meetings in Montgomery appear to be used as much to shield the board from controversy as to protect the public interest.
When it comes to closed-door meetings, the Montgomery board is in a class all its own among the largest local governments.
The board held 105 executive sessions last year, the second-highest of the 16 New River and Roanoke valley boards and councils examined in a Roanoke Times & World-News survey. Only the tiny town of Rocky Mount in Franklin County, population 5,000, had more.
Even giving the board the benefit of the doubt - discounting instances when the supervisors returned to public view briefly to extend the meeting past 11:30 p.m., as their rules require, then returned to executive session - the county still had 88 closed sessions in 29 of its 41 regular and special meetings last year.
It's something Board of Supervisors Chairman Larry Linkous has pledged to change in his last nine months in office. (He's leaving to run for a General Assembly seat.)
"I would like to see us this year not have as many executive sessions," Linkous said. "It makes our meetings a whole lot quicker and people aren't as worn out at the end."
So far this year, the board has kept to Linkous' wish: as of March 1, there hadn't been an executive session since a special, 90-minute closed-door meeting Feb. 1 to discuss a personnel issue. In fact, both regular meetings last month - on Feb. 13 and 27 - ended without executive sessions, something that hadn't happened in more than a year.
The rapid turnaround coincided with at least three factors: the board's talk in October about ways to speed up meetings; an election year; and the Roanoke Times & World-News beginning work on this and related articles in February on closed sessions.
Still, most Montgomery supervisors and their top employee defend the practice as legal and necessary given the major issues the board has considered recently.
"I don't think we've abused it, really," said Ira Long, a county supervisor since 1984. "It's just that things come up that we feel like it's necessary to have an executive session.
"It seems like this year it's probably going to be an election issue," Long said. "I don't think it's that big of an issue. ... We don't try to hide anything."
Four of the seven supervisors' seats, including Long's, will be up for election in November.
The closed-door practice is nothing new. Lindsay West was a member of the board for 12 years until she lost an election in 1987. She served when the county and Christiansburg negotiated a major annexation. "The fact is that there's a certain amount of business that really is impossible to do in public," she said.
County Administrator Betty Thomas said Montgomery - with 75,600 residents - has a greater volume of government business than many of its regional counterparts.
But the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, representing a population of 80,700, held only 59 executive sessions. And the Roanoke City Council, representing a population of 97,000, held 51.
Montgomery County Attorney Roy Thorpe attends most executive sessions to advise the board - and, he said, to make sure it follows the closed-meetings law. The balance between secrecy and openness is something that's come up from time to time since he joined the county government in 1984, Thorpe said.
He has warned the board about the limits of the law. In an Oct. 7, 1991, memo for instance, Thorpe said as long as talk centered on landfill issues that would be included in a contract, the board was complying with the law. "General discussion of solid waste management without more, would not in my opinion qualify for executive session discussion," Thorpe wrote.
Not all Montgomery board members agree with the closed-door practice, but they almost always go along with it.
"I can't defend the purpose of an executive session if someone else calls it," Supervisor Joe Gorman said. "I disagree with the fact that we've had so many ... but the content has been strictly in compliance" with the law.
Before entering executive session, the board must have an on-the-record vote. Only 12 times last year did anyone vote against going behind closed doors. Of those instances, only twice did anyone beside Supervisor Jim Moore vote "no."
(In 1993, Moore campaigned against secrecy with a binder of landfill-related "classified" reports secured with a chain and padlock. The board didn't "declassify" the outdated reports - most dating from October 1991 - until February 1994.)
In late October, the board held a retreat to hash out issues, including making meetings more efficient. Last year, eight of its 24 regular meetings adjourned after midnight, including three after 1 a.m. The latest was 1:40 a.m., according to official minutes. In every case, a lengthy, closed-door session preceded adjournment. Eight of the board's 17 special meetings went past 10 p.m., including all five special meetings with executive sessions.
Don Lacy, a Virginia Tech professor and expert in local government, runs orientation programs for newly elected supervisors and council members statewide. Lacy, a former Montgomery School Board member and possible Gorman opponent in the fall, said the real question with executive sessions is whether the material has to be behind closed doors, and if so, can the board stay focused. "The danger that always exists [is that] if you stay in executive session very long, other things tend to wander into the discussion," Lacy said.
Moore said board members can think they've come to a consensus, but not really have agreement. "One of the problems ... is you don't cast any votes, so you don't get any decisions made. What you get is a lot of opinions expressed."
by CNB