In places such as Moody County, it’s fairly easy to feel close to government.
The elected officials tend to be neighbors, friends or at least someone whose name is familiar. But sometimes, people forget one leg of government is, themselves as taxpayers and citizens. And government can often feel so distant, even in a small town or county.
Government isn’t and shouldn’t be a private club of people who sit around board tables and hammer out the details of the laws, rules and regulations that citizens will live by. Granted, someone has to be responsible to do this important work.
Kudos to those who are willing and want to run for public office to take on that task. They often don’t get enough thanks.
With several positions either open or up for re-election in all the communities in the county, it’s a great time for people to examine whether they could give of themselves to shape the communities from seats in government.
The deadline for returning signed petitions is Feb. 23 to be on the April 10 ballot.
When people run and if elected, there’s an important thing to remember though. Working for citizens means working in public where regular folks can see and hear what is happening. I like the old adage, “Do the public’s work in public.”
No one should tolerate it any other way. If a person isn’t willing to be held accountable for their decisions made in government, they frankly shouldn’t run.
It sounds simple on the surface but sometimes things get mucked in the mire of human nature. For some reason, once someone is elected, there can be all kinds of reasons they don’t particularly want people to know exactly everything they talk about and stand for. They like to keep it private.
At the most recent city council meeting, the council, its lawyer Paul Lewis and administrator Don Whitman voted to go into executive session, citing the rule that lets them do so to talk about a personnel issue or a potential employee.
Come to find out, there wasn’t actually a person that they were talking about by name. Instead, they wanted to talk about the qualifications and expectations for a new city administrator. The city is closing applications yet this week for the position that will become vacant in April.
Executive sessions are secret. If any action is needed, the board must vote in public after coming out of the closed-door meeting.
Here’s another thing that people sometimes forget. A city council, school board or county commission can always have their discussion in public because they are not required to shut out you as citizens.
Could the council have talked about qualifications and expectations in public? Yep, easily. However, they have said that while they didn’t mention anyone by name, they thought someone in the public might be able to identify candidates who had applied just by describing some things about them.
What the council did talk about when it opened the doors again so the public could come back into the meeting room was how they as a council would be the one looking at candidates. Before that, the plan was that a committee of four would narrow down the applicants.
It also means that the Flandreau Development Corporation, which had asked to offer opinions on candidates when it comes to their economic development skills, won’t be involved in helping the city find its next administrator. Somewhere along the line, the city council came to that consensus but didn’t need to vote on it.
Whether you agree or disagree with that decision, it should be easy to see that there was never a reason to meet in private to talk about job candidates that haven’t even been through a vetting process at all. And certainly, we can hope the council didn’t talk in private about the FDC’s role in helping because that wouldn’t meet the requirements of an executive session.
Often people will say that members of every governmental body talk about things in closed sessions that they shouldn’t. It’s common and there’s nothing anyone can do, defenders say.
That’s not the expectations under state law and it shouldn’t be your expectations either.
The first step in terms of a solution is to elect government representatives that promise to get up from their chair and walk out of the room in protest if a government body is meeting in private about something that should be the public’s business. It fairly easy as caring citizens to show up at meetings and observe the workings of government.
Keeping the public’s business public is too valuable to ignore potential violations. It’s the citizen’s rights to monitor secrecy and demand accountability. You own it, after all.
