From maintaining roads to providing adequate emergency services
to subdividing land, you want to know how your tax money is being
spent, who influences policies and why regulations and budgets are
changed.
The public should hear those discussions because it is the
public’s business.
You are the public.
You want officials to discuss these issues in open meetings. You
don’t want officials who emerge from closed-door sessions and
announce decisions without explanation or feedback.
Officials who prefer closed sessions because they dislike public
debate aren’t serving your interests. Secrecy fosters suspicion and
distrust. It can breed corruption and bad government.
In Elbert County, we have seen what happens when school, town,
county commissioner and special district boards attempt to keep the
public in the dark. The community organizes recalls, the district
attorney starts investigations, the state treasurer tells board
members to pay attention and do their jobs and litigation often
follows. All of this takes time and money and whom do you suppose
pays for it? You, the tax payer.
Public access to government meetings and records helps ensure
that elected and appointed officials are working for the benefit of
the public. Public access to government meetings and records
nurtures confidence in the decisions made by officials. Public
access to government meetings and records is not a just a
constitutional protection for the press, but a constitutional
protection of each and every citizen.
This election year, you can help protect public interest and
your constitutional right by voting for candidates who will
practice open government on a daily basis.
You don’t want officials who resort to secret meetings or e-mail
conversations or conference calls to conduct public business. That
elitist attitude reflects a desire to manage the flow of
information and hinders your ability to evaluate their job
performance.
It’s also against the law. Colorado’s Open Meetings and Open
Records Laws clearly protect public access to government
information.
“In the deepest part of the country’s sense of its democracy and
freedom is a code that springs from its basic legal document,” said
Steve Isenberg chairman emeritus of the Adelphi University board of
trustees, and former publisher of New York Newsday, vice president
of the Los Angeles Times and chief of staff for New York City mayor
John Lindsay. “[It] shouldn’t make you arrogant, it shouldn’t make
you stuffy, it shouldn’t make you sanctimonious. It ought to make
you responsible and it ought to make you brave.”
Responsible and brave should characterize newspapers, government
officials and voters, who support, use and adhere to the
constitutional right to open government.
When you cast your ballot in the 2004 general election, vote for
candidates who will not only advocate open government, but who will
also encourage their elected colleagues to conduct the public’s
business in public, because open government will always be the best
form of government.