Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009

Open government and closed doors

If Columbus Council is conducting city business, even informally, behind the locked doors of the Government Center lounge and conference room between the plaza and the council chambers, they are in violation of Georgia open meeting laws. Period. That is not a gray area or a loophole or a shadowy place in sunshine law.

That said …

If councilors are using the lounge/conference room for nothing more than coffee and informal conversation, then this is pretty much a non-issue.

The subject of the locked conference room arose last week. Previously, media representatives and private citizens were able to talk to councilors and other city officials when they gathered in that room prior to council meetings. Now the door is locked, and an authorized city employee key card is needed for entry.

The practical reality, of course, is that there is no way — especially in the era of telephones and e-mail and the other instant technology of communications — to prevent elected officials from conducting at least some official business away from the light of public scrutiny. It happens all the time. All that government watchdogs, whether they are media organizations or individual citizens, can do is expose such collusion when they learn of it.

But the matter of when informal interaction among officials becomes private handling of what is supposed to be public business isn’t always so clear cut. Every reporter who covers governing bodies for long will sooner or later come across those “pre-meetings” or “coffees” where it is clear the real decisions have been made before the process is officially played out in front of the microphones and cameras.

Yet that kind of familiar manipulation of the machinery of government doesn’t make every informal contact among public servants sinister or suspect. Common sense says sometimes people need to talk through things in a quieter venue, if for no other reason than just to be able to hear themselves think. City Manager Isaiah Hugley says the lounge is “a good environment to go for dialogue.”

OK … we get it, and we think most reasonable citizens would agree.

City Attorney Clifton Fay says that for councilors gathering in the conference room to be in violation of state law, there would need to be an agenda and formal discussion of official city business; Georgia Press Association attorney David Hudson says the standard is tougher than that: If a quorum — in the case of Columbus Council, six members — is present and there is any discussion of city business, public access is mandatory.

This is one of those “benefit of the doubt” things, and under the circumstances described, we’re inclined to say council is entitled to it. It is not a benefit officials should consider themselves at liberty to abuse.