The pathetic excuses for continuing to keep the public out of D.C. government meetings are as instructive as they are outrageous. Council Member Carol Schwartz, R-at large, is afraid that citizens will start questioning all the yelling and cursing that is now kept behind closed doors. Others worry that taxpayers’ presence will put a damper on their private deliberations over how to spend public funds. School Board Vice President Carolyn Graham is even concerned that letting people know what’s really going on will inspire them to run to the courts and file a lawsuit or two.
If so, we say bring it all on. It would be good for city residents to observe the temper tantrums, back-room deal-making, political jockeying and all the rest of the dysfunctional behavior that now passes for serious deliberation in D.C. If their mere presence forces city agencies, the Board of Education and charter school operators (all of whom oppose such transparency) to change their behavior and clean up their act, so much the better.
D.C. law now only requires final votes to be open to the public. But by that time, all the major trade-offs and decisions have already been made — in secret. That’s why Council Members Vincent Orange, Ward 5, and Kathy Patterson, Ward 3, have proposed a bill to open any gathering where a quorum of lawmakers are present — including the Council’s breakfast meetings. The bill requires advance notice of all public meetings and includes penalties for not doing so. It would also limit the number of items that could still be discussed behind closed doors.
The proposal has the backing of Mayor Anthony Williams and a majority on the Council. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, testified that D.C. has “the most outdated, ineffective open meetings statute in the country” during a five-hour hearing by the Committee on Government Operations earlier this month. A city that shuts its own residents out of every decision-making step of the way has a lot of nerve complaining about being marginalized in congressional deliberations.
Schwartz thinks it would be politically “dangerous” for Council members “to air all of our dirty laundry in public.” But she needs to explain what’s safe about keeping the public in the dark. One of the bedrock principles of good government is that conducting public business in the open is the best way to keep it clean and responsive. That hasn’t changed since Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once famously remarked that “sunshine is the best disinfectant.”
And sunshine is exactly what D.C.’s polluted political culture needs a whole lot more of.
