Allot has been going on these days with various local governments. The Easton Area School Board is raising tax by more than 10%, issued a $36M dollar bond, and then EASD board refusal to renew the contract of the school district Human Resources Director. Williams Township has been in news about the expansion of their landfill and being sued in court for Supervisor meetings that may violate provisions of the state Sunshine Act. Forks Township has had its share of issues ranging from the a 2008 tax increase to the public financing of the Fire tower.
In each of these situations, the public expressed grave concerns about the transparency of the decision making process and the availability of critical information to the public on how these decisions were made. The public expressed their concerns by speaking out at local government meetings, writing letters to the editor, or by taking their grievances to court. It is hard to imagine a greater trust between a local official and the public, than the promise of open and honest government. This trust is a bond that enables the public to maintain faith in it's public institutions.
I understand it is hard to practice open government. The process is time consuming and may lead to public disagreements. But this is the nature of the beast.
I believe in each of these situations the affected local governments could have avoided these situations by practicing open government. By being open with the public, by providing relevant information about the facts surrounding the decision, and taking the time to actually listen and understand the public input. If the decision involved a specific person, then the privacy of that person needs to be honored, but the process used to make the decision needs to be shared with the public.
We need to remember that being a public official is not about meeting our needs, but meeting needs of the community. These are the people who have a placed a scared trust in us to make the best decisions possible.
1 comment:
I don’t understand why more people don’t go to their local government meetings. I am the first to agree that they can be boring at times but you can fix that by reviewing agendas on line to see if the meeting has any interest. Or just go but take something to read during dull moments. The degree of openness at meetings increases in direct proportion to the number of people who attend. You can also judge openness in the manner in which the meetings are run. There must be interaction between the audience and the officials through public comment. All public officials whether elected or appointed are obligated to explain their votes.
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