Editorial: Government works best in the light

Government works best for the people when its actions and deliberations are carried out openly in the full view of the public. Last week’s meeting of the Clarendon Board of Aldermen, however, did not live up to that standard.

The Texas Open Meetings Act governs every meeting of every local government board in this state, and every intention of that statute is to give the most access to the public. It outlines the posting of agendas to insure the public has some warning of what is to be discussed at upcoming meetings; it prohibits a quorum of government boards from discussing, planning, or taking any kind of action outside of a public meeting; and it even provides certain protections for public employees.

It is a serious law, and one with criminal penalties for those who blatantly ignore its requirements. Organizations like the Texas Association of School Boards and the Texas Municipal League aren’t big fans of the Open Meetings Act. TML was even recently involved in a lawsuit that challenged the federal constitutionality of the act, but last month the US Supreme Court let stand a lower court’s ruling that upheld the Texas law.

The law does recognize that some items may need to be discussed privately, and it provides nine very specific reasons that a board may meet in a “closed session” or “executive session.”

Call it what you will, but it’s still a secret meeting… behind closed doors… out of the sunshine. They are sometimes necessary, usually innocuous, but always secret.

The law absolutely prevents a board from taking action in closed session. Anything they are going to do must be done when the board reconvenes in open session. But when a board meets in closed session and then doesn’t do anything, the public is left to wonder, “What just happened?”

One of the reasons a board may convene in secret is to consider “personnel matters,” and it was that exception, along with a blanket agenda statement reserving “the right to meet in closed session on any agenda item should the need arise…”, that the board hastily beat feet to the second floor of City Hall last Tuesday while deliberating city job descriptions.

The board certainly did not follow proper procedure when it moved into closed session, and there are substantial reasons to believe the closed session itself was improper.

According to the Texas Attorney General’s office, the Open Meetings Act “allows a governing body to hold a closed meeting to discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline or dismissal of a public officer or employee.” However, the exception only allows “the discussion of a particular person or persons in a closed meeting. A governmental body may not discuss general policies regarding an entire class of employees in a closed meeting held under the personnel exception. Such general policies must be addressed during the open portion of a meeting.”

Furthermore, the Attorney General’s office says, “…the more important the position being discussed, the more specific the posting will need to be in describing that position.”

In other words, if the city’s agenda had specified they were going to discuss the City Secretary’s position or duties, then a closed session would have been valid. But the agenda didn’t say that. It said they were going to discuss “updated job descriptions.” In other words, all job descriptions, not just City Secretary Machiel Covey’s. That’s too broad to go into closed session.

Another absolute provision of the Open Meetings Act is that the board is not allowed to meet in closed session if the employee in question requests the discussion be held in public. The discussion of “job descriptions” never made it to anyone’s job but Machiel Covey’s, and several observers felt she had been pretty clear that she was willing to discuss the agenda item in open session.

But that was before Alderman Debbie Roberts launched her inquest about Covey’s duties, and it was Roberts that later insisted the meeting be moved upstairs. It is possible that Roberts just wanted to privately ask Covey for her recipe for sopapilla cheesecake, but it is more likely that she was about to continue her litany of questions specific to the city secretary’s job and that she wanted to do so away from the scrutiny of the 17 citizens observing the meeting.

What really happened in City Hall’s modern day Star Chamber is known only to the seven people who climbed the stairs last week. It was a secret meeting after all.

All we know for sure is that they took no action on job descriptions that were previously described as being out of date from 2002 – which may or may not mean Covey has less work to do – and also took no action on the city’s chain of command – another topic that was far too broad for discussion in a closed session.

Clarendon’s citizens have a right to know what’s happening at City Hall, and the Board of Aldermen have an obligation to conduct their affairs as openly as possible. Moving forward, they need to do a better job than they did last week.