YACK on: Transparency
Grant Sanders
I'm rather fortunate to be a columnist in this fine newspaper and not a reporter or an editor, which is something else entirely. While I have the freedom to write about bratwurst or my views on school

sports or my feelings on the relative importance of various arts and crafts activities, reporters and news editors are far more concerned with what is factual and newsworthy.

Similarly, my friends and brethren in the news business are big fans of the concept of transparency. And it's obvious why. When something in government is open, transparent and public, they can send a reporter there to cover it and fill their pages with information that the public can read.

This is what they do. If government were not transparent to some respect, they would have little on which to report. And columns like mine, which are comprised of equal parts opinion, humor and creative complaining, and in no way to be construed as "news" or even "facts," would then have to be 23,700 words each week instead of the 750-900 words I usually pen.

But let's get real here folks. A lot happens in government that is not transparent nor open to the public at all. With good reason.

For example, several issues such as real estate transactions and personnel issues, are discussed in what is known as "executive session." The public and the news media are not invited. Why? Because these discussions are of a sensitive nature and news of them could have serious negative ramifications. We also discuss union contracts in executive session and then the contracts are voted upon by the various unions and then vetted at town meeting, or not, as the case may be.

I think we can all see why some governmental goings-on should not be public, at least initially.

Furthermore, if you think that members of the various boards and committees only talk about the issues to one another when the meetings are called to order, you're really kidding yourselves. There's nothing illegal about two elected Planning Board members, for example, getting together over a spot of tea and discussing the finer points of 40B developments and how to grease the skids for them or throw up roadblocks in front of them. It happens all the time. Over tea, or coffee or fine, 12-year-old scotch or a pair of cell phones or over the cantaloupes in the Stop & Shop produce aisle. Deals and alliances are made. Opinions are changed. Votes are traded. The art of politics is practiced.

All unbeknownst to the public and the news media.

Is this a bad thing? Well, yes, it can be. If the people involved have the blackest of souls and the meanest and greediest of intentions, surely backroom deal-making and discussions can mean nothing but pain and injustice.

But, if the people involved are good, caring public servants who are working to ensure that the people's will is carried out, then, well, what's the problem?

This whole issue became top-of-mind for me about two weeks ago. It was then that I found out that self-appointed whistle-blower and Board of Selectman member, Brian Chadwick, had called some members of an informal budget workgroup to task for not posting their meeting due to the fact that three out of the seven or eight members in attendance were also members of the audit committee. And this, he claimed - wrongly - is a violation of the open meeting law. (Wrongly, because the audit committee is charged with looking backward at past spending and the budget committee is charged with looking forward, so there's really no overlap despite the financial undertones of both committees.)

Perhaps Brian does not like the fact that this informal group is meeting without him (he was a founding member of this formerly very informal group which is comprised of the chair and vice chair of the Board of Selectmen, Finance Committee and School Committee). Or maybe he still thinks he's a cop and that it's his job to pull committees and workgroups over to check their license and registration.

Who knows? All I know is this: this group does some important work. Work that has not been done in the past because it would tick off various "entitled" constituencies. They talk about things that should not be discussed in public until the details are worked out.

For example, they can, I'm assuming, discuss informally what would happen if a certain program or department did not get funding. They could possibly look at the salaries of department heads and muse aloud about how much the town could save if certain jobs were eliminated. They have the ability to run what-if scenarios on changing town employee benefits to something that is not rising at a rate of 8 percent to 9 percent per year. They can discuss strategies on how best to broach the funding subject with voters and Town-Meeting-goers.

Try doing that with newspaper reporters in the room. If these meeting were made public, how much of that brand of frank discussion do you think would take place?

Well, all of it, of course.

But it would take place in secret, among two or three people over tea, or coffee or fine, 12-year-old scotch or a pair of cell phones or over the cantaloupes in the Stop & Shop produce aisle. And not in one place among the six heads of the three most important boards in town government and a few invited guests.

At least the public is now aware that these meetings are taking place and that they will have an opportunity to weigh in when the blue-sky discussions are over and the resulting strategies are brought to the Board of Selectmen, the Finance Committee and the School Committee. Isn't that enough openness and transparency? It ought to be.

Or should we drive our elected and appointed officials deeper into the shadows in order to complete the very hard work that we elected then to do?

YACK on. I

Grant Sanders is the host of YACK, The Nantucket Online Community at yackon.com and he believes that committees are perhaps the worst way possible to get anything done ever. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Nantucket Independent.