Sunday, June 01, 2008
An end to Christiansburg's secrets
Christian Trejbal
Recent columns
- Baptists might leave downtown Blacksburg
- A theater rises between town and campus
- Making sense of local elections
- Voters have only themselves to blame
From the RoundTable blog
The Christiansburg Town Council will attend summer school Tuesday night. After their regular 7:30 meeting, council members will receive remedial lessons in open government. They need it.
The law is clear on these things. In Virginia, government is to be conducted in the sunlight of public scrutiny. With very few exceptions, citizens may ask for any government document and receive it. They need not say why they want it; officials must simply provide public records.
Meanwhile, elected officials must announce when and where their meetings will take place. When a council finance committee meets to talk about whether the town should raise taxes, it must let the public know and allow them to attend.
That's how it is supposed to work anyway, but as Roanoke Times reporter Donna Alvis-Banks discovered a couple of months ago, that's not the Christiansburg way. The town had been holding budget discussions behind closed doors without any public notice.
Officials say they have fixed the problem. They post announcements for meetings on a bulletin board in a corner of Town Hall.
That's a start, but the underlying disregard, underappreciation and sometimes disdain for openness that pervades the town will not be exorcised so easily.
The lax judgment that let officials for years think they could talk about how to spend the public's money without welcoming the public to the discussion could return.
Tuesday's session is supposed to prevent that. Mayor Richard Ballengee asked town attorneys to prepare a refresher course on the town's obligations under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
At first glance, Ballengee's choice is odd. After all, these same attorneys never mentioned that council members and Town Manager Lance Terpenny were breaking the law.
The attorneys, however, were only facilitators in the town's secrecy. The council deserves most of the blame.
Council members swear an oath to discharge the duties placed on them by the commonwealth. Even if there were room in that pledge to choose which duties are important -- and there is not -- the law that empowers citizens to hold their leaders accountable should be near the top of the list. That they held it in such low regard speaks poorly to their desire to serve the public.
Your thoughts
Newly elected Councilmen Henry Showalter and James Vanhoozier ought to show up for the meeting Tuesday to make sure they do not repeat their predecessors' mistake.
Town Manager Terpenny and the rest of the town staff should pay attention, too. Those career bureaucrats are supposed to help guide citizen lawmakers and keep them aware of their obligations. They encouraged the violations that occurred and still do not go out of their way to share information with the public.
And the citizens of Christiansburg should take advantage of this free lesson in what their government owes them. The town could not have gotten away with so much secrecy if the people had not blissfully looked the other way.
Some people have started to pay attention; they have started to use the law and make information available to all. Those few pioneers cannot bring about the needed paradigm shift alone. A fresh perspective on government will require far greater citizen involvement, and the people can learn about some of the tools at their disposal on Tuesday.
A representative from the Virginia Coalition for Open Government will attend Tuesday's meeting. If the council or town attorneys have any doubts about the law, they should not hesitate to call on his expertise.
Maybe the attorneys have boned up and have a ripping good lesson ready. They might pound home the lesson that open government is good government.
Just because the law allows the town to keep something secret does not mean officials must. They might inspire the council to incorporate true openness in the upcoming Web site redesign.
If the specifics of the law prove too complicated, though, here's an easy cheat. The mayor, council members, town manager and town staff should write this down, hang it in the back of the council chambers and plaster it on office walls: Government belongs to the people. Will a secret serve their interests or yours and your cronies'?
If you answer the people every time, you won't be far off.
Trejbal is an editorial writer for The Roanoke Times based in the New River Valley bureau in Christiansburg.
