Friday, August 01, 2008
Editorial: Open government on display in Pulaski
The town demonstrates a fresh commitment to the public with some recent actions.
From the RoundTable blog
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Local elected officials throughout Southwest Virginia might want to check out what's going on in Pulaski. The town council there is putting on a show of how government should work.
In May, Pulaski voters chose some fresh, young faces to serve on the council, and the new council is doing things differently. Already it has shown a preference for openness that was sometimes missing before.
Voters also promoted Councilman Jeff Worrell to mayor, and thereby created a vacancy. The town charter gives the new council a month and a half to appoint a replacement.
Too often, elected bodies in the same situation publicly ask for applications but do the real selection work behind closed doors. They hold quiet interviews and private discussions, presenting the winner who will represent the people as a fait accompli.
That isn't how Pulaski is handling it. The council publicly solicited applications, and then kept things public. It provided copies of the applications to anyone interested. It invited citizens to watch last week's interviews. And on Tuesday, it will deliberate in open session before choosing.
Throughout the process, citizens have had many opportunities to share their thoughts on the candidates. As long as council members aren't spending this final weekend colluding by phone or e-mail, citizens have no reason to complain about the process.
Indeed, reinvigorated citizen activism generated another smart move by at least one council member. Morgan Welker, one of those fresh, young council members elected in May, ran with ties to Citizens for the Betterment of Pulaski.
Like most such groups, CBP has an agenda. Generally, it wants the town to improve. Specifically, of late, it wants the town manager fired and some other changes made at town hall.
Hearing that, Welker announced he would stop attending the group's meetings. He has rightly recognized that as a councilman his responsibility is to the entire community, not just one group.
That doesn't mean he can't work with CBP and other citizens groups. Their voices are welcome additions to the public conversation in a town where citizen participation had ebbed. Welker just shouldn't give special treatment to one.
Roanoke, Blacksburg, Radford and other communities might get most of the attention, but some of the best government in Southwest Virginia occurs in Pulaski these days.
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