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As surprising as this may sound, there was a time when this writer wasn’t as concerned as perhaps he should have been whenever local government officials sat down to conduct the public’s business.
My feeling back in 1973 when our family moved to Fredericksburg was that each of us could be relatively secure in believing that all elected representatives here were honest, conscientious and responsible people who were intent on doing a good job in performing whatever their fellow citizens had elected them to do.
The thought that any of them would ever intentionally do anything behind closed doors to compromise the public’s trust really never entered my mind.
And even today, I can’t recall that anything’s ever happened here over those 36 years to cause me to question the performance and dedication of our hometown’s elected officials.
Still, human nature being what it can be, this rather naive approach is really a luxury that no member of the Fourth Estate should tolerate on be-half of those in our communities who are relying on us to keep an eye on things for them.
These thoughts came to mind a few months ago after hearing about the legal efforts originating out of Alpine, Texas, to challenge the state’s criminal penalties for violating the Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA) which was passed by the Texas Legislature in 1967 and subsequently strengthened in 1973 following the infamous “Sharpstown Scandal.”
As things now stand under TOMA, it is illegal for a member or members of a government body to conspire to circumvent the law “by meeting in numbers less than a quorum for the purpose of secret deliberations.” An offense is punishable by a fine of $100 to $500 and/or confinement in a county jail for one to six months.
However, the Texas Municipal League — a lobbying organization funded by taxpayer dollars from its 1,100-member cities — recently passed a resolution seeking to pass a law providing “less restrictive penalties that balance the First Amendment right of government officials” who violate the Texas Open Meetings Act.
Because I don’t pretend to possess a background capable of arguing the various strong points of this issue, our newspaper’s approach ever since we first heard about the TML challenge has been to rely on the wisdom of people who have had a lot more legal expertise than I was able to get out of a college journalism law course many moons ago.
As a result, the pages of our publication in recent weeks have let the words of open government champions like Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, former Texas Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby and Texas Daily Newspaper Association / Texas Press Association Legislative Advisory Chairman Fred Hartman explain the issue and underscore how stripping away the law’s enforcement mechanism would seriously weaken TOMA’s integrity and perhaps even make it ineffective.
For example, Hartman recently wrote that “the intent of the Texas Open Meetings Act is to prevent decisions about government business from being made in secret, and the people behind this lawsuit should stop misrepresenting what the law says. Elected officials aren’t prohibited from speaking to each other outside of a meeting. They’re prevented from conspiring ‘to circumvent’ the law by making secret decisions.”
Meanwhile, Hobby pointed out that “the First Amendment cannot be a shield to prevent accountability of public officials, but guarantees access to the workings of these govern-mental bodies just like it does to our courts.”
In the same vein, Abbott argued that the Texas Open Meetings Act furthers — rather than frustrates — fundamental First Amendment values. Elected officials work for the people, the AG said, and do not have a First Amendment right against the very people they serve.
From where I sit, it would seem that the argument by some in favor of watering down TOMA’s punishment provisions because they think they’re too strident makes about as much sense as weakening the state’s drinking-and-driving laws because few of us would want to face the music under the state’s tough DWI laws should we ever get pulled over after doing too much “celebrating” at a party.
Essentially, like most laws, TOMA focuses on the exception to the rule — not on those who abide by it.
I truly believe that the vast majority of our communities’ elected officials are indeed fair-minded, well-meaning folks. They are our neighbors, the guy we run into at the grocery store or the lady sitting in the next pew at church, and they’re all intent on doing a good job to represent us in city, county, school and other forms of government.
Meanwhile, as long as everyone understands that the “open” in “open meetings” really means what it says, no elected official should have anything to worry about — no matter how severe the penalty for violating the law might be.
The need for upholding TOMA’s stringent penalty characteristics brings to mind something the character Woodrow F. Call told his son Newt in Larry McMurtry’s book Lonesome Dove about taking a gun along on a night ride: “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”
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