posted by Tom Moertel at 7:20 PM /
Over on his blog, Commissioner Dan Miller sheds some light on the proposed joint steering meetings between the municipality and the school board. It’s a topic we’ve discussed before on Blog-Lebo (19 comments; 5 comments), but it’s worth revisiting because, now that the commissioners have reconsidered the legality of closed meetings, it looks like there will be no meetings unless they are open. From Dan Miller’s blog posting:
In this case, that something we ordinarily could not measure is the school district’s preference for secrecy. (I use “secrecy” here not to be dramatic but to be precise: the content of the joint steering meetings, as originally proposed by the school district, was not merely to be closed to the public but also unrecorded and therefore never subject to public review.) Now, thanks to the counteroffer from the commission, we can learn whether the school board values secrecy more than better coordination with the municipality.
That’s because, now that closed meetings are off the table, the school board can’t have both secrecy and better coordination: it must choose between the two. If it chooses to go ahead with the open meetings, we’ll know it was willing to give up secrecy for better coordination with the municipality. But, if it chooses not to go ahead, we’ll know that secrecy was more important.
(My argument assumes that secrecy is not somehow essential to better coordination with the municipality. If you believe otherwise, that without secrecy the joint steering meetings cannot bear fruit, then I can understand why you might reject open meetings. But, if any elected representative believes this, I want to hear them say it in public, especially since what they do say in public is that they believe in openness and transparency.)
Pretty soon, the school board is going to have to decide whether to accept the commission’s offer of open meetings. When they do, we will learn something important about the school board’s values.
Upon hearing the Solicitor’s opinion in executive session, the Commission decided unanimously to rescind our offer to participate in private joint steering meetings and instead extended an offer for public meetings to begin asap. Four Commissioners were present at that time of this unanimous decision. (Emphasis in original.)What’s interesting is that this reversal creates what economists call a “natural experiment”: it’s when Nature changes some variable, normally beyond our control, in a way that allows us to measure something that ordinarily we could not.
In this case, that something we ordinarily could not measure is the school district’s preference for secrecy. (I use “secrecy” here not to be dramatic but to be precise: the content of the joint steering meetings, as originally proposed by the school district, was not merely to be closed to the public but also unrecorded and therefore never subject to public review.) Now, thanks to the counteroffer from the commission, we can learn whether the school board values secrecy more than better coordination with the municipality.
That’s because, now that closed meetings are off the table, the school board can’t have both secrecy and better coordination: it must choose between the two. If it chooses to go ahead with the open meetings, we’ll know it was willing to give up secrecy for better coordination with the municipality. But, if it chooses not to go ahead, we’ll know that secrecy was more important.
(My argument assumes that secrecy is not somehow essential to better coordination with the municipality. If you believe otherwise, that without secrecy the joint steering meetings cannot bear fruit, then I can understand why you might reject open meetings. But, if any elected representative believes this, I want to hear them say it in public, especially since what they do say in public is that they believe in openness and transparency.)
Pretty soon, the school board is going to have to decide whether to accept the commission’s offer of open meetings. When they do, we will learn something important about the school board’s values.
Labels: economics, joint steering committee, mt. lebanon commission, mt. lebanon school board, natural experiments
4 Comments:
The School Board's position is silly.
Did not the SB President publicly promise or at least promote transparency just a few weeks ago ?
She and her solicitor are now apparently unable or unwilling to provide a clear, convincing, legal and public argument for secrecy to justify this contrarian posture.
I personally do not believe that the joint steering committee was ever legally constituted in the first place; and, I have also heard that some PA authorities believe that such committees, when legally constituted, are in fact governmental agencies, which in turn are subject to the open meetings and open records acts.
Bill Lewis
At the end of the 02.01.11 Policy Committee meeting podcast, I expressed my desire to have open Joint Steering Committee meetings. The SB was having open discussions about TIF guidelines, but were going to carry them over to the Joint Steering Committee meetings where they would go back to private discussions. I guess they were just teasing about keeping everything public.
Also, in a former comment that you linked to this thread, Tom, I made this comment: "Commissioners Joe (Ward 3)and Raja (Ward 1) voted against open meetings even though Mt. Lebanon Solicitor Philip Weis advised the commissioners that the meetings would be better off open to the public." I made that comment based on the Feb. 17 Trib article. Dan Miller clarified that there were four commissioners who agreed to open Joint Steering Committee meetings with the fifth commissioner not present to "vote." For the record, Ward 1 (Raja) and Ward 3 (Joe) Commissioners did participate in private Joint Steering Committee meetings during 2010, as well as Joe agreeing to attend this year's Joint Steering Committee meetings during a Discussion Session, also recorded in a podcast. Maybe I had that in the back of my mind when I read the Feb. 17 Trib article.
Elaine Gillen
I'm guesssing they went with plan B.
Mum's the word.
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