Local agendas are a little part of a bigger problem

The White House and local politicians have something in common: They are all in the thrall of a trend, evolving over a couple decades or more, to keep more secrets from the people they serve.

Last week The Washington Post reported that President Joe Biden was “leaning toward” releasing information that Congress has requested.

Congress has a duty to provide oversight over the executive branch. Giving information to Congress that it needs to perform that constitutional duty should be a given unless blocked by the third branch of government, the courts.

Presidents, though, have been declaring “executive privilege” while in office, creating out of whole cloth a new power and precedent of the executive to evade and thwart oversight of Congress.

At the other far end of the political system, local elected bodies have increasingly adopted a policy, perfectly legally, to include on their agendas, usually at the bottom, an “executive session,” — that is, a closed session of local lawmakers allowed by state law under certain exemptions to its Open Public Meetings Act.

There’s nothing wrong with a city council or school board meeting in executive session. But the now near-universal practice of including such a session in agenda boilerplate should give us pause.

Certainly, including it in the preset starting point of every agenda for a meeting of the people’s representatives in government is simply a matter of clerical convenience for an employee of the executive branch, and it can be ignored if there is no need for a closed session.

But secrecy by government should never be a matter of convenience. Establishing it as one in such a mundane way undermines the very spirit of open government that the Open Public Meetings Act established in no uncertain terms:

“The legislature finds and declares that all public commissions, boards, councils, committees, subcommittees, departments, divisions, offices, and all other public agencies of this state and subdivisions thereof exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of this chapter that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.

The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.” — Revised Code of Washington  42.30.010.

Including “Executive Session” in the agenda boilerplate for a meeting of a city council or hospital district won’t lead to an unnecessary war or an unpopular national health policy, but it does encourage and enable the people and the press to shrug off a closed meeting as normal instead of an exception. And it regularly allows leadership to only check with employees at the meeting on whether closing it is necessary — without giving due consideration to the question beforehand.

Worse, the very acceptance of such a policy as normal gives root to an insidious apathy that at a national level can lead to secrecy at the top. Like our right to vote, open government accountable to those governed should never be taken for granted.

President Biden should lean away from “executive privilege.” And local governing bodies should rethink the practice of including “Executive Session” at the bottom of every agenda, needed or not.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher