Mississippi’s so-called sunshine laws are not well-understood, even by those who serve in public office and are supposed to follow the rules for public records and public meetings.
One of the most common misperceptions is interpreting exemptions in the laws as mandates: that is, if the laws allow something to be done or kept in secret, some confuse that to mean those matters cannot or should not be handled in the open.
There have been a couple of recent occasions at public meetings in Greenwood where this confusion has been evident.
Dorothy Glenn, a first-term member of the Greenwood City Council, caused a stir when she wanted to openly discuss during a Feb. 1 council meeting the salary of Bettie Ray, the assistant to Mayor Carolyn McAdams. In specific, Glenn wanted to know how much Ray had received in pay raises, and how that compared to some other city employees.
That soon prompted an exchange of letters to this newspaper, with Ray claiming that what Glenn had done was “inappropriate and perhaps even illegal,” and Glenn firing back in defense of her inquiry.
Appropriateness is in the eye of the beholder. What Glenn did was unusual for a City Council meeting, that’s for sure, but as to the law, she was on solid ground.
Although many personnel records are exempt from disclosure, the names and compensation of those on the public payroll are not. It doesn’t matter whether the public employees are elected, appointed or hired. If they draw a taxpayer-funded salary, their compensation is public record.
For good reason.
Every public employee works for the taxpayers. Their immediate supervisors are simply the taxpayers’ surrogates.
Ray may take her instructions from the mayor, but in principle she works for each one of us. And the law says that as her employer, we have a right to know how much we are paying her, if we are so inclined to want to know.
That may make government employees who are not in the public eye, such as Ray, understandably un-comfortable. Most people, regardless of where they work, would rather their salaries not be broadcast for everyone to know. But those are not the rules in government service, and anyone who works for the government should know that going in.
Besides, there is another good reason for the compensation of public employees to be a public record. If pay was exempt from disclosure, the opportunity for shenanigans would be immense. Government officials could pay exorbitant salaries to their friends and cronies, and no one would be the wiser. A line item in the government body’s budget might look out of whack, but there would be no way to know who is getting what unless an insider leaked the information.
As with most sunshine laws, Mississippi’s Public Records Act helps keep government honest.
The other sunshine law, the Open Meetings Act, got an interesting workout at one of the wilder public meetings I have seen in a while.
Back in early October, when the oversight board of the Convention and Visitors Bureau was splitting along racial lines over whom to hire for the executive director’s job, some on the board became uncomfortable about what was being said or inferred about one of the candidates, all of which was being recorded by The Taxpayers Channel.
Suresh Chawla, then the chairman of the board, tried twice during that two-hour-long wrangling to get the other members to agree to go into executive session. Both times they rejected his suggestion.
They had every right to do so. The Open Meetings Act provides a handful of reasons for which a public body can go into a closed-door session. One of those exemptions is to discuss certain aspects of personnel, such as their character or professional competence. But the law does not mandate an executive session. If the majority of a board wants everything to be said in the open, it can make that happen.
It’s not often that a public board errs on the side of openness. Most always, it’s the opposite. The CVB board itself must have had second thoughts. At its next two meetings, it invoked the exemption and went into executive session to continue its discussion on the candidates and settle on Patrick Ervin for the job.
Shutting out the public from the debate did provide a veneer of civility, even though the decision was not unanimous, required a do-over two months later because of a procedural flaw, and produced a reverse discrimination lawsuit from the runner-up, Ashley Farmer.
Which was better? The messy open session, or the closed orderly ones.
As a journalist, of course, I go for the open. It would have made better copy, if we had covered that meeting. More importantly, it vividly illustrated the divisions and concerns on the CVB board, of which the public should be aware.
It also was in better keeping with the democratic principle that undergirds Mississippi’s sunshine laws. The citizens’ right to know about their government is more important than any other consideration. It doesn’t matter whether openness is at times inconvenient or unruly or embarrassing. It produces better and more honest government than the alternative.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
