Open meetings not necessarily open government

    News people write a lot about open government meetings, but there's a difference between open government and open meetings.
    You can have all the open meetings in the world, but an open and inclusive government is tough to have when the press fails to vet the candidates before the general elections.
     At an open meeting, like a forum for candidates, everyone can see the candidates and hear their responses to questions. But the openness there is useless if questions and answers are not followed up with increasing incisive and probing questions.
     And what point is there in insisting on open meetings if the reporters assigned to the beat show up late, leave early, or fail to write anything on a given topic because of overwork, lack of space or time?  Time and again, I have seen agenda items covered in open session go unreported, or comments made by elected officials or key staff go without reporting. It was discussed, in open session, but only a few took note, and if it becomes controversial later, the charge is that it was hidden, or being pushed through without enough public input.
        Then there is the Who Cares test. I used to ask reporters to ask the question, Who Cares? when deciding how much time to put into an issue. Sometimes, the things people care about are never part of a public meeting, and all too often, the things covered in public meetings are going to fail the who cares test.
     A case in point is the mystery of the missing portraits. Who removed the official portraits of the governor and vice governor from the lobby of the county office building?  Some people -- Democrats, in particular -- care a lot. Most people could not care less that the pictures were there in the first place -- or not.
     But the story behind the story is, How petty can the partisanship get if an elected commissioner, or followers, counted coup by deposing not only the incumbent commissioners, but the imagery of the political opposition at the state level?
And was it a unilateral decision by one commissioner, an semi-executive decision by a staffer, or did it come as a directive following a coffee-break chat between a couple or three commissioners?
     The press allows candidates to get away with broad statements.  Populist candidates also get a lot of soft tosses. When a person seeking office claims to be speaking "for the people," no one asks how they know what the people want. Are they going by the pats on the back they get from people who share their politics, or special interest groups?  How broad a spectrum of the population does the candidate serve, and what would that mean if they are elected?
     It's a generality, but my experience has been that the broader the spectrum of the population served by a candidate, the more responsive they will be to questions, and the more depth in their answers. The narrower the support -- although it may be noisy and passionate -- the more apt you are to get slogans and platitudes as responses.
     Volume of rhetoric is not openness.
     The Carroll County Board of Commissioners have been open about the fact that they do not feel compelled to conduct all business they might want to have with department heads. The reason is valid; when fewer people know what you're talking about until you're ready for the release of a plan, the less chance of having to deal with criticism before you actually have a complete plan of action.
     That's the reason, but that does not make it right.
     This board, in particular, gained popularity with certain constituencies -- enough to get a few thousand votes in a small district -- by claiming that the previous commissioners were overreaching -- getting out too far in front on planning and zoning, or airport renewal, or discussions about alternatives to state police. They were able to pick up the banner of opposition because they knew the discussions were taking place; the previous two boards were the most open in the history of the county. But because most people missed the initial discussions, or because the first talks were never reported in the local papers, the would-be candidates gained traction by accusing the elected officials then in office of making final decisions --"done deals" -- when the fact is they processes were just beginning.
    
     The spotlight gets hotter after the election. The candidates are now the insiders, the populists are now the guardians of the status quo as they deem appropriate. The press is less enamored. And the criticism nags.
     A week or so ago, I wrote that the wheels are wobbling on Commissioner Haven Shoemaker's cart, as evidenced by his diatribe in the letters to the editor about critics. On the heels of that, the word is out that Commissioner Richard Rothschild has informed former county employee Neil Ridgely that he will be sued if he does not cease what Rothschild considers slander and malicious commentary on the web site www.Carrollinchaos.com.
     There are other blogs created to comment on the local political scene. One of the more civil and relevant ones is www.commonsensecarroll.com. The commentary on that site is pointed, but intelligent. Such was not the case with some of the products used to stir up opposition to previous boards, and push for neo-conservative candidates like Rothschild, Frazier, Shoemaker and Howard.
     One of Rothschild's most ardent supporters is known to support the creation of web sites and pop-up regional tabloids whose primary purpose has been to trash the reputations of people considered too "liberal" to be in office in Carroll County. The definition of liberal includes what more enlightened people might think of as moderate, or open-minded. Those publications were brutal in their malicious attacks on the last two boards of commissioners, particularly board president Julia Gouge. She believes the constant harangue eroded faith in her, and she's probably right.
     Shoemaker and Rothschild, in particular, and Robin Frazier and Doug Howard, to a lesser degree, will have their detractors, and they should accept it as part of the job; they like to read good reviews from like-minded conservatives, so they should know that what applies to others in the public eye also applies to them:  Don't start believing your own public relations press clippings, and don't ignore the bad reviews. You learn more from the latter.