Now that elections are past, municipal and school board leaders need to engage in one of their most important duties: learning how to fulfill Texas’ opengovernment requirements mandated under law.
Government should be transparent at all costs. Newly elected and appointed public officials must comply with open-records and open-meetings statutes in order to serve the people.
It wouldn’t hurt for incumbents to reacquaint themselves with the laws as well.
For decades, Texas journalists have fought to create and enhance these Sunshine Laws, which shine a light on how the government conducts the people’s business using the people’s money.
Violations of these cherished edicts can result in fines and even criminal charges, but there should be no reason why any member of a city council or school board would want to circumvent them in the first place.
A simple online search indicates several organizations provide the required training: the Texas Municipal League, the Texas Association of Counties, the Texas Association of School Boards, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the V.G Young Institute of County Government and more.
Indeed, many media outlets usually have at least one veteran journalist willing to go over the finer points of public disclosure with local politicians and government functionaries.
Elected officials are not the leaders of the populace, they are its servants.
Most office seekers are volunteers –– neighbors and friends –– who ran for election with the best of intentions to make society better. Their burden is a heavy one, but they must carry out their actions in front of the public whenever possible, save for those narrowly mandated items allowed by executive sessions.
Even then, any vote must be taken in public.
Now a lawmaker wants to add another layer of transparency. House Bill 4991, sponsored by state Rep.
Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, requires “open meetings and public-information training for certain public officials and attorneys regarding the open meetings and public information laws.”
The bill’s aim is to further strengthen the public’s right to know. Many councils and school boards, as well as other governmental entities, hire contract attorneys to represent them.
While these counselors might be good in a courtroom or a negotiation, not all of them are trained in open-records laws.
Even without this proposed legislation, attorneys hired by school boards or councils should undergo this training.
Though sometimes elected officials chafe under the state’s Sunshine Laws, these statutes exist for a good reason: keeping government open to scrutiny and fully accountable to the people.
That’s how a constitutional federal republic is supposed to work.
Thomas Edwards
Comment
Comments