FROM THE EDITOR
The following is a familiar refrain we in the media sound each year in the wake of municipal and school board elections: New and current political representatives must ensure they comply with Texas’ open-government requirements mandated under law.
Government functions involving city councils and school boards must be transparent, which means following openrecords and open-meetings statutes.
The state’s Sunshine Laws dictate how officeholders elected by the people conduct the people’s business in the open while spending the people’s money.
Fines and even criminal charges are possible for violations. However, folks who ran for office to serve their constituents shouldn’t want to circumvent these laws in the first place. That’s called public service.
Several organizations provide the required training to follow open-meetings and open-records statutes: 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.
Elected officials are the servants of the populace. It is understood most are well-meaning volunteers –– neighbors and friends –– who ran for office to make their town or their schools better.
The demands on their time, their families and sometimes even their livelihoods should not be forgotten.
Because they are key figures in their communities, that makes it even more vital they carry out governance in the most transparent fashion possible.
The exception is those narrowly mandated items allowed by executive sessions. Even then, a vote on such matters has to be taken in public. Backroom deals outside of the public’s scrutiny are prohibited by law, and rightly so.
Sadly, a Texas bill introduced during the 89th legislative session that would have required even more public-information training for government officials died in the Senate.
House Bill 4991, sponsored by state Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, would have required “open meetings and publicinformation training for certain public officials and attorneys regarding the open meetings and public information laws.”
The bill’s aim was 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 familiar with open-records requirements.
Even without the legislation, attorneys hired by school boards or councils should undergo this training. The same goes for public information personnel.
Though elected officials sometimes consider Sunshine Laws an impediment to “getting the job done,” these statutes exist for a good reason: The government must remain fully accountable and transparent to the people it serves.
Meanwhile, it is important to note that several governmental bodies ranging from the Williamson County Commissioners Court to Hutto and Taylor city councils and school boards have staffers trained in public media who are doing an excellent job posting agendas, updates, videos and news alerts. Those are steps in the right direction.
Agree? Disagree? Send your thoughts to thomas. [email protected]. We may run your comments as a letter to the editor, which we reserve the right to edit for length, taste and grammar.
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