Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Government in the Sunshine

We do need to remember that the Ohio sunshine law is violated only when a majority of a governmental body meets privately, without notifying, and inviting, the press and the public. I've witnessed real sunshine law violations myself, but they are not that common.

We also need to remember that folks in public office do need to meet privately, in small non-majority gatherings, from time to time. It is impossible to engineer a compromise at a public meeting. Statements made by elected officials at such public meetings tend to get frozen in stone and, with no opportunity for informal give and take, such meetings turn into posturing contests.

You can't get much done that way, but I've seen it happen over and over again in our community.

So let's ease off the trigger a bit, and cut our elected leaders just a bit more slack. We'll get better government in return.


By Yosemite Pam

Disagree

Pam,

That is exactly what executive sessions are for. Please don't coddle these folks, the law is clear and no slack is required.

on the fence

Executive sessions only cover pending or active law suits, personnel matters, and the purchase of land. All other topics must be in the light of day not at the diner. The second issue is what is the topic being discussed. Political strategies and organizational issues are all OK to talk about. The problem is the perception of someone seeing this and not knowing exactly what the subject matter is.

I also can agree with Pam in that there should be some times that our government groups can get together out of the view of the public and talk about issues concerning us all. If some of these group issues could be resolved off line and out of view there might be less ego boosting and one upsmanship of certain elected leaders.