It is easy to be offended that any city councilor could summon the nerve to block the e-mail correspondence of a council colleague, based on sheer rudeness alone.
While rude, it is also appropriate.
Auburn City Councilor Kelly Matzen is exactly right to refuse to participate in what are essentially secret conversations among council members.
Freshman Councilor Bob Mennealy forwards a lot of e-mails to his peers. It is his way of documenting thoughts and presenting ideas to other councilors outside council chambers.
We applaud Mennealy’s commitment to his task, but even though he isn’t purposely inviting discussion of his ideas, pitching ideas by e-mail is identical to pitching ideas behind closed doors. The public, which is not included in Mennealy’s e-mail address book, is excluded from what is supposed to be an utterly public process.
Mennealy, as a citizen activist and advocate for open government, can understand the need for full disclosure because he has been kept at bay by Auburn City Hall and forced to wait for access to information himself.
He is so frustrated with what he considers the city’s interference with his right to public information that he filed a Freedom of Information request with City Hall last week for a detailed accounting of the city’s economic development spending for the past three years. This, after repeated attempts to ask for the records by e-mail and in person.
It’s a drastic step for a City Councilor to take, especially since he was asking for public documents that must be made accessible by statute to any person who asks. Mennealy isn’t just any person, though. He’s a growing thorn in the side of city government, a role he performs with vigor because it got him elected and he is committed to his watchdog role.
Good. Auburn city government needs that kind of scrutiny, but it is only effective if done openly.
Mennealy is frustrated by what he sees as inadequate and contrary information provided to councilors. He doesn’t like a pat meeting of orchestrated discussion and feels duty bound to pore over documents and account for every tax dollar. Good again.
While Mennealy is right to force full disclosure at City Hall, he is wrong to solicit conversation among councilors in secret.
Mennealy, through his e-mail network, may not be in direct violation of Maine’s Freedom of Access law with its tight open meetings parameters because he is not soliciting a meeting, but the end result of the virtual correspondence is that ideas are put on the table and considered by an official quorum. That kind of meeting and exchange of ideas must be done in the public eye.
Could the public ask to view the e-mail correspondence as a matter of public record? Sure, but that doesn’t excuse the secret meetings.
Mennealy is right to push open government in Auburn and we urge him to continue his scrutiny and hold the administration accountable for its actions and spending.
Matzen is right to support the practice that ideas springing from Auburn government are, he says, “best discussed at a public meeting where everyone can hear the discussion and can be involved.”
Together, scrutiny of records and commitment to open meetings is our guarantee of government accountability.
jmeyer@sunjournal.com
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