Under state law, there are several reasons why a city council might vote to demand that the audience, including members of the media, be temporarily banished from the council chambers.
However, it is this paper’s opinion that these closed “executive” sessions should be severely restricted. The public’s business is best done in public. Executive sessions should be limited to confidential personnel issues and the like and should not include any discussions involving how taxpayer dollars are being committed or allocated.
Our Founding Fathers realized that for democracy to work, transparency is a must. That is why our Constitution has an elaborate system of checks and balances. Underlying this system is the assumption that elected officials are there representing the people who elected them, and they work for the public – not the other way around. How many situations have you encountered in your workplace where someone who works for you has clandestine meetings that you are not allowed to know about?
Last year, at least one member of the Isle of Palms Council found out the hard way the consequences of being transparent with her voters. Katy Miars wrote an op-ed in The Island Eye News giving her views about a commercial transaction discussed in executive session. For her efforts at transparency, the Council voted in favor of a resolution to hold a public disciplinary hearing for violating the city’s recently-passed code of conduct. In this paper’s opinion, the resolution should have amended the code of conduct to provide greater transparency.
We urge elected officials in the various islands we serve to severely restrict executive sessions and better define when they can and cannot be used. Greater transparency will strengthen the democratic process and increase the confidence of the citizens in their elected officials.