Quote of the Day.
By Jim Conley • Oct 26th, 2006 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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From Robert Kennedy, Jr. while speaking in Phoenix today:
“We have a negligent press in this country,” one that has “let the American people down” by not covering what he called the “worst environmental White House we’ve ever had in history, bar none.”
How very uncivil of him. Can’t he find something positive to say about the press and the president of this wonderful country? Doesn’t he know that they are good people who sometimes make bad decisions?
See, the reason we have a so-called negligent press is because the government doesn’t operate in the full light of day. And when you push them, they fight back by withholding records and crying to editors (and publishers) about the unfairness of pursuing the story. And that leaves the reporter with nothing to work with.
Want to see it for yourself? Ask someone on the sixth floor of Brookline Town Hall for public records. You’ll end up praying that negligence is the worst of your sins when you’re done.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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The open meeting and public records laws are valuable tools for transparency in governance. But, as Jim points out, here in Brookline there is a lot of inside massaging of these laws to blur their effects. If our Selectmen and other top officials have nothing to hide, then why would they be so uncooperative in complying with these laws? What we have here are professional part-time politicians and full-time professional managers who seek and maintain political power for their own personal benefit. What are the remedies for this opaqueness on the part of these insiders?
1. More public records requests, more carefully designed, with timely follow up appeals to the Secretary of State’s Office and an occasional appeal to the courts.
2. More open meeting law challenges filed with the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office for the large number of Executive Sessions; I’m sure our DA is willing to accommodate us, as violations of the open meeting law can be criminal and at least uncivil.
3. More protection for Town employees who may observe those up the line to reveal misdeeds of the latter. Right now, this has to be done over the transom but soon the front door is to be be opened, finally.
4. A change in governance from a town to a city form of government to make public officials more accountable, in place of the quaint and inefficient five part-time Selectmen (4 of them currently attorneys) serving as the Executive and 240 TMMs serving as the Legislature once or twice a year, a Tower of Babble setting. After all, the fiscal soundness of our Town and accountability of public officials is more important than providing our five Selectmen and 240 TMMs with what seems to constitute their social and sporting lives: playing politics part-time.