Making it public, tranparency is crucial

The following editorial was published in the Gillette News Record on Jan. 15. The opinion is specific to a situation in Gillette but we feel that the message featured in the
editorial is relevant in Weston County and across the state. Background information can be found on page 13 in the story “Gillette mayor resigns over texts”
 
Government is supposed to be accountable to those who it represents. That’s why it’s supposed to be public. Laws at all levels of government are in place to ensure that agencies acting on our behalf do so in the public eye, and thus can answer to us.
Only in rare instances are governments allowed to discuss things behind closed doors, and when those
exceptions are made, they are for good reason.
The text messages between former mayor Louise Carter-King and administrator Patrick Davidson show that the city abused those laws repeatedly.
The Campbell County Attorney’s office is looking into the emails to see if there was prosecutorial misconduct. And the city administrator
indicated this week that the city is considering hiring an outside party to consider whether there were misdeeds.
Both investigations should answer questions about whether laws were broken. They also should serve notice to all local governmental entities that an executive session should never be a place where officials discuss more than the very limited business for which the session was called. Votes are never allowed because those who are elected or appointed to serve us must vote in public so that those they represent can know how they stand.
It has been apparent for some time that those basic tenants were forgotten at city hall. They were most apparent when it came to filling vacancies on the City Council and votes were taken within an executive session.
The texts that Davidson released two weeks ago show just how badly abused they were — by Davidson himself, a former city attorney who should have known better, and by Carter-King and the council, who went along with bad advice even though a glance through the statute and their own common sense should have prompted a protest.
“Good morning mayor,” Davidson wrote on April 13, 2020. “Thoughts on having an exec tomorrow night? We can visit on Tim’s thoughts on pool, utilities, budget etc”
“Might as well,” Carter-King responded. “… They might bring other stuff up too.”
“I kind of wondered if there were other things, even if just venting, that they might have,” Davidson said.
“Tim and Coach have both vented. I expect Tim to tomorrow night. Who knows with shay,” Carter-King said, referring to council members Tim Carsrud, Shawn Neary (a former Pronghorns coach) and Shay Lundvall.
“Venting on,” he questioned.
“Tim streets and picking up garbage. Coach mostly sweeping,” she said.
It’s fine for a council member to vent to another council member one-on-one. It’s fine for them to vent during a public meeting.
But it is against the law for them to use an executive session to vent on topics not related to personnel, litigation, land acquisition or a few other things that rarely, if ever, come before a city council.
Most of the items they were going to talk about deal with city priorities — do we sweep the streets when we’re shut down during a pandemic? — or budget — if we do, how do we pay for it? How do we open the pool? Those items absolutely should be part of a public discussion. There is no exception under Wyoming open meetings laws to discuss basic government spending in private. Spending money is a fundamental government function, and one that rightly deserves the most scrutiny from the public. That’s why it must be discussed in public.
Two days later, they expanded the scope of the executive session to include even more budget and
operations items.
Davidson listed the other topics for discussion in that private session:
“Exec: Fire/Camplex funding
Splash pad/football
Wastewater/operations general
Public Health/golf course”
He also wanted to talk about an op-ed piece he wrote and get their opinions of it — clearly not a topic for executive session.
In June 2020, after dealing with protests over Lundvall’s forced resignation, the two again discussed scheduling an executive session that showed just how far they would go to abuse the open meetings law.
“We run into a problem,” Davidson texted. “Shay no longer employee so longer personnel and with Bob saying no attorneys it is no longer litigation.”
“We could take apps for ward 3 and use that as basis for exec. Whether discussed or not,” he added a few minutes later. “Giving you way to have a meeting covering personnel.”
Carter-King later agreed that they would discuss “litigation, personell (sic) during the executive session.
City Council meetings have become increasingly scripted over the past decades. Usually, the council has few comments and those that are made are often stilted. Clearly, the substantive discussions have come before rather than in front of the public. They’ve even arranged who will
make motions.
In their texts, Carter-King and Davidson ridiculed the County Commission for its less orchestrated meetings, but at least in those meetings, discussion often flows more freely.
We now know that
substantive discussion and decision making at city hall was happening illegally.
Clearly, the City Council must rid itself of the notion that discussion is an icky thing unsuitable for the public’s ears. In fact, discussion and effective reasoning make government palatable to those who sense that things aren’t quite right.
The city has a chance to cleanse itself of bad habits, and started on that route this week with a work session on Wyoming’s open meetings laws. It’s an important
first step.
But there must be many more to follow to convince the public that the city truly has the public’s best interests at heart.