Training for thee, training for me

The News Letter Journal would like to applaud the Newcastle City Council for taking a step to ensure that the members of local boards possess the training and knowledge they need to appropriately spend taxpayer dollars and make decisions on behalf of the public.

But we would be remiss if we didn’t share some concerns about the council’s decision at their July 1 meeting to require service providers and/or 501c(3) that receive funds from the city to complete the board training program that is now being required of many public boards across Wyoming.

We do believe this directive is a great start to increasing the knowledge of what is required of members of public boards, their awareness of the rules and regulations that govern their activities and the importance of doing things by the book.

That said, we encourage the council to consider not making this training a requirement for receiving funds until next year because the board had already approved the city’s budget for the upcoming year before discussing and voting on the training stipulation.

We feel that adding an additional requirement to receive funds after they have been awarded would demonstrate a lack of good faith on the part of the city. We would rather see the council encourage all of the boards in the community — not just those receiving funds — to undertake the training as soon as possible and provide a clear indication that this encouragement will become a requirement for those groups who wish to be funded a year from now.

We also think it is important that residents better understand the powers and limitations of local boards, and believe that can best be accomplished by giving the community the opportunity to learn and understand what these boards are being taught.

To accomplish that objective, all board training sessions should be held in a public meeting, and should be well advertised so the public is invited to attend. The News Letter Journal would also like to record training sessions and share them with the public on our YouTube channel so citizens who are unable to attend trainings during scheduled times can do so at their convenience.

To this point, the News Letter Journal has not been allowed to record and share the training sessions that have been offered in Weston County, and we feel like this is a detriment to board members and the community as a whole.

We have repeatedly stressed the importance of appropriate board behavior, government transparency and knowledge of the laws regulating a board’s actions, but as they say “it takes two to tango” and this kind of training will be much more successful if it is made readily accessible to the public.

There will always be bad actors in government, and this training will in no way eliminate that element. However, giving the public access to the training can provide citizens with some of the knowledge they need to ensure they are being served by all boards — big or small — in the appropriate way.