By Stephanie Gattman, Truth Staff
sgattman@etruth.com
As a staunch advocate of open door and open records issues, I thought it was interesting that the Elkhart County commissioners picked transparency as a reason why the Legislature should not implement some of the local government reform proposals offered by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Chief Justice Randall Shepard.
Their premise is that county government is more transparent and open than city government.
One of the ideas in the Kernan-Shepard report is for the three-member county commission to be replaced by a single county executive. County councils then would have to become more like city councils and deal with more legislative issues, rather than just finances as they do now.
That would make county government more of a mayor-council form of government similar to Indiana cities.
As with any reform proposal, there are good and bad sides to it, but I hadn't really considered the issue of whether county government is any more open than city government.
Even before the first call came in from a mayor after the story ran in Thursday's Truth, I decided that one doesn't really operate any better than the other. They both have their pluses and minuses.
Before I weigh in, let's hear from Goshen Mayor Allan Kauffman, who obviously disagreed with commissioners Mike Yoder, Terry Rodino and Frank Lucchese. The three sent seven pages of testimony to the Senate Local Government Committee Wednesday that talked about county government.
"I wish if they want to say that cities are in violation, I think they need to say who they are," Kauffman said.
He pointed out that all Goshen's boards and commissions follow the Open Door Law and that the city attorney makes sure they are in compliance.
"The only way the commissioners cannot be in violation is to have a reporter with them all the time," Kauffman said, noting that if there are two commissioners together at any time and are receiving information, they are taking official action under the Open Door Law.
The mayor believes the law is too broad, which I, of course, disagree with. But that's another argument.
Kauffman said if the commissioners are trying to keep the current system, "don't make it appear that cities are skirting or in some way being more secretive than county government."
"I didn't appreciate what they said about cities," he said.
The commissioners didn't actually say anyone wasn't complying. But they did make a distinction that mayors are "free" from the Open Door Law when they meet with department heads, for example.
That much is true. But some mayors (and no, I'm not accusing Kauffman of this) have purposely met with members of the city council one-by-one or two-by-two to inform them of something that was coming to them so they wouldn't have to tell the public until the last possible minute. That's skirting the law.
There are loopholes in the Open Door Law for the commissioners as well. They can make a distinction between when they are meeting as legislators and as administrators. While their legislative meetings must always be announced as any governing body under the Open Door Law, their administrative meetings do not. No 48-hour notice, no posted agenda. That meeting has to be open to the public, but if you don't know when and where it's happening or who's going to be there ...
It's like the old saying, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around, does it make a sound?
There's also a fine line between what is legislative and what is administrative.
There are plenty of examples of violations of the Open Door and Open Records law by all levels of local government officials across the state. No one level is more virtuous than the other.
So while the commissioners may have been trying to score some points, they may have shot themselves in the foot. I am concerned that the commissioners, in trying to defend their jobs, might have set their relations with fellow elected officials in the cities back a ways. They really didn't need to do that.
If you want to read more about the Indiana Open Door and Open Records laws, check out the Indiana Public Access Counselor's Web site. There's a copy of the public access handbook on the site as well.