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September 5 , 2008

Council's Private Meetings Fail Herndon Citizens

The Herndon Town Council this week held its second closed meeting in a month to discuss what it can do to control loiterers on public streets in relation to the town's unofficial day labor market, particularly near Elden Street and Alabama Drive.

Both of these recent meetings were held despite provisions in the Virginia Freedom of Information Act that direct public bodies to debate policy options in open meetings, not behind closed doors.

This week, Councilman Richard Downer voiced his concern that the meetings were not allowed under FOIA. He voted against entering the closed session, and he publicly protested the discussion of the town's day laborer problems in private.

Councilman Downer is right. The citizens of Herndon are not served when the Town Council discusses policy options in private, especially as it relates to day laborers, who have been the subject of public controversy for years.

The Town Council had called for the closed meetings under the guise of meeting with the town attorney for legal advice. But that's not what this meeting was about. The town attorney wasn't providing the Town Council with legal advice regarding any pending lawsuit. He was helping the Town Council troubleshoot ideas to combat the problems associated with the day laborers.

The town attorney was offering legal analysis of different options that he developed or that were proposed by Town Council members to force day laborers into more government control.

Presumably, Town Council members are trying to protect themselves from scrutiny by vetting any proposals in private before emerging in public with one or two ideas that will not violate the protections provided by the U.S. Constitution.

The public is shut out of the process entirely. Citizens are neither encouraged nor invited to provide their own ideas about what the town should do. Nor are they allowed to hear all the ideas their elected council members may propose, and provide their opinions of which options should be pursued further. This is the essence of public debate, and it's a basic principle upon which this nation is founded.

Mayor Steve DeBenedittis said the meeting "allows us to have a good, productive discussion." But a discussion in which the public is not allowed to participate is not good or productive, and the mayor should have the courage to speak as freely in public as he would in private.

Councilman Bill Tirrell said the council was not trying to make a decision in private. But what the council is doing is proposing, discussing, vetting, amending, eliminating and refining options for the town, all without once getting any input from the public. It is not good enough to come before the people with a completed plan and say, "Here it is. Take it or leave it. Trust us. This is the best plan you'll find."

Rather, it is up to the people themselves to participate in the formation of public policy, to discuss, amend, eliminate and improve various options that come to light during the public debate. And it is the people themselves who have the responsibility to tell their elected leaders which option is in the best interest of the citizens of Herndon.

Part of the process is the public's ability to hear the proposals made by their leaders and to consider them in the public arena. In this case, the town attorney could have proposed a new and novel idea to address the town's problems, but the Town Council could reject it out of hand for reasons their constituents may never know.

On the other hand, some Town Council members may have proposed draconian and cruel policies aimed at the town's Hispanic population, and those proposals may have been discounted by the town attorney without them ever seeing the light of day.

The end result is only one component of the Town Council's responsibilities. A vast majority of the Town Council's work is debating the town's future in a public forum, gathering feedback from the town's citizens and working toward a consensus.

With these closed-door meetings, the Town Council has put its own interests above those of Herndon's citizens, and it has failed in its responsibility to serve the public.