Mayor Shirley Washington sat down recently with this newspaper for a segment of “The Newsroom,” a recorded session we’ve been producing for a few months, during which we talk to city leaders and officials. In the session with her, which was published in two parts, the topic of transparency was raised.
The subject has actually been an ongoing one. At various meetings of the City Council, council members have grumbled about not knowing enough about what’s going on in the city and blaming the mayor for the situation.
Prior to the segment with Washington, the newspaper sat down with Council Member Joni Alexander, who said that, even though the previous mayor, Debe Hollingsworth, had been accused of keeping too much of the public’s business away from the public, Washington’s administration was worse. Alexander, who is an ally of the mayor’s, is in a good position to know such a thing, given that she worked for Hollingsworth.
The criticism seemed to sting, with Washington stopping during the recording to gather her thoughts. In the end, she said there was no intention to keep things secret and that, if she had failed to get information to council members and the public, it’s because she stays so busy. In the future, she said, she would work harder to be more transparent. That sounds like a good place to start: a recognition of shortcomings and a promise to do better. But a meeting last week left a lot to be desired. More on that shortly.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
During the recorded segment, the topic of Opportunity House was raised. The mayor has had a dream of creating a homeless shelter, one that puts people back on their feet, in Pine Bluff, and Opportunity House is that vehicle.
To get there, the mayor has set up an advisory committee of local people to brainstorm on any number of issues relating to the facility, and she asked her assistant, Cynthia Anderson, to head up the whole affair.
There are also other paid city employees – such as those from the Economic and Community Development office and fire department officials, to name a few – who have and continue to spend time on the project. In addition, hundreds of thousands of federal tax dollars have either been spent – or there are plans to spend it – on the project.
The point is that this isn’t a church building a gym. It’s public employees and public money, and as such, there should be a high expectation that the public knows what’s going on.
Asked during the recorded segment if the council members are aware of any of the details about the Opportunity House project, the mayor said well, they are always invited to the meetings but that they don’t show up.
Fast forward to last week when, on Thursday, there was a committee meeting to discuss the project. A reporter from The Commercial, I.C. Murrell, showed up, apparently to the surprise of Anderson, who quickly consulted with the city attorney and returned to the gathering to eject the reporter from the proceedings. This isn’t a public meeting or one in which the press was invited, she said.
The thing is, the press is rarely if ever invited to these meetings, and the only one we can recall being officially alerted to was the big hoo-ha event when Lowe’s gave the city a grant to help get Opportunity House off the ground.
So the long and short of it is that, at the same time that council members are invited to attend a meeting, the press is not. This is not in any way, shape or form an example of transparency. And this is not an example of someone trying to do better in that department.
The mayor or Anderson may prefer to wait until all is decided, but that’s not the way transparency works. Calling a press conference to say that a new traffic light is going to be installed is not transparency. Transparency is holding public meetings, asking for public comments, openly reviewing traffic counts and accidents at the intersection, taking into consideration the pros and cons of such an action and then making a decision.
We realize that being transparent invites a lot of input from pesky members of the public and pesky elected officials and that it’s a whole lot easier to simply smile and announce that this is what we’ve decided to do. But that’s not democracy in action but rather a queen issuing edicts.
We implore the council to become more involved in what’s going on in city government and to hold this and all mayors accountable for the use of city resources and tax dollars in all city matters. If throwing a reporter out of a meeting is the mayor’s idea of working harder to be transparent, she needs an intervention by the public and especially by the elected leaders around her to force the issue. The public deserves better than governance in secrecy.