LCDEC gets mentioned in the news

Article published Jan 26, 2006

Open meetings don't guarantee information

By Bill Cotterell CAPITAL CURMUDGEON


The Democratic and Republican parties have different attitudes about open meetings, but they have a couple of things in common.
Both parties are legally right and politically unwise, when deciding whether to let the public watch them celebrating the glories of the recent past and predicting great victories in the near future.
The Republicans are reflexively secretive, but they don't need to be. The Democrats should be, but aren't.
Oh, sure, they all have private things to discuss. Any self-respecting political organization, big-business conglomerate or organized-crime family does. But nobody thinks what happens in a ballroom full of people is the important story.
The Democrats are justifiably proud of opening almost everything. Under their party bylaws, they have to. But as much as I like open meetings, they really ought to keep some of their more bizarre members and peculiar ideas out of sight.
You can almost hear the jaws tightening as the party flaks struggle to keep smiling during some Democratic debates.
Take last Monday night in the Tallahassee City Commission chamber. Members of the Leon County Democratic Executive Committee argued over accepting the minutes from the December meeting, how many vacancies were available for at-large appointments to their committee, approval of the treasurer's report and whether to continue talking or move on.
That's right: They actually argued about whether to argue.
And that's just a mid-sized county confab with a routine agenda. At the state level, a Democratic conference can resemble pro wrestling, but with fewer men wearing makeup.
The Republicans tend to be serenely like-minded, even monolithic. By the time they convene an official meeting, the leadership has made all the important decisions and the membership enthusiastically endorses them.
GOP delegates then hurry out to the lobby in hopes of having their pictures made with Jeb Bush or Katherine Harris before they get away. At Democratic meetings, the halls and lobbies are filled with merchants hawking T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaiming President Bush a dolt, a criminal, or both, along with souvenirs of the 1972 George McGovern campaign.
Republican business sessions are often closed, like they were handing out checks from Jack Abramoff as door prizes. For some reason, the GOP doesn't want people to know about all that solidarity.
At Walt Disney World last weekend, Florida Republican Chairman Carole Jean Jordan reported that the party is in terrific financial shape, has trounced the Democrats in voter registration and is ready for a tough campaign year. Then the governor came to lunch and urged everybody to stay unified and run on the record of his administration.
Hot stuff. If that information fell into the wrong hands, it could mean - well, nothing.
The Democrats sometimes close meetings, or parts of them. In Orlando last year, candidates for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship made public speeches to Florida party officers, followed by a private question-and-answer session.
A party that elects Howard Dean as its national chairman makes a strong argument for closing more meetings. But the great gaffe meisters of our time have been Republicans - Vice President Spiro Agnew, Interior Secretary James Watt, Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz, a handful of mostly Southern senators and congressmen.
That may be why the Republicans like to discuss the public's business in private. Rank-and-file Republicans, speaking unscripted, are statistically more likely to say something insensitive - and the GOP knows it won't get the media free pass that Democrats enjoy.
With Democrats, it's usually not a slip of the tongue but something they say on purpose that raises eyebrows. Sen. Hillary Clinton's recent "plantation" remark at a Martin Luther King Day observance, for instance, was no gaffe - it was said in a public meeting for a tactical purpose.
The media play a role in this open-or-closed Kabuki, whenever politicians get together. It's no coincidence that the open-meeting requirement in government, as well as in party rules, grew more pervasive as television gained importance. TV needs pictures, not documents or dozens of discrete lobby conversations.
If it weren't for media pressure to open things, the government and political parties would close every meeting and hand out sanitized official announcements afterward. But we in the media often show a naive belief that important decisions get made at meetings rather than well beforehand -and that if we somehow force our way into a meeting, we'll still see the real thing.