Transparency: "The Room Where It Happens"

Part 2 of 3.

Source: Hamilton: An American Musical.

"No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in the room where it happens."

Source: Hamilton.

Yesterday, in Part 1, I congratulated Mayor Amir Omar on trying to add transparency to the council's decisions. And I applauded Jennifer Justice and Joe Corcoran for joining him in voting against moving the decision-making process into secret. And I didn't applaud Hutchenrider, Barrios, Dorian, and Arefin who all voted to continue excluding the public from witnessing the council conduct this important business.

Today, I'll examine the council's reasoning behind their decision to keep their deliberation secret.

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Why would anyone, especially this council who all claim to be all about transparency, adopt such a non-transparent means to elect the Mayor Pro Tem? One answer is that, while they may say they are for transparency, they really aren't. If transparency requires candor and candor risks offending or embarrassing someone, some people will choose to avoid the delicate subject, all with benevolent intent. But if they hide their private candor from the public, they are not transparent. It's as simple as that. But listen to the council claim otherwise.

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Dan Barrios: "I think anybody knows me knows I'm for transparency. I am 100%." No, you are clearly not "100%." Not if you vote to take your discussions into a back room away from the public eye and ear.

Dan Barrios: "When it comes to this, I feel like we need the bonding experience. I feel that when you have it in an open discussion, people aren't going to have a candor...What was the word? You get a little bit more guarded." Sure, that's possible. But council members who say things in private that they won't say in public aren't...what is the word? Transparent.

Dan Barrios: "I absolutely agree there that taking this into public will give this kind of false sense of transparency." Only if you aren't transparent in public.

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Mayor Amir Omar gets it.

Mayor Amir Omar: "I actually went back and kind of looked at the council goals and the rules of engagement that y'all ratified just two years ago. And what I pulled out, which I thought was beautifully written and already done, was, while executing our duties, the council will interact with each other, staff, and stakeholders: respectfully, professionally and efficiently."

Note to Mayor Omar: When the council looks at its rules of engagement for this coming term, advocate for amending it to "will interact with each other, staff, and stakeholders: respectfully, professionally, efficiently, and candidly, in both public and private."

Note to all council members: if you can't do that, if it's too hard for you, I don't think you should be in public office. If, as Barrios puts it, you can only deliver a "false sense of transparency" in your public discourse, if you don't have the talent and courage to be able to speak "respectfuly, professionally, efficiently, and candidly, in both public and private," then you don't have the right stuff to be a good council member. That's what I'll be looking for to have on council the next time the council has to decide on who should be mayor pro tem.

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Curtis Dorian: "I think the majority of the council, I can speak on behalf of all of us, are for transparency, and have been." Except in this case. Here you are for secrecy. Say you are usually for transparency. Say you are sometimes for transparency. But quit making a blanket statement that you are for transparency when you vote for an exception in as important a matter as this.

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Arefin Shamsul: "I think I love the idea of transparency. We need to open the book 100% as much as possible. There's no doubt on that." But then he voted to close the book. So, excuse me, but there is more than doubt. There is proof. We heard three other council members say they think the council could conduct this business in open session. That means that they believe that "as much as possible" is 100%. If they believe it, why doesn't Arefin? If he explained why not, I missed it.

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Ken Hutchenrider: "We're really dealing with what I would consider a personnel matter. We are in essence interviewing whoever raises their hand and asks to receive votes for the Mayor Pro Tem. It's very much an interview process, whenever I look at our school districts, when they're looking at bringing on the next superintendent, most recently, if we looked at Dallas, they brought on our police chief and their fire chief. All of those interviews were done in private."

There are two glaring problems with this formulation.

One, school superintendent, police chief, fire chief, all of those are employees. City council members are officials. Hutchenrider not knowing the distinction between the role of employee and city official is a serious deficiency for someone wanting to be mayor pro tem.

Two, I've been part of job interviews, on both sides of the table. Never was it conducted by putting all the candidates into a room together, shutting the door, and asking them to pick one of themselves to get the job. This is more like a political convention, where candidates put themselves forward, speeches are given by the candidates and supporters, and delegates vote to pick one as the nominee. In political conventions, that's all done out in the open. In fact, reforms over the decades have taken steps to remove the "smoke-filled rooms" where nominations used to be settled. Richardson's process is still back in the smoke-filled room days. It's past time to bring us into the 21st Century.

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At that point, Ken Hutchenrider made a motion. "I'll make the motion to move the, I guess I'll say the entire process of the mayor pro tem selection process into executive session." Dan Barrios immediately said, "I second that." A show of hands added Curtis Dorian and Arefin Shamsul in support. And that brought the curtain down on any public discussion of selection of a mayor pro tem. Were you persuaded by their arguments? I wasn't. But, spoiler alert. I was even less persuaded by the choice they made in secret.

There, I said what I said, in what I hope has been a respectful, professional, efficient, and candid manner. And I did it in public. I hope no one was offended or embarrassed, but if so, I think they are in the wrong line of work. As Harry Truman used to say, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

End of Part 2 of 3.

In Part 3, I'll examine the council's choice of Mayor Pro Tem; I'll try to piece together a theory of how it went down in the room where it happens; and I'll talk about where we (or at least I) go from here.