Commentary by James Jordan, Sumner Newscow — Transparency is a word that gets thrown around a lot at governmental meetings. Politicians like to use it, and media folks do too.  Local governing bodies get tired of hearing about it, but as media members, that is part of our job. We can’t really report on what we don’t have access to. We do keep a close eye on that because even if they are making a good effort to be transparent, you don’t want to make it easy when the going gets tough and they really do want to hide something.

James Jordan

I think we are seeing a bit of progress though with the Wellington City Council. The council has never been really bad. I have experienced much worse in other states. But even the best bear watching. Any of us might bend things a bit when in a pinch. Who hasn’t gone over the speed limit when they felt the need?

Recently, we reported that the city of Wellington had self reported what they thought might have been a KOMA (Kansas Open Records Meeting Act) violation. Turns out it was, and now they have to go watch a presentation on the law itself.

That meeting was a town hall meeting where several council members showed up.  Because most of them spoke, it became a violation. Had only two been there, or if they had remained silent, it would not have been a violation.

It was unintentional.

At the time  I didn’t think it was a problem, but some people did question it so they reported it themselves and got the ruling.

Their reaction was different this time, than it was the last time they had a questionable meeting.

I did question the one last summer when the city went into an executive session with hospital officials when they were discussing hospital business. I wrote about it at the time, but there was no self reporting then.

They cited attorney client privilege, but the state law says you cannot have attorney client privilege if you meet with another group – which they did by meeting with the hospital officials. That was pretty cut and dry I thought at the time.

They could have been fined over that one, but we thought better of reporting them. The fine is not that big – $500 max, and they would not have gotten the maximum – and that is not a good use of taxpayer dollars. We felt at the time is was better to just point out the fact that it did appear to be a violation.

I still think we did the right thing.

The second time it happened, they reported themselves. So maybe just pointing it out was good enough at the time.

Mayor Shelly Hansel has said she wants to improve things, and she has said she would talk about any issue. True to her word, she did address this when asked.

Here is her comment:

“As far as I’m concerned I’m going to focus on the more pressing issues facing our community. What’s done is done. We have made some mistakes in the past and we are still learning. However, rather than dwelling on the negative I’m going to focus on the positive and put my energy into moving Wellington forward.”

So some people are perhaps talking about the one last summer still. They did do a better job of handling the second one, so maybe we should call it even.

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