Open Government
Though you never really know how accurate these things are, I was pleased to read that Utah ranks high in a report on the openness of state government. You can chalk up a huge part of our openness to my good friend and Utah's former House Speaker Marty Stephens. Openness was something he felt strongly about and fought for always.
Okay, you might ask, if Marty and the legislature feel so strongly about open government, why does the House Republic majority close caucuses? First, take a quiz. How many caucuses did the House majority close this past legislative session? Don't cheat and look below; take a guess.
We close caucuses to discuss things that relate only to the caucus -- like the health or welfare of a member -- and we close them to brainstorm on highly sensitive issues. For example, as I have written on a few occasions, we are facing plenty of problems in the Medicaid arena. To figure out the right answer, in addition to all the public testimony and public proceedings, we might want to close the doors and run through many scenarios, to find out where the caucus is. Premature disclosure of these discussion points could make us look overly callus or, alternatively, it could create false hope in vulnerable segments of the population. By closing the doors, we are free to broadly explore possibilities and, thereby (in my opinion), reach good results.
I'm in favor of closing caucuses in situations like those discussed above. The reality is that exploratory conversations are going to occur. If they can't happen with the caucus, leadership simply will make many of these sensitive decisions. You may not like hearing that, but that's the reality. I recently asked a member of Democratic legislative leadership how long he thought Democrats would retain always-open caucuses, if they recaptured the majority; he laughed and admitted "about a month."
I am excited to hear, however, that Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon is going to have open cabinet meetings. Elected leaders need to be optimistic; so, I don't mean to be too much of a wet blanket. But, I'll be very interested to see if this works (and skeptical that all decisions will be made in that setting). I do like and appreciate Mayor Corroon a great deal, and I wish him well in this experiment.
Answer: one caucus meeting.
Okay, you might ask, if Marty and the legislature feel so strongly about open government, why does the House Republic majority close caucuses? First, take a quiz. How many caucuses did the House majority close this past legislative session? Don't cheat and look below; take a guess.
We close caucuses to discuss things that relate only to the caucus -- like the health or welfare of a member -- and we close them to brainstorm on highly sensitive issues. For example, as I have written on a few occasions, we are facing plenty of problems in the Medicaid arena. To figure out the right answer, in addition to all the public testimony and public proceedings, we might want to close the doors and run through many scenarios, to find out where the caucus is. Premature disclosure of these discussion points could make us look overly callus or, alternatively, it could create false hope in vulnerable segments of the population. By closing the doors, we are free to broadly explore possibilities and, thereby (in my opinion), reach good results.
I'm in favor of closing caucuses in situations like those discussed above. The reality is that exploratory conversations are going to occur. If they can't happen with the caucus, leadership simply will make many of these sensitive decisions. You may not like hearing that, but that's the reality. I recently asked a member of Democratic legislative leadership how long he thought Democrats would retain always-open caucuses, if they recaptured the majority; he laughed and admitted "about a month."
I am excited to hear, however, that Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon is going to have open cabinet meetings. Elected leaders need to be optimistic; so, I don't mean to be too much of a wet blanket. But, I'll be very interested to see if this works (and skeptical that all decisions will be made in that setting). I do like and appreciate Mayor Corroon a great deal, and I wish him well in this experiment.
Answer: one caucus meeting.
posted by steve u. at 3/16/2005
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