The Mississippi Ethics Commission has gotten a personal lesson in why the presumption that public business should be conducted in the open is important to uphold.
It can potentially prevent some serious errors in policy or judgment.
The Ethics Commission has been getting an earful of criticism in recent days for a preliminary decision that the Legislature is not bound by the state’s Open Meetings Law.
The decision comes in a case that challenges the practice of House Speaker Philip Gunn to routinely hold closed-door meetings of the Republican members of his chamber in order to discuss legislative business. Since Republicans hold a supermajority in the House, such gatherings almost assuredly constitute a quorum and thus, in effect, are a meeting of the Legislature and should be open to the public to observe.
However, by a 5-3 vote, the Ethics Commission did not concur. The majority used some specious reasoning — based largely on a technicality and a misreading of state law — to say that since this is a constitutional question and not a statutory one, it was not within the Ethics Commission’s power to do anything about the complaint.
The outrage over that reasoning — which ignored the recommendation of the Ethics Commission’s own in-house attorney — prompted the body to postpone a final decision until at least Wednesday.
Obviously it’s reconsidering, as it should.
Even if only the courts, and not a regulatory body, can settle constitutional debates, the language of the state’s Open Meetings Law was written to include the Legislature. If that was not the intent, why did the drafters of that law not include, in their list of exemptions, the Legislature as a whole, rather than just legislative committees? There would be no point in singling out legislative committees for the exemption if the entire Legislature were exempt. To say otherwise creates an ambiguity that does not exist.
Conducting the public’s business in the open not only serves the public’s interest. It also helps the government body being watched to do a better job. This controversy is a good example.
Had the Ethics Commission settled this complaint about Philip Gunn in secret, no one would have been the wiser until it was too late. It is the sunshine of exposure that may keep the commission from making a grave mistake.
