Pittsburgh City Council keeps playing fast and loose with what should be the governing body’s operational byword: Transparency.
As the Tribune-Review has been bird-dogging the story, City Council has a bad habit of meeting behind closed doors – no reporters, no public allowed – for “briefings.”
Never mind that there’s no exception in Pennsylvania’s open meetings law for such “briefings”; those exceptions are limited to such things as real estate deals, legal and personnel matters.
But what city councilors have been discussing – and sometimes splitting the briefings into sections so as not to have a legal quorum – hardly has been exception-worthy.
And despite the council being called on the carpet for questionable meeting behavior, it plans to continue the practice.
To wit, the Trib reports City Council has scheduled two-closed door sessions for Wednesday. Council President Daniel Lavelle thinks himself clever by saying those “briefings” won’t involve back-and-forth discussions and are designed to give the council information without deliberations.
So, why shield the sessions from the public?
“One is about the city’s infrastructure commission, and the other is about the OneStopPGH portal where people can apply for licenses and permits through the Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections,” the Trib reports.
The Trib says Lavelle defends the closed-door OneStopPGH briefing because “we’re not ready yet to make the information public and for it to go live.”
“Council members, he said, need to learn about the updated portal before the public so they can be prepared to field questions from constituents,” the Trib reported.
That’s not a reason for a closeted meeting, that’s an excuse to hide information that by its very nature is public, automatically.
And Lavelle “could not say what kind of conversation the meeting about the infrastructure commission could entail,” the Trib added.
So, why have the meeting, closed no less?
Additionally, the Trib caught Lavelle in a Pinocchio moment: He initially told a Trib reporter he didn’t know who called for the next round of closed-door “briefings.”
But the city clerk’s office says it was Lavelle, a fact he has since acknowledged. But, “He said he did not remember whether he called for the other briefing.”
Right.
Experts say that if the sessions don’t violate the letter of those open meetings laws, they certainly violate its spirit.
But Lavelle steadfastly defends such “informational briefings”:
“Council has certainly broken no laws,” he told the Trib. “My law is to follow the law — not how you interpret the spirit.”
Seldom has a pol’s thumb ever been placed to a nose so firmly, fingers waggled so furiously and the raspberry blown with such voluminous spittle.
The spirit of the open meetings law is as clear as the letter. And Lavelle and his Pittsburgh City Council cronies should feign no surprise when the public they are disserving concludes their councilors have something to hide.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
