Djelloul Marbrook

Municipal web sites tend to be passive-aggressive. In the guise of presenting vital information their subliminal message seems to be, And don’t ever say we didn’t tell you anything.

Rather than contribute to government transparency they tend to forestall inquiry by purporting to tell you all you want to know about the government you happen to be paying for. This is a ruse to distract you from all they’re not telling you.

They are not unlike the telephone trees we encounter when we approach an insurance company, an HMO or almost any other large institution. Their underlying message is, If you persist in bothering us, we’ll wear you out while pretending to help you.

In several years of browsing municipal and county web sites I have yet to encounter information about how to get a copy of an important document or report. That would contribute to transparency. We ought to be able to download public documents.

There is no reason municipal officials can’t field the public’s questions interactively. If they won’t do it online you can be pretty sure they’re ducking the same questions in person.

These web sites offer an ideal opportunity to encourage community and regional dialogue. As with professional sports or a debate society, there should be rules against politicking, but within those constraints a useful exchange of ideas and information can and should be conducted.

Instead, what we have is a chamber-of-commerce approach, boosterism spiced with a modicum of information and telephone numbers. This is not communication. It’s certainly not transparency. It’s a preemptive strike against real public scrutiny, and it’s pervasive, which should tell us something about the demeanor of government in our country.

The problem is not just Washington. A security-state mindset has taken hold in our most humble communities. The public’s right to know is touted and at the same time thwarted by officials who do not truly believe in the public’s right to closely examine what their elective and appointive officers are doing.

A tide of government arrogance has arisen because the media no longer serve the public good. They have abdicated their responsibility to keep government transparent because they believe it costs them too much. News organizations no longer have the staff or owner writ to delve into the workings of local government. The consequence is the decline of transparency.

Across the nation, for example, local government has been able to give away the public weal to developers because of a lack of media inquiry and all the ways officials find to stonewall public access. Zoning and tax breaks have been given that come back later to screw the taxpayers. Codes have been bent out of shape or ignored, and codes that should be enacted are round-filed simply because inquiry has been discouraged.

For example, a state hydrologist in a drought-ridden Southern state may have found that the aquifer in a certain region or locality can’t support further development without building a costly reservoir that might also require a road and a bridge. The community’s leaders are aware of this finding, but they go on permitting development anyway. They may argue that they do so to create jobs or to respect owners’ rights to sell or develop property, but the fact remains that the public discourse about the hydrologist’s findings that should have taken place has been suppressed by a combination of media laxity and government contempt for the people’s right not just to get details but to get the whole picture needed to protect the aquifer.

This is not honest government. It’s government by diktat. Putting aside for a moment the absence of media responsibility, an honest municipal web site would have announced the arrival of the hydrologist’s report and made it available online. It would have said the municipality’s officials are prepared to discuss the report with the public after studying it themselves. That would be honest government. Instead, most local governments take the disingenuous position that the report was available all along in the state capital and it was not their duty to disseminate it. Technically true, but deceitful.

If this is the litmus test of a municipality’s transparency, its commitment to full discourse, then most units of government fail it miserably. —DM