Oh the games people play now, Every night and every day now

    It’s not that I don’t like to relax and play games… I think there’s a time and a place for all of us to “get down” and have a good time.  Running the city government doesn’t exactly quality as one of those appropriate times, in my opinion.  Seems to me like once you are elected to run the city, you should be all business about this task.

    But the Mayor of the fair city where I live apparently doesn’t see things that way.  He posted notice of an open meeting with the chairmen of city council committees in Kansas City to discuss upcoming legislation.  I give him credit for posting the notice — apparently in the past, those committee chairs have been the ones playing the games, conducting a giant game of musical chairs during these meetings so that a quorum was never present and therefore an “open meeting” never occurred.

    That in itself is a prime example of public officials spending way too much time and energy thinking of ways to avoid following the law. Why are they wasting any brain cells thinking up ways to avoid the law when if they’d just do what’s right and post notice and hold an open meeting, they wouldn’t have to worry about violating the law.

    So, anyway, the Mayor decides this is stupid, which is true.  Instead, he just posts notice about an open meeting.  Reporters show up to cover it.  But then what happens? The Mayor refuses to let the media up into the meeting until the time comes that a quorum is present at that meeting — then he sends word down to allow the media to attend.

    One can only assume if the last member, forming the quorum, hadn’t arrived, they’d never have opened the door.

    So was it a meeting, or not?  What was the point of prohibiting the media from attending?  If it was planned to be an open meeting, then it is simply playing games with the sunshine law to make this kind of a decision.  Frankly, I expect better from those I elect to run my city.  I expect them to follow the spirit of the law and not spend their hours looking for ways to avoid having to give me information I need to know.  That’s not the job I elected them to do.

    He had a chance to earn points for taking a game and ending it.  I thought he was going to do that.  But he is no better than those who came before him.  It’s all just a game to him, too.

    Count me among those who wish I had my vote for this child back.  I want an adult running my city.  No time for playing games when you are working with a $1 billion budget.  That’s not play money….