Editorial: Proposed City Council rule punishes transparency

Politicians have enough incentive to hide behind closed doors. They shouldn’t have to pay for offering a glimpse at the internal discussions that drive our city.

Council President Bruce Kraus introduced legislation Tuesday that would penalize council members who publicly discuss closed-door executive sessions. Offenders would have to pay $500 if a unanimous council vote deemed punishment appropriate.

Because these closed-door meetings generally occur between council members and attorneys from the city’s law department, the city has argued that the content of these meetings are confidential under attorney-client privilege. But the truth is that this rule only serves to protect council members from criticism for their decisions.

At the basis of Kraus’ proposed legislation is a logical flaw: attorney-client privilege only prevents attorneys from exposing information related to the client. It works in much the same way that HIPPA only prevents doctors from talking publicly about their patients’ illnesses — patients are allowed to discuss their own ailments at their own discretion.  

Council members are the law department’s clients in this case, so this rule would restrict the ability of people involved to share information regardless of content.

It’s very unlikely that an issue covered in one of these meetings would be massive enough to threaten the city’s well-being but small enough that a meager $500 fine would dissuade someone from exposing it. Creating these fines is a preventative move that would do very little to actually prevent substantive matters from blowing up in the public sphere.

These elected officials are discussing matters involving public funds, not nuclear weapons plans.

One such executive session occurred in September and focused on attempts to revamp the Pittsburgh Police Department’s response policies. Kraus, the member proposing the rule change, refused to make the meeting public despite calls to do so from District 1 Councilwoman Darlene Harris, the member who claims the new rule is targeted at her.

The general information covered in the meeting was explained by city officials beforehand and reported in an article by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette anyway.

What is the harm in allowing the public to hear about how their law enforcement agency is handling their concerns, and would that harm really be substantially larger if it was a member of the council who explained the proceedings?

Kraus’ proposal may seem meaningless — and, typically, there isn’t much confidential information worth protecting, but more broadly, it’s a direct threat to the kind of transparency we’ve been asking for from politicians for years. Being able to speak up about perceived ethical missteps is something worth protecting, as so few politicians would be ever be willing to take such steps in the first place.

It is also, more fundamentally, an unnecessary attempt to limit the free speech of council members, who have as much of a right as anyone to express themselves publicly or to a member of the media.

If a city official decides information is egregious enough to share with the citizens they serve, they should do so. It may be against the wishes of the larger council, but each member is individually elected by his or her district and the public deserves the chance to decide what’s important.

This proposal serves as insulation to protect city officials from facing the consequences of identification with how they behaved and spoke in a city meeting. That’s not a secret worth hiding, it’s something we have a right to know.