What is there about Politicans that make them hide from the public

Having been alive now for 88 years, I think that the one thing that politicans do not like , is a person asking questions that require an answer. No matter what the problem is, or the question being asked is, the politicans seem to believe that no answer is necessary.

Seems to me that politicans have been advised by their respective attorneys, that questions need not be answered, only official inquiries for public records need be responded to.

When a city council has a meeting, regardless of the subject matter, and the length of material presented by the staff, that a citizen can only comment on the matter for 3 minutes, or the arbitrary limit in time set by the rules.

That way the City Officials are not burdened with a lot of information that requires reply and can just do as they wish. How many times have I sat through a meeting and watch the city council listen to the public as they read the staff reporrs, and then do not respond.

It seems that they do not want any discussion about the problems, just want to take the words of the staff as gospel.

You would think that people in those positions would realize the the presenter for the motion almost always have financial things in mind when the talk, and the public might be the only people who can contradict the other side. Ah, but that would require consideration of the views of the public.

Need I repeat my self.

Sonoma County Counsel and the Brown Act

Amazing the tricks the attorneys use to try to explain why the Brown Act wasn't violated by the Board of Supervisors actions, isn't it. Yes they did something that should have been announced on the agenda, yes they did something that should have been disclosed after the closed session, but, hey, it still have to go through the adminstrative process to become effective. What, the County Counsel didn't understand the clarity of the Brown Act?. Ah, but you see, the County Counsel must defend the Board of Supervisiors if the Board of Supervisors is not complying with the law. and the County Counsel can not tell anyone anything that puts the Board at risk, at least in my humble opinion! This too shall pass, somehow, somewhere, a deal will be struck. As usual.

The magic of television in Santa Rosa, Ca.

television is such a wonderful tool for the City Council to let the public know what the City Council is doing and what the citizens think of the City Council Polices! But the City Council does not want the Citizens to be heard voicing complaints about the City Council. So in January the new City Council decided that they should move all of the comments about the City to the end of the meeting after all of the business had been transacted to delay any comments during the meeting. And after a couple of weeks of that they found that the citizens were still appearing before the City Council and making the City Council look a little foolish about some things in the Government. Ah, a solution was found! The City Council would not show the citizens speaking to the City Council ! They did that by shutting off the television cameras during the comment period. and shutting off the microphone so the comments could not be heard by the viewing public. If that was not enough a couple of weeks ago they shut off a speaker during the session causing some people to , perhaps, believe that the city council meeting was over. Ah, the honesty and dedication of politicans to the idea of listening to the public is not in question, is it? As they listen, but they don't want the public to know what they are listening to.