Alabamians who care about transparency in government should be pleased to see – and to support – legislation that will repair the damage done to the public good by three deeply disturbing decisions of the Alabama Supreme Court. A prefiled bill by Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, responsibly addresses the issues in those open government decisions.
In 2012, the court upheld the fundamentally dishonest practice of so-called "serial meetings," smaller gatherings of government bodies in which there is never a quorum present, but in which important matters that will come before the full body are discussed. It's a sneaky way around the Open Meetings Act, but the court held that is not unlawful.
Ward's bill prohibits serial meetings. That alone is enough to warrant supporting it, but the bill goes further in strengthening the right of Alabamians to know what their government is doing. Continue>>>
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