A Jeffersonian In East Texas

Any reluctance on the part of our public officials to be completely transparent and forthright causes the public to question. After all these are “public” officials! How any secrecy on the part of the commissioners court, or other public officials could be seen as advancing the causes they espouse is beyond comprehension. Surely they must know this.

With that in mind, what other reasons could be set forth for such questionable activities? (Yes, they are questionable, and the participants knew this at the time, or they would not have sought counsel on the question of open meetings. It comes across  like “How far can we go, and what can we get away with and still be beyond prosecution?”) The issue seems to be a reasonably simple one, with a very easy and simple face saving mechanism like: “Yes, we did this in secret, but we thought that we were within the boundaries of the law at the time. We now see that we were wrong, and would like to make it straight and avoid this in the future.” That would be the simple, humble, easy, and dare I say(?), endearing solution. The fact that it has not been done leads people to believe that something else is going on.

Either the participants don’t understand the law, and the lack of trust and the level of opposition to such opaque proceedings, or there is another skeleton or two in the closet. Those are about the only options. One is based on ignorance of the law, and arrogance toward it and of the peoples opposition to being kept in the dark. The other is based arrogance toward the law and the people, and fear of having those skeletons jump out.

In case you didn’t notice, the common factor is arrogance!

A.G. Says they must supply the Docs

Commissioners can’t keep their jail plans secret!

So Says the Texas Attorney General, the “What Part of No” committee revealed today. My question: What made them think that they could make plans in secret, violate the open meeting act, then violate the open records act, and get away with it? Do they think that their positions make them above the law? That is precisely the arrogant attitude that we have spoken of so many times before, and the reason that if you do a Google search of the term “official arrogance”, you will find the them mentioned at number 6, and still holding strong in that position for almost a year!

What other secret meetings were held?

The jail issue was being watched pretty closely by a lot of people. What other secret meetings went on under the radar? It is a fair question! If their arrogance is such as to make them think they could get away with keeping something that is this public a secret, what would have prevented them from carrying on other illegal activities in secret?

Related Questions

Related rumors have it that the finances of the “Finally a Jail We Can Afford” committee, are coming from people who may have a direct financial stake in the building of the new jail! It would be nice to know more. All in all, it sounds like just a regular old day of doing business in and with Smith county. You know, secret meetings, questionable dealings, etc.

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Interesting cases: Does the 4th amendment protect an individuals right against unlawful search and seizure if the unlawful search was done by a bungling boob, and not malevolently?

Tyler Smith County Jail Bond | Official Arrogance 2008

After the last November election in Smith county, we saw this article: “Smith Voters Send Clear Messages On Jail Proposal” is what the editorial in the Tyler Morning Telegraph said, but the 70 to 30 percent message was apparently not clear enough for the officials who now have a new “jailhouse lite” proposal on the ballot for the next election! The editorial listed three causes for the failure of the last jail bond:

• Price
• Location
• Pay raises

It also touched on what I think is a more probable cause:
“We also believe that voters resented the choice made by Smith County commissioners to limit public dialog.

The message voters received from commissioners, in the format of the town meetings, was “We don’t trust you.” The court’s reasoning behind the format – that naysayers would take up too much time – was flimsy and unconvincing.”

Flimsy and unconvincing? No, just downright arrogant!

In the last November election the naysayers had their say at the voting booth. It was a big horse laugh, and a slap in the face of official arrogance! The message sent back to the commissioners from the naysayers was: “We don’t trust you, either, and we are willing to go to the polling places to prove it!” The naysayers had the final say!

If anything has changed since last Novembers jail bond train wreck, it has been for the worse. Rather than becoming more open and forthright, more deceit, clandestine secrecy, and trickery have been employed!

Well folks, it is time to start looking at what the naysayers say! It is about time for some rethinking. What commissioners should have been looking at is alternatives to a new jail! Not seeing what they could salvage from previous attempts. They should have been asking the questions: “Are the voters right? Do we really need a new jail, or should we look at slowing down the rate of incarceration before we propose to tax the people to penury?”

Some advice to commissioners for the post November sob party:

Stop assuming that we even need a new jail. Start thinking outside the cell. The automatic assumption that because we have a problem with overcrowding, we need to build a new inmate warehouse, is a logical fallacy. If you owned a warehouse, and couldn’t process the goods fast enough, you would probably look at speeding up the process before you started thinking of building a new warehouse. Let’s do the same here.

Ask for public input. The sort of vague, quasi sincere requests for input in the past will not get any real information from the public. It would also be good to allow an anonymous forum for those who might otherwise be too timid to submit suggestions. There is a lot of distrust which apparently has gone unrecognized by county officials.

The last proposal had almost no public input. The proposal for November 2008 had even less! This is seen as arrogance by most people, and people despise arrogance in public officials.