At the city council meeting on March 21, transparency advocate councilmembers Weiss, Rounaghi and Orgill showed us what it means to uphold and practice real transparency in our city government. The transparency trio voted to allow access to a police body-cam video that was being blocked by our city manager and city attorney.
They made a sound decision. This should have been a 5-0 vote. Especially since the public records request rejection by the manager and attorney had already resulted in wasting approximately $20,000 of taxpayer monies on legal fees and four months of unnecessary confrontational public interaction.
Transparency is about open and honest communication. By allowing access to information, city leaders ensure accountability to the public it serves and shows us that they place importance on fostering trust and faith in an ethical governance culture.
“Trust is a social good to be protected just as much as the air we breathe or the water we drink. When it is damaged, the community as a whole suffers; and when it is destroyed societies falter and collapse.” ~ Sissela Bok
We need to support electeds that take a strong supportive position on government transparency as they are protecting the community from misappropriated resources, public policy distortion, public vs. private development benefit decision-making and corruption.
While often campaign promises aren’t always kept, it appears that electeds Weiss, Rounaghi and Orgill are taking their “pledge to transparency” campaign commitments and their integrity seriously. We should too.
Please let our Council Transparency Advocates know you appreciate the protection of our democracy: [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].
MJ Abraham, Laguna Beach resident and founder of Laguna Beach City Hall Accountability and Transparency
Often a small but artful and enterprising minority of Laguna (according to the alternate triumphs of different parties) over work to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the mouthpiece of consistent and wholesome plans digested by the City Council and modified by our mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled ladies of laguna will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them – to unjust dominion.