Readers of a certain age will remember the literal “cone of silence” that frequently descended over the slapstick spies of TV’s Get Smart, a 1960s James Bond spoof that gleefully mocked the culture of secrecy in government.
Today, our local elected officials have a loftier-sounding name for the cone of silence they employ to keep us from overhearing their private discussions about public business. They call it “executive session” — a legally allowed but often misused mechanism for closed-door meetings.
And as we saw once again on July 15, Charleston Mayor William Cogswell and Charleston City Council have grown all too quick to lower their executive session cone of silence anytime a real debate threatens to break out in public view.
Five years ago, city council openly and hotly debated a resolution to take down the controversial John C. Calhoun monument, ultimately voting unanimously to do so. At the time, elected members said it would be placed in storage until the city could find an appropriate institution — probably a museum — to display the staunchly pro-slavery statesman’s visage with context required.
But then last Tuesday night, city council voted to go into executive session to receive legal advice on several issues, including on a legal settlement with the “heritage” group that
sued the city over the Calhoun statue decision. After meeting for 45 minutes behind closed doors, they voted in public unanimously — without any public debate whatsoever — to settle the suit by giving the statue to the plaintiffs. Hmmm. Curious.
Never mind that the city had already won the case at a lower court level. Or that the only meaningful restriction on those receiving the statue was that they not display it within the city limits — an agreement that must bring real joy to neighboring leaders.
But the real issue here isn’t the Charleston council’s final decision to just make the whole problem go away. Instead, it’s the fact that the public never got to witness and hear a real debate about this deeply controversial question in open session.
Which, to be clear, is exactly what South Carolina law anticipates. And it’s exactly what Cogswell and city council members sidestepped by going into executive session for the legally-acceptable reason of receiving legal advice — only to spend 45 minutes outside of public view doing … something.
It’s that something that should set off the alarms of freedom for every city resident. Because if the closed session included substantive debate and agreement among the members, then it wasn’t just legal advice — it was backroom decision-making, which state law forbids.
We’ll leave it to readers’ imaginations to determine what went on in secret for the better part of an hour — and then how members voted without even a pro forma public discussion.
And that brings us to another point: Under previous mayors and councils, Charlestonians didn’t have to use their imaginations to fill in the blanks on city business. The press didn’t have to coddle the administration to get its questions answered. And the public didn’t have to wonder what kind of deals were being cut when their leaders met behind closed doors. The Cogswell administration breaks these traditions.
Bottom line: Democracy is loud. Governing is hard. And trying to hide all that noise and effort under a newfangled cone of silence doesn’t make Charleston better — it just makes our public officials less accountable to the people who elected them. Stop it.
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.