Live in Charleston long enough, and you’ll have the experience, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
You step into a dark room. Run your hand along the wall until it finds the switch. Suddenly, light fills the space. And the cockroaches scatter.
Yeah, yuck. And no, the old Charleston insistence on calling them Palmetto bugs doesn’t actually make it any better.
But there’s a moral to this story — and it’s one our democracy learned a long time ago: Bad things can happen in the dark. And nothing scatters the pests like letting in the sunshine.
That’s why we have sunshine laws like the state Freedom of Information Act that require our elected officials to do public business in public, not the backrooms. And it’s why we expect them to answer serious, sometimes tough, questions about how they’re governing with our money — and in our name.
So in honor of Sunshine Week (March 15-21), the national annual celebration of open government, we’d like to recognize one Lowcountry government that’s clearly moving in the right direction — and another that seems blind.
First, the good news. After decades of bobbing, weaving and occasionally just hiding, Charleston County has spent the past year going from laggard to leader on transparency.
County council now holds most of its substantive debates in public, instead of finding excuses to retreat into executive session. Communications staff members are helpful when reporters call. And leaders are crafting this November’s sales tax referendum in the open with real public input — a complete reversal from the kind of backroom dealmaking that ultimately doomed a similar 2024 referendum.
Sadly, the news is very different in the city that gave Charleston County its name.
For almost 50 years, under Mayors Joe Riley and John Tecklenburg, Charleston set the standard for openness in the Lowcountry. Interviews were routine. City council meetings featured lively debates on genuinely difficult issues. And staffers were made available to explain the ins and outs of complicated policies to the press and public.
Contrast that with Mayor William Cogswell’s Charleston, which appears to have traded the city’s traditional motto, Aedes Mores Juraque Curat (“She guards her buildings, customs and laws”), for a less high-minded formulation: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Examples abound. The West Ashley redevelopment deal that was cooked up with a private developer in the mayor’s office rather than going through the procurement process. The behind-closed-doors decision last fall to hand over a Confederate marker to the so-called “heritage group” that re-erected it in Marion Square without public review. And there’s a new city policy requiring 30-day Freedom of Information Act requests for public documents that staff used to produce quickly.
It’s a new culture to obfuscate, delay, impede and close doors.
And then there’s the Cogswell team’s attitude toward answering basic questions, which one former staffer described in a recent City Paper cover story.
“They definitely said don’t talk to The City Paper,” the staffer said. “And The Post and Courier. Those were the two big ones that were mostly holding them accountable.”
Again — yeah, yuck.
So like the county, the city of Charleston can and should change course and culture. Part of that requires city council members to be more leaders than lemmings and not put up with the secrecy and motions for executive session.
Now during Sunshine Week is a great time to start turning things around. And in doing so, the city will earn back some of the respect it lost from residents.
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