Do you want to know a secret?

By Matt Lane
Editor

March 19, 2008 08:20 am

— Anyone who pays even a passing interest to politics and government knows this fact: Government officials and politicians are, more often than not, trying to pull one over on us.
Of course, that is a cynical view which paints a large number of people as less than honest. They are not the “straight shooters” they so often claim to be. Rather, most politicians and government officials are masters of equivocation, able to spin large yarns in a single bound of verbal nonsense.
Need an example? OK, try this one from a Feb. 23 story by James Beaty on the county courthouse and its asbestos-laden floor tiles:
“When asked about the asbestos, (Pittsburg County Commissioner Randy) Crone said a state official told him “You could eat it” and it wouldn’t hurt you.”
Eat it? OK, commissioner, you go first.
The equivocation pales next to the average government official’s desire to keep you in the dark with arcane rules, bad filing systems, long waiting periods for information and other schemes developed over the centuries. These methods, rarely written down as policy but passed on like the wisdom of the ages, have served many politicians well and led to case after case of corruption and malfeasance.
Right here in McAlester, cunning criminal minds have used obfuscation, equivocation and other underhanded techniques to plunder money from taxpayers. And, yes, they tried to keep the ugly truths secret.
Given this city’s history, one might think the culture of secrecy would have faded away. Sadly, that is not the case at all. The real truth is that secrets are still kept.
When the McAlester City Council wants to keep things on the sly, they often use Oklahoma’s Open Meetings Act to slink off behind closed doors and meet in the quaintly named “executive session.” We make sure that this newspaper calls those gatherings what they are: Secret.
Of course the city council is not unique; other government entities relish the chance to keep the pesky public and their inconvenient questions at bay.
The county commissioners, the McAlester Regional Health Center board, the McAlester Economic Development Service and any number of local and state agencies use similar methods to ensure that you don’t know everything about what they do in your name. Come on, you can trust them. Right?
From city hall to the state house to the White House, letting you know less is the order of the day. President George W. Bush and his Minister of Secrecy, Vice President Dick Cheney, are loath to provide the people and press with any information that isn’t pure-filtered by the White House information machine.
That attitude — Rights? You don’t have no stinking right to know — trickles down to state and local governments.
According to OpenTheGovernment.org, for every dollar spent declassifying old secrets, federal agencies spend $185 creating and securing new secrets. Is the same true at the local and state levels? Probably not, but the true cost isn’t counted in dollars and cents. It is counted in the lost liberty and representation of our interests which you and I suffer any time the government decides it knows best and we don’t need to know.
Should there be secrets held by government in a free society? Perhaps. But they should be the exception, not the rule. For the most part, history teaches us full disclosure, open government and transparency work best to keep tyrants and dictators at bay.
As he was shredding the Constitution, former President Richard Nixon said if the president does it, it isn’t illegal. That cancer, that attitude, is on the rise in this nation, this state and in this city.
Too much secrecy in government is un-American and dangerous to our liberties. It doesn’t matter if it’s local officials or the president of the United States, not trusting ordinary citizens to make good decisions based on a complete understanding of the facts often results in bad policy decisions and something much less than government of, by and for the people.
Matt Lane is the editor of the McAlester News-Capital. Send him hate mail or encouragement to: Editor, P.O. Box 987, McAlester, OK, 74501. Call him at 421-2022 or e-mail to editor@mcalesternews.com.