Flying Monkeys and Rainbows

There was a good comment to an earlier post, where the commenter contrasted litigation and politics.

He or she made the point, apt in the case of our dealings with the City, that in litigation there is always the potential for a large downside while there really is no big downside for local government employees if they choose to disregard their proper roles and act contrary to legal requirements.

I spent Monday in Bozeman in a settlement conference. I have attended many settlement conferences, both on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants. For the (thankfully) uninitiated, in the typical settlement conference the two parties are placed in separate rooms with their lawyers, and an unrelated third party, the mediator, shuttles between the two rooms talking with the two groups, trying to get them to agree to a mutually disagreeable settlement of their claims.

When preparing a client for a settlement conference, I tell them to expect the worst. In other words, if the mediator were to go back and forth between the two rooms and tell each side how great their case is, no case would ever settle. No, the mediator tells each side about the weaknesses in their case, not the strengths.

In other words, the mediator works us over with the downside. To that extent, the commenter is correct.

How about City management, then? Is it true that they can refuse to produce documents, make disclosures that are less than accurate, and generally operate in secret because they face no real downside? Unfortunately, I think it is true. The big question is "why is there no downside here?". There is obviously some downside in politics, just ask Sen. Larry Craig.

I think there is a systemic breakdown on a number of levels. In no particular order, I think we have a breakdown in the citizenry, the media, elected government, and the system itself.

Let's start with the media. What has happened to our once-great Great Falls Tribune? If one were to review the open government and right to know cases in this state, one would find that our paper has been a major player in developing this law. There was a time when the Tribune fought hard, with lawyers, to ensure the public's right to know. In this case, well...yawn. For whatever reason, the Tribune does not even seem to be asking the questions, let alone fighting for answers.

Next we have the citizens. "Did you see the way Britney Spears flopped at the Video Music Awards?" Any questions?

Elected officials in this community are under siege. Just watch a City Commission meeting and watch the people in the audience stand there and lambaste these volunteer, public servants for a couple hours. In some sort of weird perversion of the Stockholm Syndrome, all five of our Commissioners have reacted to the criticism by aligning themselves with the City Staff rather than allowing the camel's nose under the tent to consider that maybe, just maybe, some of what these pissed off people are hurling at them might be based in fact.

Finally, the system itself is at fault. We have five, part-time, volunteer elected officials trying to control an entrenched City administration, an administration led by an experienced, six-figure manager. Pick the winner.

So, those are my thoughts. What do you guys think?

(By the way, to the commenter: my Freedom of Information fight has only been going on since last December. I'm enough of a blowhard to write about lots of different things besides "flying monkeys and rainbows." That was a good one, though!)