ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : A Vote for Darkness

The first rule of elected officials should be to conduct public business in public. That may sound obvious, but too often agencies and boards seem to use any excuse to retreat behind closed doors.

The Santa Ana Unified School District trustees this week censured one of their own, trustee Rosemarie Avila, for allegedly leaking confidential documents related to district plans to purchase land for schools. The censure move was a bad one.

There was a good deal of politics involved in the action. Avila has irritated her colleagues on a number of issues, and she has not always been right. But in this case, she appears to have been chastised for airing a topic that needs public debate than for allegedly disclosing material that was truly confidential.

The approximate price the district would probably pay was hardly a state secret; many knew the figure before Avila objected that the district was paying too much. State law allows closed-door meetings to discuss personnel or litigation, and there is a case for not disclosing a school district’s top price for land or material. But the cat was already out of the bag, and the issue of whether the district was going to pay too much was of substantial public interest.

The job of elected officials is not to keep taxpayers in the dark; it is to explain and enlighten. That’s why Avila did the right thing.