by Gabe Donio

Last week, a notice announcing a change in the start time for town meetings was announced with little fanfare by Hammonton Town Clerk Susanne Oddo.
No change was made in the meeting dates, just the start time. The change was noted by the town clerk with the following line:
“However, all Town Council Meetings will begin with a closed session at 6:00 p.m.”
It’s just one sentence, one line, but it represents a fundamental shift in how the town does business during its meetings.
For a town that values transparent government, alarm bells should be ringing.
It’s wrong.
The Hammonton Board of Education has been holding closed sessions before their meetings for some time.
That’s also wrong.
Unfortunately, the board tends to be given a pass because the public’s expectations have been lowered in recent years. During that same time period, people have come to expect better from the town council.
That is what makes this move so disappointing.
The first argument for holding the closed session before the meeting seems to be founded on the “freshness” of the council members. That is, council members are more likely to be clearheaded at the beginning of the meeting, at 6 p.m. than they are at the end of the meeting, at around 10 p.m., 11 p.m. or sometimes later.
That argument has some merit, but when council members are running for office, they should be aware that once a month, they will have to sit through some long meetings, and then go through a closed session at the end of the meeting.
It’s not that much to ask.
The second argument for the closed session before the meeting cites the fact that previous council closed sessions would open to a room empty of nearly everyone but the occasional enterprising journalist from The Gazette. During the current administration, the camera has been turned on again after the council reconvenes, but only true local government junkies and insomniacs are still watching that late at night.
Let’s set aside both of these arguments.
Neither of them speaks to the real reason why local government bodies – town council and school board – are holding these “closed door” sessions before their public meetings.
Yes, some closed sessions are necessary to allow the council and the school board to deal with matters of litigation or personnel. If those were the only issues being discussed in every closed session meeting ever held by the governing bodies, it would be fine. If the closed session meetings were being held after the meetings, instead of before major issues were scheduled to be discussed publicly, that would be fine.
Unfortunately, oftentimes these closed sessions are nothing more than formalized versions of the good old-fashioned “meeting before the meeting” – it’s a great way to get around Sunshine Law violations, because “dress rehearsal” discussions about what will eventually be public matters are now being held in a closed council chamber or school library rather than some smoky back room.
But it’s a back room discussion, just the same.
It’s still the “meeting before the meeting,” especially when matters that should be debated in the public eye are being discussed, matters that should be discussed without the safety net or camouflage created by closed doors.
A true “open government” means the discussion takes place in front of the full governing body, the public, the television cameras and the media – without a rehearsal or back room arm twisting or pressure in a closed session.
There may be more grandstanding. There may be more arguments. There may be times people will not win the vote they feel they should win, or have others lose the vote they feel others should lose.
Democracy isn’t always smooth or pretty – but it works better than “secret” meetings before open meetings that are dressed up as closed sessions but are really designed to deal with “touchy” issues before opening up the meeting to the public.
The public isn’t served well by these “meetings before the meetings” by the town council or the board of education. It’s up to the public to decide whether or not they should continue.
Gabe Donio is The Gazette’s publisher.