You mentioned this in another email, and your post today reminded me I didn't address it before and I want to be on the record on this issue. I am a supporter of televising HRA meetings and council work sessions or, at least, making audio recordings to be posted on the web. Unless there is some affirmative reason why some meeting must be confidential, I think the city should make as much information as possible available and should make that information as accessible as possible.
Niska's "some affirmative reason why some meeting must be confidential" qualification is proper. My understanding is that the open meeting law in Minnesota recognizes sensitive situations as properly closed. Two that come to mind are personnel matters where privacy is a factor; and deliberations over imminent or pending litigation, where attorney-client privileged communication may occur and where disadvantage to the City could result from public-meeting revelations to opposing parties is a factor.
I do not know whether the law accords temporary secret status where arguably critical business matters are pending, i.e., where arguably sensitive matters of cost and policy might affect a possible contract. I will look at it and possibly put an UPDATE to this post.
Niska is correct about that. However, the main point of his email is maximizing the openness and public dissemination of open meetings; i.e., not having to attend an inconvenient location such as city hall miles away from home, in order to see what is happening in an open and public meeting.
Niska supports being able to keep abreast of all meeting detail from home as much as feasible, and I respect and endorse that position.
In my view, the finance committee and public works committee meetings should be televised - as having a greater and more immediate and direct fiscal impact upon the taxes and spending levels being borne and supported by Ramsey Citizens than, in comparison, parks board matters, which are televised. I do not criticize televising park board sessions. I criticize NOT televising more, and am not saying televise less. One easy kill, the sessions where meetings are discussed in retrospect by officials, when meetings themselves could be rebroadcast and when other meetings could be added to the broadcast scheduling.
I expect candidate Niska would support finance and public works committee meetings being televised as part of his general statement. I invite his opinion. [UPDATE: Niska emailed, "... my stance on transparency extends to any committee meetings or other meetings where your tax money is being spent." That answers the speculation.]
Any other candidate feeling strongly one way or the other, or any other person now a public official or a private citizen, has the opportunity to go on record, here (and elsewhere as chosen), on this question.
I do know that the Ward 1 incumbent voted previously to cease televising work sessions when the practice had been that they were televised, and I wonder if his position remains that way. He is free to email, and I would post his thoughts as prominently and fairly as I have posted his opponent's. Finance and public works committee meetings were not broadcast at times in the past when the Ward 1 incumbent chaired each of those committees.
____________UPDATE___________
Regarding what's a closed meeting, vs an open one, there is Minn. Stat. Sect. 13D.05; online here; stating at the start:
13D.05 MEETINGS HAVING DATA CLASSIFIED AS NOT PUBLIC.
Subdivision 1. General principles.
(a) Except as provided in this chapter, meetings may not be closed to discuss data that are not public data. [...]
There's nothing there exempting a majority of a council junketing together to Vegas, away from the municipality, to go to a trade show, en mass.
I recall Bill Goodrich carefully instructing council members to be cautious about even serial private contacts by phone or email between members growing in number into a board majority. He cautioned that there was precedent that such a thing could be construed, as a matter of law, to be a violation of the open meeting law.
I expect the four that went did so because that's what they wanted, and they did not care enough to check out what they wanted in advance with the City Attorney, sending a quorum instead of less, and hence opening themselves to charges they violated the Minnesota Open Meeting Act and giving the appearance they don't sufficiently care about the open meeting law of Minnesota or its requirements and nuances.
The League of Minnesota Cities Handbook has this to say in its online Chap. 7, related to meetings, pages 7-9 and 7-10 [click to enlarge and read]:
I strongly doubt some of the past more experienced, cautious, restrained and sagacious council members ever would have made such a compromised decision, to send off any out-of-town official quorem to a non-public meeting venue (a fee-to-attend situation).
One past Ramsey council member immediately mentioned the Open Meeting dimension to things when told that four of the seven council members went on the recent Las Vegas shopping-center oriented trade show - junket.
The mentality of "Damn the Torpedos, Full Speed Ahead," might be okay for John Paul Jones during the Revolutionary war, or within the present-day military. But it is a questionable and imprudent way to run a government - one by tradition supposed to be a government of law and not of men, one subject always to the rule of law.
That's the legend.
It should be given more than cursory attention. More than lip service. It has a purpose, to curb irrational or improper exuberances, as well as to curb actual wrongdoing.
Prudent former council members understand this, and, again, I give a hat tip to one former member for flagging the open meeting dimension of things to me.
For disclosure, the three council members that insulated themselves from potential error were John Dehen, Dave Jeffrey, and Jeff Wise. I expect they did so without any sentinel to warn them where the ice was too thin to skate.
_____________FURTHER UPDATE______________
A school child could explain why Vegas is a bad place, the worst place, to mess around with un-open meetings. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. It's not only a saying. It's a trademark.