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Show Council's Method If asked "What do you think is one of the greatest problems and dangers in dealing with government bodies," what would you answer? Undoubtedly answers would be as varied as the interests and occupations of those answering. From the newspapers' angle the greatest problem is getting information from these bodies, so that the public ' may know what is going on. Only then can intelligent decisions be made by the citizens at large. The greatest danger is, of course, that this lack of information, this making of decisions by annonymous entitles r.ot required to answer for their decisions, is rapidly shoving the United States into an Iron Curtain country. In this case the iron curtain is between those who govern, and the governed. It is for this reason that we cannot 'applaud the way the Bountiful city council hired the new chief of police. We have no argument with the man. He appears to have good references, and the future will judge him. Nor do we argue with improving our police protection system. We dislike only the manner in which it was clone. It is unfortunate that the chief's shinny new badge should have a bent pin. If the action had been done in regularly scheduled meetings of the council, there could be no objection raised. Even if no one came to hear the discussion, at least it would have been possible if someone had wished to. But when the city council withdraws to the city manager's man-ager's office, no such action is possible. And after the decision was made, it could not wait a week to be announced in a regular council meeting. Instead a rush session was convened Monday night. True, in a sense it was a public meeting. If someone had been strolling by and chanced to enter the room, he or she could have heard the discussion. But who would know, or chance by? True again, minutes were kept. But they were almost al-most seconds, rather than minutes. All was calm anonymity. anony-mity. Nc names. Just bare essentials. A new chief of police was hired. There is no doubt the council felt it had sufficient reasons to do as it did. All those who withhold information informa-tion the public should have believe their reasons are sufficient and valid. But one reason leads to another, one shutter to another the iron curtain is made surreptitiously. surrepti-tiously. The withholding information shutter is snowballing throughout our land. This was well written in a recent report of the advancement of freedom of information committee of Sigma Delta Chi. It said in part: There is a "growing philosophy in American government that, once elected or appointed, the bureaucrat regards government govern-ment as his private domain and that, in his opinion, the people who pay the taxes should be satisfied with the decisions of government after they are made and should be content with spoonfed information of government." This has not happened in Bountiful, Let's see that it doesn't. |