Seattle City Council secrecy doesn't serve us

Is it really this hard being a politician?

I wonder, because our local politicos have made it look nearly impossible of late for them to carry out even the simplest trappings of their jobs.

Such as: sitting in a room in public and making decisions.

The Seattle City Council had the sitting part OK. It was that the room was off-limits to you and me. What they were talking about was so privileged or half-baked or boring — these were some of the actual explanations — that it wouldn't do to let the public in on it.

So we had the spectacle Thursday of an aide to Councilmember Jean Godden, an ex-journalist, pulling a Seattle Times reporter from a room by her purse strap. Then the city attorney saying that meeting in private probably violates the spirit of the state's open-meetings law (you think?). Then the inevitable Friday-afternoon backpedaling and forming of review committees.

Who knows, maybe if the council met in secret it would get more done. I'm more concerned about the rationale they gave for why they thought secrecy was OK.

Councilmember Tim Burgess, another ex-journalist, summed it up: Privacy lets them speak openly. Close the door and they can "talk freely and debate issues without being worried about how our comments will be interpreted."

Which raises the question of what we're getting when the door is open.

But seriously: Is it that risky to discuss a budget in the open?

Some things are difficult to talk about. Example: King County Assessor Scott Noble trying to explain his drinking problem, which led him to drive drunk the wrong way on I-5 and nearly kill two people. Watching that on TV was squirm-inducing.

But whether to fund the Bookmobile for another year? How dicey can talking about that be?

I've been wondering about our odd aversion to debate ever since King County Executive Ron Sims told me a few years back that he kept mum his opposition to light rail for at least a year because he didn't want to get "beat up."

"Face it, this is not a town that tolerates dissent," he said.

I remember thinking: This is transit policy we're talking about. He's not a Tibetan resisting the totalitarian Chinese. It's an argument about whether to put light rail on the I-90 bridge.

Sometimes you get called names, it's true. And we are a city known for our passive-aggressive pursuit of politeness. Maybe having any sort of vigorous debate is considered ill-mannered.

Speaking of passive-aggressive, the Metropolitan King County Council was also in the news last week.

Charged with replacing Sims, who is leaving to join the Obama administration, the council announced it was heroically assigning that task to ... you know what's coming next ... a 16-member blue-ribbon commission!

At Seattle City Hall, the politicians literally went behind closed doors. Ducking behind a blue-ribbon panel is another variety of hiding. How hard would it be, I wonder, to just debate it for a few days and then make this political appointment?

I know being an elected official seems thankless. But I don't get why lately it seems so troublesome for them to simply talk openly about what they're doing. And then make a bleeping decision.

Which is why I'm developing a bit of a crush on state Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown.

She's the one who recently set everyone atwitter by suggesting a state income tax. Not only did she bring up a supposedly unholy idea, but she couched it in an insightful critique of how the state's current tax policy hammers both the poor and businesses.

Put aside for now whether you agree with her. The point is: She's out with it. Her Web site, blog.senatedemocrats.wa.gov/brown, and her appearances seem to be chock-full of what down at Seattle City Hall they might call "talking freely and debating issues." In public!

Brown, who represents Spokane, was asked: Isn't this political suicide?

She said she figures people can handle it. It's only tax policy. Then she said:

"Having a conversation about restructuring this tax system so that working-class families are treated more fairly is not a conversation I am afraid of having."

Conversation. Not afraid. She must not be from around here.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.