“Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
…I have heard from our elected leaders who get to sit on the inside that the opposite is the case. They have to convene in closed sessions, they say, precisely because it is the best way to protect the citizens. To openly discuss provisions in the ordinance is to make it vulnerable to challenge by the industry. To explain is to provide ammunition for those who want to make the ordinance weaker.
This is what I call closed-door paternalism. There’s just one problem with it: we already have a weak ordinance! The very process that is supposed to be protecting our interests is undermining them…
Continue reading Adam Briggle’s recent post at Denton Drilling: The End of Closed-Door Paternalism.