Posted on: Saturday, October 18, 2003

EDITORIAL
Sunshine law training need not apply to all

The City Council has overriden Mayor Jeremy Harris' veto of a bill to make sunshine-law training mandatory for members of city boards and commissions.

While we strongly support sunshine training for all elected officials and appointees, we understand the mayor's objection to applying it to the city's awkwardly structured vision teams.

Under the law, which mandates open meetings and public access to information, anyone attending at least three vision-team meetings would have to undergo sunshine training. Harris says such an unwieldy requirement is likely to deter citizens from participating in the process, and we're inclined to agree.

To further complicate matters, the Office of Information Practices has ruled the teams are subject to the law while the corporation counsel says they should be exempt.

Instead of making all vision-team members do the sunshine training, why not just train the team facilitator or city representative?

In fact, why not add sunshine law training to existing ethics training and other aspects of democratic governance?