Open records law.
Open meetings law.
Transparency.
Ohio University administrators need to familiarize themselves with all three of these terms, and not just for public relations speeches.
Administrators have had a long history of showing disdain for open records law. Most recently, they redacted an essential information technology report detailing how our IT department stacks up to others around the country. The justification for redacting the report was that some of the documents contained trade secrets. In other words, the company that prepared the report didn't want to let out industry secrets.
That justification was flimsy at best. OU officials hired the company to prepare the report. Certainly they had every right to do whatever they pleased with the report that was prepared.
Now university officials have moved on from blocking the public's access to documents to blocking the public's access to meetings, and the justification is even flimsier. Budget Planning Council meetings, in which top university administrators and others meet to discuss the budget, are closed to the public using a preposterous technicality.
Ohio Revised Code says that the meetings of any board
commission committee council
or similar decision-making body of a state agency
institution
or authority should be open to the public. OU officials say Budget Planning Council meetings are closed because it is only a recommending body that provides advice to President Roderick McDavis before he shares the budget with the Board of Trustees.
To say that Budget Planning Council is not making any budget decisions is an absolute lie. These meetings are where crucial budget decisions are being made; McDavis likely is simply rubber-stamping those decisions before he presents the budget to the Board of Trustees. That crucial budget decisions are being made in secret should be of concern to everyone.
McDavis himself ought to order these meetings be open to the public. And if he really thinks decisions aren't being made there, he ought to open up his house on Park Place when he is burning the midnight oil actually making budget decisions.
That would be real transparency.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the executive editors.
17
Archives
