If you have had the opportunity to attend a recent Washington County Board of Supervisors meeting, you’ll know they regularly descend into chaos.
And that chaos is over a single issue: the reinstatement of IMS engineering as the county’s engineer.
Reinstatement of the group as the county engineer is indefensible. For the six years they operated in Washington County, we lost out on state aid money and saw little to no work done on the roads and bridges here.
Other than the ownership group at IMS, there only seem to be three people who wanted them back as county engineer. Those people are Mala Brooks, Jerry Redmond and Tommy Benson.
When votes for IMS come up, arguments fly. Those recent votes have failed due to numerous procedural issues, absenteeism from board members and technical difficulties.
After the most recent fiasco of a board meeting that devolved into yelling and screaming, one of the board member’s wives chose to address the board in defense of her husband, Tommy Benson, at the next meeting.
I agree with much of what Mrs. Benson had to say but with one glaring exception.
Mrs. Benson suggested the board of supervisors should conduct more of their meetings behind closed doors in executive sessions to avoid the public airing of grievances.
That is the very last thing we need to have happen in Washington County. There are too many called executive sessions as it is now.
The Open Meetings Act of 1972 allows for a wide range of reasons for a body to enter an executive session.
To enumerate each of them here would take too much space, but they can be found here: https://www.ethics.ms.gov/title-25-chapter-41-open-meetings#25-41-7.
A boiled-down version of what is acceptable for an executive session is discussions that may end in the termination of a county employee, contract negotiations, discussion of rules for the body itself and discussion of economic development issues related to the relocation of a business.
There is also an exemption for discussion of a line item that might end in the termination of an individual employee, but all other budget items are to be considered in an open meeting.
These open meetings are the bedrock of our local governance. We elect people to represent us at these meetings, but they don’t get to do so unilaterally.
They must know the people are watching, whether with their own eyes or from the stories produced by those who cover the news.
Executive sessions are a way to avoid that scrutiny and, as such, should be rarely used.
While Mrs. Benson’s sentiment was correct, our board members need to behave themselves while conducting our business, doing it behind closed doors will not achieve the outcome we desire.
All of these meetings are video-recorded now and we don’t need viral videos of unproductive actions taken in meetings and spread to the larger world.
We should work hard to keep our meetings open, productive and civil so at least it looks like we know what we are doing here in Washington County.
Jon Alverson is proud to be the publisher and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. You can reach him at 662-335-1155 or write to him at jalverson@ddtonline.com.
