folo

Oh goody, Day Five of “Mississippi: The Secret State” favors us with a familiar byline around here — the Daily Journal‘s Patsy Brumfield’s — attached to Some quasi-governmental groups not covered by Miss. sunshine laws.

Patsy may not agree, but I’m sure glad she drew this assignment, since she makes what might otherwise have been dull reading, not-so:

TUPELO –Just because an organization “looks” like it’s a public agency, it may not be.

And if it isn’t a public agency, it’s not obligated to be open in any way. That’s the way Mississippi’s laws read as they address issues of open meetings and open records.

What kind of agencies are we talking about?

£¢ Nonprofit community action agencies.

£¢ Nonprofit community development foundations.

£¢ County councils of government.

£¢ Multistate or regional bodies.

£¢ Public and private hospital boards and committees.

£¢ Law enforcement officials.

£¢ Public community college and university foundations.

Those are just a few types of organizations that look “public” but are not. …

Um . . . the state laws under which I’ve lived would disagree, but that’s just them, I guess.

Anyhow, Patsy focuses on two entities in Tupelo’s Lee County, the Community Development Foundation and its “child,” the Council of Governments, both of which get public attention and make public impacts but operate out of general public view.

The CDF is widely heralded as a major player in the region’s landing Toyota Motor Corp., which is building a manufacturing plant northwest of Tupelo. CDF has 1,100 members and some of its officers are elected officials.

But CDF’s business doesn’t belong to the public, even though its impact does. It’s a nonprofit membership organization. If you want to know CDF’s inner workings, you can’t, except for public pronouncements and internally produced publications. …

Organizations like this can do a lot of good, their members say, despite and because of their closed doors.

“CDF is set up to protect client confidentiality,” said David Rumbarger, CDF’s chief executive officer. “We don’t spend public money that hasn’t already gone through the public process.”

He means the public money CDF receives was discussed and vetted at public meetings of local city councils or the Board of Supervisors.

The CDF goes back to 1948, when it was organized as a nonprofit corporation via the Mississippi secretary of state’s office. So, Patsy points out, it’s “had plenty of time to respond to any criticism about its operating structure.”

“If this could be done publicly, they would have made a different decision in 1948,” Rumbarger says. CDF holds its meetings, decides how to spend its resources, and maps its strategy with zero public intrusion because it doesn’t fall under Mississippi’s Open Meetings law. Rumbarger believes it owes its success to its quasi-public flexibility to act speedily when other public entities bog down in controversy. As an example, he cites the long-ago development of a regional water system, a project that raised such public furor “that the various entities affected by the plan asked CDF to take the reins, promote the necessary legislation and develop a mechanism to make it work. That’s what happened and it’s pretty much history at this point.”

(Yes, I suppose “Daddy Knows Best/Speak Only When Spoken To” families are more efficient . . . at scattering offspring thousands of miles distant, at first opportunity and for good. But I digress.)

Lee County’s COG, less formally organized, works much the same, with mayors and other municipal and county officials regularly meeting to discuss common problems — things like as zoning, housing, law enforcement, and such.

While it doesn’t have the authority to make public decisions, its members go back home, hold their public meetings and make decisions based on their experiences at the Council of Governments sessions.

Because COG is outside the jurisdiction of Mississippi’s Open Meetings law, it’s not open to the public.

“I’d rather not speak on why it’s structured the way it is, but my experience with the Council of Governments has been good,” said Verona Mayor Bobby Williams, the immediate past chairman of Lee COG.

(Interesting quote there, Mayor Williams. No telling what we might be reading between your lines . . . let me just say that it carries a rather Wagnerian soundtrack here, and Hitler like Wagner a lot, you know.)

Though Mississippi’s public hospitals and their governing boards also are exempt from public meetings, Patsy notes that “things are different in Natchez.” Walter Brown, board attorney for the county-owned Natchez Regional Medical Center, says his board’s meetings are always open to the public, and when the members don’t want the public in on something (that might, for instance, tip off competitors), they just go into executive session.

“A good deal of the work, like dealing with competing salaries, has to be in executive session,” Brown said.

And Brown says he believes in open meetings.

“I think for lots of reasons meetings should be open,” he said. “If I tell you what’s going on, there will be an informed electorate.”

But none of this openness has attracted much interest from Natchez citizens, he said. Very rarely do any members of the public attend the meetings.

Now I’m going to leave Patsy’s closing grafs as-are for your enjoyment:

And if you’re wondering about those millions of dollars raised each year by Mississippi’s public university and community college nonprofit foundations, don’t wonder. They’re not required to tell you much of anything, especially who their donors are and what they’re doing with the money.

They are governed by bylaws and boards of directors, and can pretty much do what they want. They may bear the names of their public institutions, but they aren’t public at all.

How chahmin’.