[CGC] Rick Kollinger's "Tasteful & Penetrating Insights" 4/12

[Administrator]

In the book "Catch-22" there is a character named Major Major. His parent's, 
the Major's, in a bit of whimsy named him Major. Thus his full name was 
Major Major. The Army upon seeing this immediately commissioned him a Major, 
making him Major Major Major.

However, Major Major did not feel that he was up to the job so he instituted 
the policy of seeing no one in his office while he was there. He would, 
however, be available to guests when he was not there. This led to the 
following sort of dialogue:

"Is Major Major in?"
"Yes, he is."
"May I see him?"
"No, you may not."
"When can I see him?"
"When he is no longer in."

This is much the same policy adapted by the Centreville Town Council. The 
Town recently cancelled a work shop regarding adjustments to the town's 
noise ordinance. They did so because they thought the meeting might get too, 
well, noisy.

With estimates of 100 people attending the meeting, it was cancelled because 
of concerns that not much could be accomplished because of all the differing 
opinions.

This is always a concern of highly efficient government officials, that 
opinions other than their own will make their way into the public 
marketplace. This is always unfortunate because the public's opinion almost 
invariably is more sensible, cost effective and popular than those of the 
elected official's. More importantly, it undermines the trust the 
politicians have placed in their own opinions which were arrived at after 
polling those citizens who gave to their election campaigns.

This has led many local governments to have "closed" meetings. This they do 
by citing the need to discuss "personnel issues". Since they consider 
themselves "personnel" of the town, they see this as a way of skirting the 
Open Meetings Law.
Or they can simply schedule the meetings at a time and place inconvenient to 
everyone. That is, the public is perfectly welcome to attend when they're 
not there; but discouraged to attend when they are.

But maybe they should simply take a page from the sophisticated school 
system's "Book of Definitions" and refer to cancelled meetings as 
"alternative meeting schedules."

School administrators and school board members recently returned from a 
junket at Rat Planet in Orlando, Florida to plead for more money for their 
school systems. In Talbot County, this means more bucks for their laptop 
initiative.

They have been charging the kids $ 50 a year for "insurance" on their 
computers. Except they haven't had insurance for 16 months. This was 
explained away by school superintendent Karen Salmon as still being used for 
computer costs. Or you could believe option #2 explanation by Asst. school 
superintendent, Carol Visintainer who said the fees were "the cost of doing 
business."

So, under these definitions if you were to contract with someone to mow your 
lawn for $ 50 and they didn't, they could explain that:
a. The $ 50 still went towards the lawn mower, or
b. The $ 50 wasn't meant for actually mowing your lawn but rather was "the 
cost of doing business."

Of course, this is an extreme example and would be known in law enforcement 
circles, not as "the cost of doing business" but "larceny after trust."