The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-27
THE SECRET SESSION.

The latest city in the State to offend against the principle of the open door in the transaction of the peoples bus ines is the enterprising city of New Britain. special committee of the court of common council appointed to confer with officials of the Con- necticut Trolley company. upon the matter of double-tracking certain streets, met and after a discussion agreed to hold the conference behind closed dors, the clerk to later use his judgment in making public the notes of the meeting. Mayor Landers, who should have been the first to protest against this method of attending to the public business, remarked that while he would gladly abide by the decision of the majority he would personally prefer an executive session which was straightway ordered.
 The argument which induced the members of the committee to thus knock Democratic principles of gov ernment into cooked hat was that they would be able to discuss each question as it arose more freely if the ears of the public were stuffed with cotton. The representative of the trolley company said that 1t was immaterial to him which course was followed, the open or the shut door, but that perhaps "a family talk" might be in the interest of progress. after which the public could learn what had been done in its behalf. Commissioner O'Neill of the depart- ment of public works Is man the voters of that city will do well to bear in mind. He protested against a secret session of the committee on the sim pie but convincing ground that the peoples business should be done in the open; that the people would want to know first hand what had been done and that they had a right to know it.
 This matter of secret sessions of public boards Is as old as the most timid man who ever served in a pub lie capacity and the more 1t is consld- cred the more reprehensible 1t be- comes. The public servant who be- lieves that he can serve his constit- uency better in the dark than in the light is congenitally unfltted for public life to the exact extent of his unwillingness to let 1t be known what his attitude is towards contemplated public improvements. The very idea of a secret session of public body juss tifies the suspicion that the public Iservants interested have motives and aims which cannot be squared with the public good. A private institution may do as it pleases. Since it's busi- ness is it's own and of no other con- cern to the public than to gratiFy en Idle curiosity it does well to confer in private. A public board has no right whatever to conduct its busi- ness apart from the ear of the public if the public expresses a wish to listen. The power which the public servant possesses is a delegated power and represents in no sense whatever the rights of proprietorshlp,
 The need at all times in popular government is men in office whose conduct is always within the scrutiny of their employer. The weak and evil things which government has done can invariably be traced to an assump- ton of power on the part of public servants. It Is a pity that city like New Britain, which is rapidly becom- ing one of the foremost manufacturing centers in the State, should encour-
 age star chamber proceedings, especi-
 ally where the interests of public ser-
 vice corporations are involved as in this case.
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