Why the recording issue will not go away.
Here’s the issue:
Imagine this scenario: The majority of the board doesn’t want an audio recording made. A single person on the board wants to record. What happens? If you answer: the single person must obey the will of the majority, then you are saying:
If the majority of the board wants to commit an illegal or immoral action, a single commissioner cannot choose to record that action in order to assist with future accountability, prosecution, reconciliation, or reparation for the wrong done. You are basically saying, the majority of the board can do and say whatever it wants in the board room, regardless of how blatantly dishonest, because, an elected commissioner, one of the few humans on earth who actually have the job of paying attention to these meetings, cannot start recording the meetings without majority agreement. You are preventing the minority of the people who are elected to safeguard the operations of the board from using a basic tool of safeguarding against dishonest and immoral behavior: an accurate record.
Ironically, you are giving the majority the power over the tool of transparency which will surely keep us all safe from the gross abuses of the minority powers- which we see throughout history.
Anyone who ever attempts to hold the majority of the board accountable for arguments, statements, claims, promises, agreements, assertions, attacks, crimes, lies, or what have you from the public board meetings, will be forced to deal with the endless quagmire of confusion and mystification of human memory and the manipulations of clever orators.
On the other hand, if you recognize the right to record a public meeting as sacred for both individual commissioners as well as normal human beings, you preserve a vital safeguard against blatant and poorly justified wrong doing. Wrong doing can still happen, but allowing such to blur away in the confusion of history is no longer a foregone conclusion. Forever, schmucks like me will always have the power to simply publish the complete record of the shenanigans and let the chips fall where the endless analysis of history lay them forth.
You might also ask why this issue has taken 6 years to get anywhere near resolved.
