Instead of you can have your cake and eat it, too, here is a more practical, more regional alternative.
You can have your tortillas and eat them, too, while watching Española City Council meetings, live and online.
The city is debating bringing back “virtual” meetings you can watch online on your computer or phone. These virtual meetings were eliminated as part of budget cuts. Mayor John Ramon Vigil suggested recently the decision to reinstate the virtual meetings may come down to a choice between providing free tortillas to senior citizens or paying for the technology to restore the meetings.
Former Mayor Javier Sanchez has generously proposed a solution. In today’s Rio Grande Sun, on Page A7, Sanchez says his restaurant La Cocina will provide area seniors free tortillas for a year so the city can resume virtual meetings.
Virtual meetings, which came to the fore during the COVID lockdowns, are a great invention for democracy. You sit in your office or home and watch government at work. Like watching sausage being made, it’s often not attractive. But you see how things either work or don’t work.
Traditionally, that’s been the job of the press, and to a large degree it still is. We attend government and school board meetings because the public at large does not have the time. Our reporting, though, is offered through a prism that may or may not be distorted by a reporter’s point of view and background. Our attempt is to be fair and accurate but sometimes, we know, we are telling readers and viewers how we saw and heard things as well as what we saw and heard. It might be a perspective totally our own.
A virtual meeting removes the filter and allows you to see and judge for yourself. It’s better for long-term democracy because it makes government more transparent.
“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” is a Washington Post slogan that has only been in place since 2017. The phrase is attributed to the Post’s famous Watergate reporter Bob Woodward. It’s a dandy.
Democracy is best practiced out in the open. Governing is hard work and not at all glamorous. It’s tedious and often ugly. Virtual meetings lift the veil of darkness and let in light.
Also in today’s newspaper, former Mayor Sanchez points out many ills plaguing Española and Rio Arriba County. Transparency is lacking in most of our public bodies, including the city council, county commission and school board. We, as citizens, can force transparency by attending public meetings, in person or virtually, and then voicing our concerns. We can put pressure on public officials to act in good faith and out in the open.
“Tortillas for Transparency” is not as catchy as “Democracy Dies in Darkness” but it has a nice ring to it. Among other things, it sounds as comforting as, well, as comforting as a warm tortilla.
Let’s feed our seniors and open government for all to see, firsthand.