Olympia Bulletin

(Olympia, WA) – Olympia City Councilmember Rhenda Strub’s recent attack on a local open government advocate appears in the Tacoma News Tribune:

Rhenda Strub is not going to like this editorial.

She’s the Olympia city councilwoman who’s miffed that a guy named Steven Segall had the gall to question the City Council’s practice of conducting private meetings via e-mail from the council dais.

Segall, you see, lives in Thurston County, but not in Olympia – a fact that apparently disqualifies him from the right to question the council’s practices.

Strub told The Olympian newspaper, “He’s just meddling in something that, frankly, is none of his business.”

Consider this our application to join Segall in the Olympia Meddlers Club. We too live outside the Olympia city limits, and we too think the council’s deliberation-by-Internet stinks.

So does the attorney general’s open government expert, Tim Ford. He wrote to Olympia Mayor Doug Mah last month to criticize the council’s use of e-mail during council meetings.

“E-mail deliberations on public matters that are concurrently being discussed in a public meeting are wholly inconsistent with the requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act and should cease,” Ford said.