By Caleb Taylor

Should local public officials be able to meet in secret to discuss economic development projects?

sponsored by State Rep. Delia Haak R-District 91 and State Sen. Lance Eads R-District 7 would amend 淫性视频鈥檚 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to allow for an executive session to be called by local government officials to discuss economic development projects.聽

Executive sessions are closed to the public and these discussions aren鈥檛 subject to FOIA requests. Currently, local governments can only call an executive session for discussions related to employment, demotion, promotion, appointment, disciplining or resignation of public officers or employees.

During a meeting of the Senate City, County and Local Affairs committee on April 8th, Eads said the 鈥渂ill allows cities and counties to go into an executive session to discuss an economic development project鈥� and 鈥渟pecifically defines what that means and what types of things they can talk about.鈥�

Eads said:

This would provide an exemption within the executive session from FOIA so that they would have the ability to discuss where they鈥檙e at in the process to make sure they have the best opportunity to be successful while at the same time not give out any vulnerable information by creating undue competition with information they don鈥檛 want to share with anyone else at that point in the process.鈥�

ACRE Economic Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu said the bill would 鈥渆rode鈥� 淫性视频鈥檚 FOIA that鈥檚 widely considered to be one of the best in the nation.

Kalulu said:

The bill restricts government transparency. In general, transparency is beneficial to both the government and for their citizens.There鈥檚 academic evidence that shows that economic development incentives are not as effective as they鈥檙e advertised hence the need for transparency. We鈥檙e pumping public money into economic development incentives that aren鈥檛 very effective. That鈥檚 why we need to be more transparent in the way we鈥檙e going about these deals.鈥澛�

Kalulu is a co-author of 鈥�Access 淫性视频: County Web Transparency鈥� with ACRE Policy Analyst Joyce Ajayi.

You can watch Kalulu鈥檚 full testimony (begins at 10:34:23 a.m.)

The bill failed to pass for a lack of a motion to pass. Previously, the bill .

For more of our research on targeted incentives, go here. For more of our research on transparency, go here.