The term public servant is too frequently an inaccurate description of elected officials.
Too often, elected officials become overwhelmed with the high honors associated with the posts to which they have been elected, forgetting it is not the officeholders who lend honor to the posts, but rather the people they represent.
It seems the members of the Harford County Council most recently elected or re-elected to serve have quickly lost sight of their mission to interact with the community they represent. The evidence: a dictum issued at the beginning of the week stating that henceforth members of the Harford County Council may not be approached by news reporters at the conclusion of public council meetings.
The policy was announced via email to members of the media by the council's news communications director, Sherrie Johnson.
The reason cited for this prohibition is the need for security, Council President Richard Slutzky later explained. He said the ban on contacting council members while they are behind their dais in the chamber would include the general public, too, while also saying the policy is in "flux."
While security is an important consideration for any public gathering, it's an issue that in this instance already has been given plenty of consideration. It is necessary to pass through a metal detector before entering the county council chambers, and armed sheriff's deputies are at every council meeting, checking those who enter and inside the chamber.
The effect of precluding anyone, media members or otherwise, from approaching county council members after the regular meeting has ended only serves to chill the dissemination of information about matters of public policy, while the effect on security is, at best, negligible.
While it isn't necessarily widely known, the research portion of the job done by reporters is made possible not by virtue of some special authority granted to members of the profession, but rather by the basic rights of all citizens. The right to publish what they find is what is protected in the First Amendment.
If reporters can be prevented from approaching elected officials in a non-disruptive way at the conclusion of a public meeting, any other member of the public is subject to the same kind of limited access to those who have been elected to represent their interests. The right of the people to approach government officials, specifically the right to petition the government, is also among the rights specifically reserved to the governed under the First Amendment.
If an individual's right to approach those elected to the county council is infringed, the question is raised as to which of the five First Amendment rights — speech, assembly, religion, press and petition the government — can be regulated.
If members of the Harford County Council don't want to be subject to questions from reporters or the general public at the end of their sessions they should take some advice from an elected official who had a better understanding of the role of the public in making public policy, Harry S. Truman, who said: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."