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The following Editorial appeared in the Star-Telegram

GAG POLICY

We don't agree with the step that newly elected Colleyville Mayor Donna Arp took last year, but we must stand in defense of her right to take it.

The Colleyville City Council adopted a policy this week aimed at discouraging council members from disclosing information about discussions held in closed-door meetings. Arp, while a member of the council last year, had told developer Raman Chandler that a lawsuit could grow out of a dispute between Chandler and the city.

The new policy says that council members "shall not make selective disclosure of confidential matters discussed in executive session, where the disclosure of the information has not been made to the general public, and/or where such disclosure provides an unfair advantage to the recipient."

The council can talk all day about what it wants, but it must remember this: Everything it does is public business. There are some topics, including lawsuits, on which the council is allowed in the public interest to hold private discussions.

Every council member, including Arp, has the right to free speech and can disagree with her fellow council members about whether information should be kept secret. In making these decisions, she is answerable to no one but the voters who elected her.

That freedom of each member to speak out is the most important safeguard against abuse of the privilege that public bodies have been granted to hold limited closed-door meetings.

In Arp's case, she should not have tipped the city's legal hand in its disagreement with Chandler. But we cannot abide the council's intended limits on her ability to speak.

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