Osage Beach Alderman Believe Transparency At City Hall Is In Line With The People’s Requests

Transparency in Government continues to be an ongoing struggle despite promises made by politicians statewide and nationwide.

On the local level, some politicians like Osage Beach aldermen Richard Ross and Justin Hoffman took to the KRMS airwaves to say in this current age and time of social media, Ross believes that the city has done a good job with transparency.

“We didn’t have live feeds, we weren’t even video anything. And you know, you didn’t come to the meeting, you didn’t know what was going on, and now you don’t have to come. If you’ve got Facebook or a computer, it’s not that hard to figure out what’s going on. So I think we’re very transparent.”

Hoffman agreed with Ross but added a caveat that there are limits to what can, and cannot, be released to the public at any given time.

“From what I’ve seen in my 2 years that we are completely transparent other than things that are legal matters and you can’t be transparent about things that are in executive session.”

Actions taken during executive sessions by a governing body are to be released following the session and within 72 hours in response to a request falling under provisions of the Sunshine law.