Every year, for every elected office, candidates are asked what their position would be on Policy X or Policy Y. Candidates also make promises about what they would do about Issue A or Issue B. And some try to assure voters that they would adhere to Principle M but not Principle N (or vice versa) if elected.

How often does Policy X or Y, Issue A or B, or Principle M or N refer to open government?

Not too often, right? But shouldn’t it?

Come Sept. 4, my rambunctious 5-year-old son will be joining the ranks of public school kindergartners across the state. Some school districts are already in the swing of things, but thanks to Kings Dominion, it will be Tuesday before the bell rings for all the schools.

School will be good for my little one. He needs the challenge of new material and the structure of a school day. He also needs someone other than his nagging mother to remind him that he is accountable for his behavior.

That’s something the schools should be doing, too, as the school year progresses: being accountable to the public they serve. We parents hope they will do the right thing without our nagging. But just as we do with our children, we must be prepared to remind them that we care and that we are watching.

I've written before about electronic meetings, and I'll probably write about them in the future. But I'm writing about them today because I just spent three hours in a meeting to talk about e-meetings, and I've left there vexed.

First, a bit of background about how and why we have the rules that we do for electronic meetings.

The short version is that a number of years back, there was an attempt to give government some flexibility to use electronic methods to meet without hampering the public's right to observe their government. The original e-meeting rules applied only to state agencies and required 30 days notice.

Those requirements were pretty onerous, so the FOIA Council created a subcommittee to review how the rules might be relaxed. The subcommittee came up with a recommendation, which was eventually passed by the General Assembly and enacted into law, that greatly relaxed the notice period to three days and otherwise loosened the procedures and reporting requirements. The rules applied only to state agencies, though. Local and regional bodies could not meet by electronic means at all.