No secret in these ballots
Being the inquisitive person that I am, I had to do some checking when Marion Mayor Mary Olson commented at the April 21 Marion City Council meeting that the Newton City Commission recently used a secret ballot to select a commissioner to fill an unexpired term.
The Mayor made the comment because Marion City Councilman Bill Holdeman wanted the council to vote by secret ballot in making the annual appointments of city officials. City attorney Dan Baldwin told Holdeman that secret ballots were not allowed.
The Kansas Open Meetings Act (KOMA) does not allow public governing bodies like city councils, county commissions, and school districts to make decisions behind closed doors or by way of secret ballot.
So I had to find out what the heck was going on. Did the Newton commission vote by secret ballot?
When the Newton commission met April 10, there were ballots distributed to the commissioners. There were six candidates who had applied for the position and each commissioner could vote up to three times.
Those ballots then were collected by the city attorney who tallied the votes and read them out loud.
The minutes, which were approved at the April 22 meeting, included the results of the selections made by each of the commissioners and the candidate with the highest number of votes was sworn in.
And there you have it. No secret ballots. No hidden decisions. Just the way government meetings are supposed to be. Open and honest.
— SUSAN BERG
