EDITORIAL: City Hall secrecy is an affront to the public

The possibility a of manufacturing operation coming to Port Washington that is so massive it will require almost two square miles of land is looming over the city and town. Details are so scant that there is no way for residents to know how this development would affect their communities, and many are worried. They have reason to worry about that, but there is a more immediate concern: The city’s elected representatives are refusing to honor their responsibility to be open and forthright with their constituents.

The eight members of the Common Council and the mayor are dealing with representatives of that enormous and mysterious industrial development in secret. They are refusing to reveal information about the development or anything about what the company is asking or demanding of the city and what the council and mayor might decide to give.

They are shutting the public out at the developer’s insistence. They didn’t just agree to the developer’s demand for secrecy, they promised it in writing. Each one of the nine elected officials signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA).

In a further affront to the public, city officials are keeping the agreement itself secret, refusing to release a document that is a public record under Wisconsin law.

This is so far removed from the universal expectations of elected government officials’ conduct that it is hard to believe it’s happening in Port Washington. Yet it is: The mayor and all of the city’s aldermen signed a document requiring them to keep from the public information critical to an issue that could have an enormous impact on the community.

Signing an NDA is not illegal, but it is clearly wrong for elected officials to agree to do the public’s business in private.

Nondisclosure agreements are business devices. Frequently called secrecy agreements, they are typically used to protect a company’s confidential information from being disclosed by employees, vendors, investors and others in the private sector.

Legal experts advise companies to avoid NDAs involving government entities. In guidance published online, the international law firm Vorys, Sater, Semour and Pease, an authority on business transactions, warns that business-government NDAs “run squarely against public records laws, which require the governmental entity to provide transparency that is incongruous with confidential business transactions.” It points out that such agreements can be “unenforceable as drafted by trying to require a governmental entity to keep public records confidential in violation of the law.”

Acting under the Public Records Law, Ozaukee Press has requested a copy of the agreement the public officials signed. The request has been ignored.

Even the existence of the agreement would not have been known beyond City Hall if it hadn’t been reported by Ozaukee Press based on information confirmed by the only alderman who would say more than “no comment.”

The alderman explained that he and the others felt obliged to sign the NDA because representatives of the manufacturer demanded it as a condition of informing Port officials of their plans.

Warning lights have to be flashing for every citizen who reads this. If their elected officials fell so easily in line to do the bidding of a solicitor even before negotiations started, what other concessions will they be offering?

Not one of the agreement signers had the gumption to stand up and give the NDA demand the response it deserved—no, we will do this our way, in full view of the people of the city and town; if you don’t like our conditions, take whatever you’re selling somewhere else.

The company in question is a semiconductor manufacturer that has been contracting to buy land—more than 1,000 acres already with possibly more to come—in the Town of Port Washington for a vast campus surrounding microchip manufacturing plants. The land would have to be annexed to the City of Port Washington for the development to proceed.

Secrecy has ruled from the beginning. No details concerning the planned size of the operation and its infrastructure requirements, such as its needs for new or expanded highways and the great amount of water used by such operations, have been disclosed. The public is left to guess at the impacts on their communities, whether positive or negative, of what could be one of the largest industrial developments in southeastern Wisconsin.

The company can be as secretive as it wants to be, but city officials do not have that option. They got off to a bad start dealing with this issue. Now they need to restart by making the agreement public and informing the manufacturer’s representatives that there will be no further discussions until they tear it up.

And then put an end to City Hall secrecy.