Why secret meetings on reopening and why not trust small business people?

In a commentary, Lubbock’s Scott Mann makes points about the City of Lubbock’s shutdown of business and infringement of basic rights of the people that apply, in varying degrees, to many local governments in Texas, not just the Hub City.

As to the city’s reopening committee, which has met in secret, Mann writes:

“We fault them not for serving, but this isn’t their job. [Mayor] Pope’s Politburo cannot, even with a unanimous voice, open Lubbock.  We don’t need your rules, mayor, but if we did, the council could draw them up in an hour. Oh, wait, the council can’t deliberate in secret.”

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And this is a key point, the Mayor issued the draconian decrees and he can just as easily undo them. And if he insists his blame be diluted with a committee, citizens have one they elected and whose members are answerable to them at the ballot box: the city council. But, as Mann pointed out a city council cannot legally meet in secret.

Another key point made in the essay titled “Pope’s Politburo: Is this America?” is this:

“Big businesses, on the other hand, like Target, are delighted Pope allows them to remain open and sell what ten thousand small businesses in Lubbock wish they could. And, oddly enough, even though shelf-space-shortages and restaurant closures have forced most of us into the grocery every third day, somehow those businesses have not become centers of infection. So why not trust small business?”

Mr. Mann, I learned a long time ago that those who find it hard to trust others are often, not always but often, that way because they themselves cannot be trusted. In other words they don’t trust because they think most others are like themselves: untrustworthy.

Maybe that is why Lubbock’s mayor and others in the state are so hesitant to trust business owners to run their own shops.