Justice is not served
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Editor,
I don’t make it a point of visiting the halls (rooms) of justice if I’m not summoned, but I did decide to attend a final hearing for the citizens lawsuit against the city of Polson to see how the wheels of justice turned and what brand of justice would be meted out.
As I understood it, the citizens filed that the city had broken the Open Meeting Laws by closing two of the three question and answer interview sessions with the prospective candidates for City Manager. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. They did or they didn’t.
Turns out, the law sees it otherwise; multiple shades of grey. The state law doesn’t seem to have these shades, but Judge Manley saw them. The lawyer representing the city was allowed her oratory, unabated. Seems the rules were different when it was the other lawyer’s turn. The judge kept interrupting.
Judge Manley seemed to keep the “people’s” lawyer in a box that had nothing to do with the city’s infraction and the purpose of the suit. Whether or not a resident of Polson stood up in a city council meeting and called them all crooks or not had nothing to do with the city knowingly breaking the law (they had been warned by legislator Greg Hertz of their potentially illegal intentions after he had contacted the State Attorney general’s office). Interesting that the now ex-mayor acted on the advice of the now ex-city attorney.
The judge referred to two other cases in the state that were “similar,” but not the same, as precedent. No, this one is different. The city either broke the law or they didn’t. The law was complied during previous city manager hirings, why the change in process for this one?
What I discovered during my brief visit was that in the “rooms” of justice, it’s not how justice will be served, but rather whether or not it will even make an appearance.
I don’t plan to make any further un-summoned visits to that judicial vacuum. I witnessed enough.
Michael Gale
Ronan
