Why the Council Can't Say Everything in Public
A short field guide to what looks like stonewalling at council meetings, and what's actually going on.
If you’ve ever watched a Verona Borough Council meeting, whether in person, on the YouTube stream, or in a clip a neighbor texted you, and walked away thinking they didn’t actually answer the question, you’re not wrong. But you’re probably misreading what just happened.
There’s a story most of us tell ourselves when a council member dodges a direct question: they’re hiding something, they don’t care, they’ve already made up their minds in the back room. Sometimes that’s true. Often, it isn’t. The thing that looks like stonewalling is usually something else: an elected official operating inside a thicket of legal constraints, many of which exist to protect us, that prevent them from saying out loud what they actually know or think.
This post is about that thicket. Once you can see it, council meetings make a lot more sense, and your civic outrage starts pointing in more useful directions.
The six big constraints
There are roughly six categories of subject matter that the council either cannot discuss in open session or is strongly advised by counsel not to:
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Pending or anticipated litigation. If the borough is being sued, or thinks it might be, anything said in a public meeting becomes evidence. Saying “we did nothing wrong” in public can cost the borough a settlement. Saying “yeah, that was a mistake” can cost it the case. So the lawyer says: don’t say anything. And they don’t.
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Personnel matters. Hiring, firing, discipline, salary negotiations, complaints against an employee. Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act explicitly carves these out for executive session, and for good reason: public characterization of a borough employee, even an accurate one, can become a lawsuit. So the council moves these conversations into closed session.
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Real estate and contract negotiations. If the borough is negotiating to buy a piece of land or sign a vendor contract, broadcasting their position destroys their leverage. Imagine telling a seller “we’ll go up to $1.2M” in front of an audience that includes the seller’s broker. The negotiation is over before it began.
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Attorney-client privileged advice. When the borough solicitor advises the council on a legal question, that advice is privileged, the same way the advice your lawyer gives you is privileged. The moment they discuss it in open session, the privilege is waived and the advice becomes part of the public record. So they don’t.
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Active investigations and public safety. If there’s an open investigation by police, by code enforcement, by anyone, disclosing what the council has been briefed on can compromise it. They know things. They can’t tell you yet.
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Procedural rules. Council meetings run on parliamentary procedure. A council member who wants to respond to a public comment may not be allowed to, depending on where the meeting is in its agenda. What looks like cold silence is sometimes just procedural compliance.
The first five are recognized by Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act, the state law that requires most of the council’s business to happen in public while permitting executive (closed) session for a narrow list of categories. The law strikes a balance: most things in the open, a specific set of things in executive session, with the council required to publicly announce the general subject and the reason for entering executive session. The sixth is just how meetings work.
What this looks like in practice
A few examples of moments that look evasive but probably aren’t:
- A resident asks pointed questions about a personnel dispute that’s been the subject of public rumor. The council says nothing substantive. → Likely category 2 (personnel) plus possibly category 1 (pending litigation).
- A council member is asked about a property the borough is reportedly interested in buying. They say “we have no comment at this time.” → Almost certainly category 3 (real estate negotiation).
- A long-running dispute between residents and a developer is on the agenda. The council votes, but barely discusses it from the dais. → Likely category 1. They’ve discussed it extensively in executive session, on advice of counsel.
- A council member responds to a sharp public comment with “thank you for your input” and nothing else. → Could be category 6 (procedural), could be category 1, could just be a council member exercising discipline.
In each case, the right read isn’t they’re hiding something. It’s they’re under instruction. The frustrating part (and this is real) is that the council often can’t tell you which category applies, because saying so violates the same constraint.
The honest caveat
This isn’t a free pass for the council, and I’m not going to pretend it is.
The categories above can also be misused, invoked to avoid uncomfortable conversations that aren’t actually covered. Executive session can become a place where things happen that should have been public. The Sunshine Act has teeth, but only when residents and the press are paying attention.
So the deal this newsletter is offering is straightforward: I’ll do the work of explaining what’s a legitimate constraint and what looks like a constraint being used as a shield. When I can’t tell, I’ll say so. When I think the council overreached into executive session for something that didn’t qualify, I’ll say that too. The point isn’t to defend the council. It’s to make sure your civic attention gets spent on the right things.
Why this matters
Verona, like every town, has a finite supply of civic attention. Every minute spent being angry at a council member for “not answering” a question they legally couldn’t answer is a minute not spent on the things that actually deserve scrutiny: how the budget gets prioritized, what gets on the agenda and what doesn’t, who gets appointed to which board, how decisions get made between meetings.
The most useful thing a Verona resident can do, and the most useful thing this newsletter can do, is help separate the things that look bad from the things that are bad. They overlap. They aren’t the same.
If this changed how you'll watch the next meeting, forward it to a neighbor.