A win for transparency

Last Wednesday, a proposal came before the Dorchester Village Board to sell a piece of villageowned land to a business owner looking to build a shop near STH 13 on the village’s west side. Trustees immediately asked the right question: what kind of business is it going to be?

Village president Kurt Schwoch said the prospective buyer did not want any publicity at this point in the process, but trustees still demanded answers.

“I think we should know more about it before we make any motions on the thing,” said trustee Clem Klimpke.

Kudos to the village board members for asking to know before voting to approve the sale of village-owned land. Too often, deals involving land owned by a public entity are shrouded in secrecy, usually because one party or the other wants the deal to go through before the public knows what’s happening.

The trustees in Dorchester were not asking for a full resume and cover letter from the prospective buyer; they just wanted to know what kind of business they were inviting onto village land. What they were asking was not unreasonable, especially since the land they are looking at selling is collectively owned by every taxpayer in the village.

“I understand the guy not wanting to be in the public eye, but he’s going to have to be, because we’re not approving anything until we get to know more,” trustee Keith Lageman said.

Developers and other business owners should realize that transparency is the cost of doing business with a unit of government. If they expect to benefit from incentives — like cheap land or free public infrastructure — they should be especially prepared to expose themselves to some level of public disclosure.

In this case, Schwoch divulged what kind of business was interested in buying the land, and the trustees went ahead with approving the first stage of the sale. It was a fair compromise, and one that we hope other municipalities learn from.