By David Poulson
Dec. 14, 2009

Confession may be good for the soul but it sure makes for lousy public policy.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources last week dug out an old chestnut of a strategy for soliciting comment on a $600 million copper-nickel mine. Critics nickname this process the confessional style of public discourse. Usually government officials resort to it as an efficient way to handle hearings where hundreds of people are eager to express dissatisfaction, if not anger.

I covered a confessional hearing in 2002 when Michigan officials considered new rules for large livestock farms.  From a news standpoint it wasn’t a bad deal. I got two stories – one about the issue and another about the disdain for the process.

Here’s how that process works: The public is invited to a meeting where officials present a bit of background of the decision at hand. Then people are allowed one at a time to speak to a stenographer who records their responses. Often the commenter is in a room separate from everyone else. Sometimes someone representing the decision-making agency is present, but not always.  Theoretically someone – maybe a bunch of someones – with authority reads what everyone says, thus informing the decision.

Perhaps the experience doesn’t rise to the level of requiring the confessional seal. But it is a private transaction. Commenters don’t hear each other so of course they don’t respond to each other.  Any synergy gleaned from the clash of ideas is washed out in the bland process of providing dictation.

The argument for the procedure sounds reasonable. Many more people can submit comments.  Minnesota officials sought 10 stenographers to serve the expected multitude.  That’s government efficiency.

“We feel that using this method we’ll be able to hear from more than 300 attendees, as opposed to using the microphone method where we’d hear from 30 to 50 people,” Colleen Coyne, the DNR communications director, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Hey, I get this.

As a former newspaper reporter, I sat through hundreds of hours of public testimony. You know what? A lot of it is a waste of time.  You get the blowhards who obviously enjoy a public stage.  You get people who won’t let their lack of knowledge keep them from expressing it at great lengths.  You get hired shills who trot out interminable presentations developed by expensive public relations agencies.

No doubt such people inhibit others from speaking. Some people lose patience and go home.

And some become galvanized.  Lois Gibbs went from quiet housewife to the founder and leader of a national advocacy group when she was thrust into the limelight during the Love Canal controversy some 30 years ago.

My opposition to this process is in part selfish. Some of my best news stories were informed by the views expressed, argued and debated at public hearings. They are where I met experts, advocates, opponents and victims.  They are where I learned things that I wouldn’t otherwise have known enough to even ask about.

I’m not saying I have never mentally – or even actually – rolled my eyes at a speaker at a public hearing. But the interaction at those hearings made me a better reporter.

Wouldn’t it have the same impact on the people who make the decisions?

Here’s the deal: You want to express yourself unencumbered by the views of others? Find a friendly blog and post to it.

But we should not for a minute give up full, raucous, personal and public debate.

A public hearing is not simply a place to take in comment. It is an arena for the clash of ideas, a marketplace that produces collaborative thought and understanding beyond the individuals who participate in it.

Perhaps most important, it is an opportunity for the deciders and those who live with their decisions to meet face to face.

Democracy cannot be sanitized and managed. At its very best, it is messy and inefficient and the worst way to make public policy – except for all others.

David Poulson edits Great Lakes Echo and is the associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.