Local officials need to answer questions honestly, in a timely manner

We, as a newspaper, have one obligation: to inform the public, hold officials accountable, and to help with public discourse.
This can come in many different ways, some of which are “light hearted” whether it be through writing about a local charity event, highlighting what happened under the lights at the Friday night football games, or writing about something good someone did in one of our communities.
Then there are times when questions need to be answered, in order to inform the public, many questions in which government officials may feel uncomfortable answering for whatever reason they may have.
Why do we ask? Why are newspapers important? We want to provide you yet another example.
Recently, a reporter came across a memo from the Kasson Police Chief to the City Council indicating at least one business was caught during an educational compliance visit selling THC products which were not in compliance with state standards.
It prompted the reporter, who has been covering the topic, to look into it further.
Starting as soon as he found it buried within pages of the agenda, the reporter started asking about the memo. Police Chief Josh Hanson was on vacation, so he asked the next likely person to have information, City Administrator Tim Ibisch.
“I think it’s important to follow the proper channels for requests of this nature, so I would ask you to reach out to the Police Chief when he returns,” he wrote in an email. “He is best contact for these questions.”
This in our opinion is an absolutely unacceptable answer. How could it be that only one person in the city had an answer to what seemed like very simple questions — such as was the memo about the Kasson Liquor Store?
One of the questions asked of the city administrator was “Can you please confirm if the chief was referring to the liquor store selling products out of compliance or if it was the other store?”
Multiple emails were sent back and forth between Ibisch and the reporter for this story, without the simple question being answered.
The police chief returned from his vacation on Monday, and Ibisch finally said what he knew and didn’t know.
“The police chief did not make any indications to me that there were sales of products that were not permissible, outside of the email conversation that have been going back and forth between you and him,” Ibisch wrote.
Why a city administrator would waste so much time, energy, and effort, avoiding a simple yes or no question is actually astonishing to us.
When a reporter asks a question the question should be answered. If someone doesn’t have an answer, admit it. If someone needs more time to answer a question let the reporter know, we are all humans, and we understand things can be complicated to answer.
This wasn’t the case, however. In our view, this was a simple case of a city official, not wanting to answer a question, and not wanting to be transparent with the public — the people who pay his salary.
If a government official simply doesn’t have an answer, why not just say it?
As it turned out in this case not only were we informing the public about what happened in this situationit turns out we were informing the city administration as well.
It’s yet another example of why transparency is important. What if a reporter never found this memo and didn’t ask questions? Would no one ever know about it? Would people in city hall be clueless to what took place? Or would some type of unfounded rumor make its way to Facebook or another social media site?
We don’t know the answer to those questions, but we know we will continue to be working hard to bring transparency to the communities we cover, despite any resistance we come across along the way.