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Cast your votes.
Has every delegate voted?
Does any delegate desire to change his
vote?
(There was no response.)
The Clerk will record the vote.
There being 82 votes in the affirmative
and 34 in the negative, the motion to re-
consider is adopted.
The question now arises on the adoption
of Amendment No. 1. Are you ready for
the question?
(Call for the question.)
THE PRESIDENT: The question arises
on the adoption of Amendment No. 1. A
vote Aye is a vote in favor of the amend-
ment...A vote No is a vote against.
Cast your votes.
Has every delegate voted?
Does any delegate desire to change his
vote?
(There was no response.)
There being 40 votes in the affirmative
and 76 in the negative, the motion fails
and the amendment is rejected.
Delegate Willoner, you have two amend-
ments, one of which is sponsored by your-
self and fifteen or more other delegates
and the other by you alone, Amendment K
and Amendment U. Are they intended as
alternates?
DELEGATE WILLONER: Yes, they
are, Mr. Chairman.
THE PRESIDENT: The Chair would be
disposed to put Amendment K and permit
you the opportunity to move your Amend-
ment U as a substitute if that meets with
your approval?
DELEGATE WILLONER: That would
meet with my approval, Mr. Chairman.
THE PRESIDENT: Pages please dis-
tribute Amendment K.
This poses a problem. Are you going to
be sponsoring both?
DELEGATE WILLONER: One is an
alternative or, as has been said in this
Convention, a second line of defense.
THE PRESIDENT: You cannot very
well offer it and then offer a substitute
for it.
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DELEGATE WILLONER: It is not
meant to be a substitute for it, Mr. Chair-
man. It will not be offered if Amendment
K passes.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, all right.
Amendment K, K for King.
This will be Amendment No. 6. The Clerk
will read the amendment.
READING CLERK: Amendment No. 6
to Committee Recommendation No. R&P-1
and R&P-2 as amended by Report No.
S&D-9 by Delegate Willoner and others.
On page 4 immediately preceding line 45
of section 1.18, Reserved Rights, add the
following new section: "Section 1. .............
Freedom of Information.
Governmental proceedings, meetings, and
records shall be open to the people and
prior notice of such proceedings or meet-
ings shall be provided, except as otherwise
prescribed by law."
THE PRESIDENT: The amendment
having been offered by Delegate Willoner
and seconded by the co-sponsors, the Chair
recognizes Delegate Willoner.
DELEGATE WILLONER: Mr. Chair-
man and members of the convention, this
amendment is offered as it was offered
before for the purpose of developing the
principle of freedom of information.
I should like to say that there is a very
major change in this to answer the critics
of our previous proposal.
It had been said that the previous pro-
posal was too broad and allowed too much
or was too dramatic a change, so what has
been done to answer these critics, because
invariably all the critics that I spoke to
said that they were strongly in favor of
freedom of information except that they
felt that the provision went too far, was
to strike the word "all." The effect of this
would be that those areas where the public
interest would be served by maintaining
secrecy, would be protected.
Let me give you an example so that you
understand the effect of this. There is no
presumption now that public meetings are
open. Let us say a body of county commis-
sioners would decide to hold an executive
session and they close the session up and
there is no reason why they have to main-
tain it as an open session.
This would change the presumption. The
presumption would be that they must hold
an open session. However, it would be a
refutable presumption in that in the event
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