"He used to say soulshine,
Its better than sunshine,
Its better than moonshine,
Damn sure better than rain."

I don't advocate violating the law to anyone.  At the same time, I am regularly amazed by the standards that are applied to public entities.  In the private sector, I believe that a high standard of ethics is required.  When you seek information, you do what is logical:  gather reasonable decision-makers together, lay out relevant information, listen to concerns and commit to follow-up with a good -- or at least better -- solution.

I have no idea what happened when several members of Newark City Council met with local developer, Bill Kraner, but I happen to know that all three of the council members are highly ethical, honest individuals who seek to make good decisions for the City of Newark.  Two of the three are Newark natives; the other has been a long-time resident of the City and they have been tagged in what I call a "gotcha" moment.  A gotcha moment occurs when you do nothing wrong but potentially do something technically incorrect:  you didn't file some paperwork, didn't use the right form, violated a protocol.

The three council members are three of the five members of Council's Economic Development Committee.

Still, people are working very hard to find something sinister in a meeting with a local developer - A meeting, I might add, that has been so over hyped that I imagine G. Gordon Liddy, Alger Hiss and several members of the Star Chamber were also present.

Newark Law Director, Doug Sasson, recently editorialized about the problem of head-counting for the purposes of Sunshine Laws.  I thought his points were reasonable.

The essence, or soul, of the Sunshine Law is that you don't deliberate or make decisions without proper public notice, not that you don't attempt to gather good information and make good decisions.