I Repeat: Your Attendance Is Encouraged

Will the third time be the charm?

Council member Vincent B. Orange Sr. (D-Ward 5) hopes that at least two colleagues from the Committee on Government Operations will show up today as he makes a third attempt to move forward on a controversial bill that could open most D.C. government meetings to the public whenever a quorum is present.

Here's the problem: Orange, who is chairman of the committee and a sponsor of the bill along with council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), can't seem to rally a quorum to discuss the legislation.

Twice he and council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4) have sat waiting, one committee member shy of the three needed to get a conversation officially started. Council members Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) and Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) have been absent.

Last week at the scheduled meeting time, the absentees were having a private meeting to discuss possible amendments to the open-meetings bill.

Currently, public bodies can meet in private if no "official action of any kind is taken."

The bill would eliminate the closed-meeting policy, with the exception of personnel and legal matters. One of the amendments discussed last week behind closed doors would allow such meetings if "there is no intention for the discussion to lead to an official action."

Graham, who wrote the amendments, said he wanted to use them as "discussion items" but would not necessarily move to place them in the bill.

He, Mendelson and Schwartz arrived in the hearing room minutes after Orange had adjourned the meeting and left the building last week. Orange and Fenty had waited 38 minutes for their colleagues.

Orange said he did what he could to get his colleagues to attend the meetings. The first time, he went by their offices. Last week, "I called dispatch, and they patched me into each office," he said.

When he was patched into Graham's office, he was told that Graham was in a meeting. "I said, 'In five minutes, I will adjourn the meeting,' " Orange said.

Graham said he got the message. "I looked up at the clock. . . . It had only been two minutes," he said.