So the Council wanted to do its budget meetings in private, which everyone and Tom Carr said was bad, though Jean Godden said Tom Carr said it was okay, and the Council said it’s no different than other closed-door meetings about arcane stuff (like cutting city programs), and that the Mayor can cut them on his own anyway.Well, the Council won’t be having those meetings anymore, and with a 4:20 time stamp, Council Prez Richard Conlin weighs in with a Seattle Times Op-Ed to defend the group’s honor. The short of it: they’re doing a lot of good stuff on open government. Conlin notes the critiques of the secret budget meetings and says, “We can do much better. That’s why I have convened a Special Committee on Open Government, which is reviewing policies and procedures throughout the city to make sure every department is using best practices for public-records disclosure and open meetings.” Of course, that committee convened in February, so the secret budget meetings would have been occurring on its watch.