Doing the public’s business in public is a great idea, one enshrined in state legislation by the open-meetings law. For the Legislature, however, doing the public’s business – all of it – in public, is a great idea only if you’re not the party that holds the gavel.

Thus, Senate Republicans may well open their weekly caucus meeting to the public, something the Democrats used to do – way back when the GOP ran the place. Here’s hoping their experience helps persuade them to continue the practice, no matter who’s in charge.

Caucuses, weekly meetings the two parties in each house of the Legislature hold to discuss the public’s business, are closed, those involved say, because allowing public scrutiny of lawmakers’ now-private discussions would change the candid nature of the sessions.

Yet if candor has been lost in other areas of government around the state, from school board meetings to those at city hall, Oregon doesn’t seem to have suffered much. Public officials still manage to be surprisingly – sometimes appallingly – blunt about matters before them, sometimes to their own embarrassment.

Just ask Ron Chinn, the Multno-mah County Education Service District board member whose disparaging remarks about students with intellectual disabilities earned him the justified wrath of people from as far away as Washington, D.C. Chinn surely regrets his “candor,” as he should. And they still manage to get the public’s business done, often pretty well.

What public caucus sessions would do, at least if all four caucuses agreed to them, is give the lie to any suggestion that lawmakers cut deals about bills in private for reasons that all too often have nothing to do with the public good. That cannot be bad for a body that’s worried about the lack of faith the citizens of Oregon have.

Open caucuses would not end the occasionally stupid remark, and they might not ever change the way in which a piece of legislation becomes law.

What they would do is add to the evidence that lawmakers are on the up and up, there to serve all Oregonians to the best of their ability. That’s not such a bad thing, if you think about it.