Phillip Bradshaw has been gone from elected service for a couple of weeks, and I miss him already.

It’s not because we always saw eye to eye.

At his final meeting as a member of the Isle of Wight County Board of Supervisors, Bradshaw gave this newspaper a good tongue-lashing. He believed we’d done a poor job of reporting Isle of Wight’s perspective on the Navy’s proposed use of Franklin Municipal Airport for touch-and-go training of turboprop pilots. Our newspaper was an easy target that night as supervisors, who later in the same meeting passed a resolution opposing the project, looked to mollify angry Carrsville District citizens.

To his credit, Bradshaw didn’t say anything publicly at the meeting that he hadn’t already said to me in a telephone conversation. And he had a point. The reporter who had been covering the story left our staff after having interviewed Bradshaw and others to get Isle of Wight’s take on the Navy training. The story based on those interviews went unwritten.

Even when on the receiving end of his criticism, I always admired Bradshaw’s candor. I never wondered where he stood on an issue, never had to read between the lines.

When others toed the party line, Bradshaw wasn’t bashful about breaking ranks. When we invited Western Tidewater leaders to visit with our news staff on the one-year anniversary of the announcement of the closure of Franklin’s paper mill, he was the one person in the room who said the current pace of job-creation efforts is unacceptable. He wasn’t a defeatist. He shouldered much of the blame, saying his county had not properly emphasized and funded economic development. He refused to succumb to low expectations.

On transparency, Bradshaw didn’t just preach it. He practiced it. His commitment was to keeping his constituents fully informed, but he understood the critical role of the media in that process. He returned every phone call I ever made to him, and he answered my questions forthrightly. On rare occasions when he couldn’t speak publicly about a matter, he’d go off the record and give me enough background to ensure that anything I reported was accurate or, in cases where reporting a story was premature, that I’d have the necessary information to write the story later.

Bradshaw’s belief in candor and transparency was usually reflected by the rest of the Isle of Wight board, which has meaningful dialog — among supervisors and with citizens — at its meetings. The conversation can be lively at times, tension is often high, and meetings run long, but that’s how it should be. Democracy was never meant to be pretty and polite. Isle of Wight citizens get to see their government in action, warts and all. When I watch other legislative bodies in the area, it’s clear that the tough decisions are being hashed out elsewhere, out of the view of the citizens they represent.

Bradshaw began with a presumption that county business was the people’s business. There had to be a darned good reason to go behind closed doors.

When Isle of Wight officials would huddle occasionally with colleagues in Franklin and Southampton County to discuss issues of regional interest, citizens would know about it only because Isle of Wight — at Bradshaw’s insistence — let them know. Franklin and Southampton officials took the position that, because the meetings did not involve quorums of their elected leadership, they had no obligation to inform citizens.

As a legal matter, they were right. The law says such a meeting can be closed. It doesn’t say it must be. When given the choice, Bradshaw and Isle of Wight picked openness. The default position elsewhere has become secrecy. Openness is conceded, begrudgingly, when the law demands it.

For Bradshaw, transparency was more than a campaign slogan.

He’s moved behind the scenes now, as chief financial officer for Isle of Wight County Schools. This columnist, for one, will miss his contributions to public life.

STEVE STEWART is publisher of The Tidewater News. His e-mail address is steve.stewart@tidewaternews.com.