Rod Watson: Honest and open government in New York is under constant assault

But honest and open government is under constant assault not only on a national scale, but also right here in New York. The threats are not always as obvious, but they are no less insidious. And it falls to local heroes flying under the radar to safeguard the public’s right to know and to be heard.

“Our Town Board, they don’t share things readily. You have to FOIL request everything,” said Cathy Worthington, a resident of Stafford in Genesee County, referring to the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

Worthington is among six residents – and the reporters who covered them – who were scheduled to be honored Wednesday night at the New York Coalition for Open Government’s annual meeting via videoconference.

Her request last November was so fundamental to open government that it seems almost unbelievable that it was denied: She wanted a copy of the proposed town budget before it was voted on. But as chronicled by Howard Owens in The Batavian, officials refused her, contending – erroneously – that she could only read it in the Town Clerk’s Office, not have a copy to take home and study.

In cases like this, it’s often hard to know if government officials are ignorant or just contemptuous of citizens’ right to information – or both. They get away with it because they can, because New York’s anemic Committee on Open Government has no real enforcement power and because too few citizens use the power they have to monitor and punish obstinate officials.

“Shame on me” for previously attending only a handful of board meetings despite being a town resident for 27 years, Worthington said.

That all changed a couple of years ago when she got the municipal run-around while seeking approval to put up a pole barn. That ordeal inspired her to get involved, to the point that she now attends all meetings, records them for posting on a video news service and has a “What’s Happening in Stafford, NY” Facebook page.

“The more I investigate, the more I just cringe,” said Worthington, whose 2021 Town Board write-in candidacy failed but who will be on the ballot in November.

While Worthington is a relative newcomer to the open-government wars, Allegany County resident Casey Jones began fighting them more than 50 years ago as a newspaper journalist in Chenango County, where he also was a mayor and held other government posts.

He moved to Allegany County about seven years ago and calls it probably “the most secretive government I’ve run into in all the years I’ve been involved with this.”

The Coalition for Open Government recognized him for standing up to a County Legislature committee that – as detailed by Andrew Harris of the Wellsville Sun – wanted to go into executive session to talk about a contract with a local college.

Such sessions are regularly misused by governmental bodies who either don’t know or don’t care what the law says about doing the public’s business in public.

Jones, who runs the AlleganyHopeWNY.org website, said he’s tried to do forums on open government, but with limited success.

“Most people really don’t know what’s going on in local government,” he said, citing as an example those who get riled up when a governmental body votes to increase taxes. Yet, he noted, they were in the dark about the groundwork that had been laid for the increase and the fact that “all the actions that caused them to go up had been taken prior to that time.”

But coalition President Paul Wolf thinks the public is becoming more aroused about such issues.

“They see executive sessions that don’t seem right to them. They file FOIL requests that drag on forever,” he said.

Wolf also sees the growing outrage in the fact the group began as the Buffalo Niagara Coalition for Open Government but changed its name after expanding across the state to include members from more than 30 counties. And he sees it in the fact that the coalition’s social media posts seem to be getting more traction as its reports hold government officials accountable while also praising those who respect the public’s right to know.

Worthington says that when she talks to residents about such issues, “they care about it, as well, but they fear retaliation. They don’t want to speak up.”

Whether it’s fear or simple apathy, that silence is what allows officials to thumb their noses at both open government laws and the citizens those laws are supposed to empower. The coalition’s public recognition of citizens like Worthington, Jones and the other four – from Long Island, the Finger Lakes region, Watertown and Orange County – spotlights the power of such citizen engagement.

It also highlights the importance of local newspapers, which cover governmental shenanigans and bring such abuses to light.

What citizens then do with that information is up to them.

Efforts to steal a national election obviously get people worked up, but the daily drip, drip, drip of local government violations of the spirit and letter of New York’s open government laws is just as corrosive.

Like the coalition’s honorees, other citizens can fight for their right to know and to be treated with respect. Or they can passively accept whatever elected officials and their apparatchiks want to do to them and let democracy corrode.

In the end, for good or bad, we get the kind of government we deserve.