as reported by M. M. Tirion
Potsdam is enjoying a resurgence. The inordinately successful Children’s Museum, the new and growing St Lawrence Arts Council, the recently opened Quarry apartment complex at the site of the historic St Lawrence Academy and Potsdam Normal Schools, a new field of solar power generators between the middle school and Debra Dr apartments, an expanding airport facility, several new cafes and restaurants, along with lucrative state and federal fundings that promise a riverwalk trail, a skatepark, pickle ball courts, a new Food Coop and several other exciting additions, suggest vibrant growth. The expansions, additions and revisions enabled by state and federal funding require multiple, complex and interconnected matters to be resolved by village officials: engineering and architectural challenges, environmental and safety matters, visual appeal, rights of way, fees and maintenance costs that must be considered and evaluated lest costly mistakes get made.
Avoiding mistakes requires foremost an appreciation of the challenges, challenges that may be technical (hydrodams) or developed from issues of earlier times (rights of way) or enveloped in legalese (insurance and hiring matters). Bringing people with different skill sets to the table is a prerequisite for gaining an appreciation of the various roadblocks. After listing and understanding the problems ahead, resolving those matters likewise requires a plentiful supply of discussions, suggestions, ideas and coordination. Such open discussions call on all the skill, expertise and experience amongst participants and ideally result in the honing of ideas en route to optimal solutions. Imagine such discussions not being allowed! And yet, they are not.
I quote Alex Aichinger, former professor at Northwestern State University in Louisiana, from an article published in 2009:
Open meeting laws, also called sunshine laws, require that, with notable exceptions, most meetings of federal and state government agencies and regulatory bodies be open to the public, along with their decisions and records…it is not mentioned in the First Amendment…Open meeting laws are a relatively new development. They ensure the public’s right to access to the internal workings of government at all levels. This “right” cannot be traced back to America’s common law tradition with England or to practices in place when the United States was founded…Although these laws guarantee that the public and the media can attend, they do not guarantee the public’s right to speak…What constitutes a meeting is usually defined by its purpose — to perform public business (social gatherings are not considered meetings) — and the number of participants—a quorum or majority. All such meetings, unless specifically and legally exempted, are presumed to be open to the public, and agencies are required to give advance notice of the date, time, place, and agenda.
I am a strong advocate of transparency and accountability. I applaud and am frankly amazed at the breadth and depth of the data bases available in NYS: sales tax received per NAICS per county per quarter; outstanding debts per village, town, city, school or fire district or county; complete current loan profiles per jurisdiction; numbers of Covid-19 patients intubated per day per hospital: any data that NYS government collects, it shares (data sets not always easy to locate nor manipulate). But open meeting laws go further than requiring equal access to data or freedom of information generally: the law precludes any spontaneous discussions amongst elected officials.
Imagine: a new board member sees two fellow board members chatting at a local coffeeshop, and walks over to ask for clarification about the agenda for next day’s board meeting. This, she is hurriedly informed, is disallowed! Three board members constitute a quorum and may not deliberate in this way without giving advance notice! Imagine: The board is in session after advance notification online and in print. Now every word and gesture of each participant is recorded and broadcast live, on Zoom or on FaceBook and later reported upon, in print. Do participants feel comfortable cogitating on gnarly problems in this format? Can a relaxed back and forth discussion ensue when every nuance can be de-contextualized and rebroadcast in possibly unfavorable terms? Imagine: the board moves and votes to close a meeting, the recording devices are turned off, while a few attendees remain seated. Someone raises a spontaneous idea pursuant to the meeting just ended: “Could we forego the closure of that facility by subcontracting the work to a local outfit?” It is a fair question and a decent idea, but illegally posed! The query may be entertained only if 3 of the 5 board members immediately leave the room.
I do not yet see how to function effectively as a village board member within the straightjacket of the “advance notice of date, time, place and agenda” of any assembly of 3 or more board members. How can the 5 members of the board consult together and with outside experts within this constraint? Comments sent by email likely will be misunderstood or suffer from delayed responses. Phone calls between two individuals often end irresolutely as any two may not have the relevant expertise to address the technical issues. This aspect of the Open Meeting Law seems inordinately unhelpful. We’ve all heard and probably said: “Government is dysfunctional.” In days past, I considered as culprits gerrymandering and slanted primaries that permit fringe candidates to win; changing educational norms; unconstrained social media platforms; and click-bait news headlining. But after two months aboard the PV board, I see a very different culprit: the open meeting law mandating all gatherings of 3 or more board members to be pre-announced as to date, time, place and agenda. Contrast this requirement to the situation in the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo Ontario, where every office, every hallway and every restroom is outfitted with whiteboard and markers! Here one does not gamble the loss of an insight that might explain the foundations of the universe! Could something similar not be developed to protect for democracy the ability to think, organize, cogitate, plan and resolve?
Local Government Matters 