The New York Coalition for Open Government sought to have the major party gubernatorial candidates join a forum on open government. Three of the seven were on board, answering a questionnaire and sharing their stances on the topic with the media.
Participating were Republican Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino; Congressman Tom Suozzi, D-Long Island, Queens; and businessman and Republican Harry Wilson.
The coalition asked the candidates questions on whether they support amending the Open Meetings Law (OML) to mandate the public’s right to speak at meetings held by public bodies; whether they support giving the attorney general or some other entity the ability to address compliance issues with open government laws; whether they use an encrypted messaging app to conduct government business; and whether they support enacting legislation keeping government officials from using an encrypted messaging app.
New York Coalition for Open Government
At the beginning of Wednesday’s virtual forum, coalition President Paul Wolf said reports the coalition has done show, on a regular basis, a lack of compliance with the Open Meetings Law.
“We did a report on villages where we took a look at 20 villages across New York state. We checked to see if they were posting meeting documents as required by law. And, 70% of them were not doing so,” Wolf said.
Wolf said the coalition looked at planning boards and found that 75% of those — 20 across the state — were not posting meeting documents. It looked at 20 school boards across the state and found that 61% of them made improper executive session motions.
Among the coalition’s goals for 2022 is creation of an entity with authority to address violations of the Open Meetings Law (OML) and Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Another coalition goal is to have OML amended to mandate that the public is allowed to speak at meetings held by public bodies.
“Many public bodies will allow the public to speak, but they don’t have to,” he said.
The open government website, opengovernment.ny.gov, says the Open Meetings Law applies to “public bodies.” “Public bodies” includes entities of two or more people who conduct public business and perform a governmental function for New York state, for an agency of the state or for public corporations, such as cities, counties, towns, villages and school districts including committees and subcommittees of these entities.
Robert Astorino
Astorino said he’s always been an advocate for open meetings and open government.
“As county executive, in Westchester, we started putting everything online in advance of meetings so the public can understand what’s on the agenda,” he said. The Board of Acquisition and Contract, which is very powerful, meets in the county executive’s conference room and awards most of the contracts for the county, was never transparent. It was always closed-door, nobody had an agenda in advance.”
The county executive said the agendas for board meetings are now put out in advance and meetings are televised online. People can watch them online or physically attend.
“I am a big believer in the public having a right to question their government as a fundamental principal of our democracy,” he said.
Astorino said he agrees with the questions the coalition posed. He said he didn’t know it wasn’t in the Open Meetings Law (OML) that there must be a public comment time during public entities’ meetings.
“To me, that is so contrary to what we are as a country just the fact that you’re supposed to be able to address your government and that we don’t,” he said. Astorino said Gov. Kathy Hochul talked about bringing in an age of transparency, yet one of the first things she did was suspend the Open Meetings Law.
Thomas Suozzi
Suozzi said he agrees with the coalition on all of its issues.
“I think the attorney general should be given the power to help the public enforce open meeting laws. I think people should be allowed to give public comments at meetings. I do not use encrypted apps and I don’t think government officials should be using encrypted apps,” he said. “New York state’s not competitive. It’s because we lack openness. Politicians, elected officials, don’t listen to the public about what they care about.”
Suozzi said has been in Congress for 5 1/2 years and was trained as a CPA and attorney. He was mayor of Glen Cove for eight years and was county executive in Nassau County for eight years as well.
“I’m a proven executive who knows how to get things done,” he said. “No. 2, I’m a common-sense Democrat. I’m not going to pander to the left, I’m not going to back down to the right. I’m going to work with anybody who actually wants to help people. No. 3, I’m very clear on my issues — crime, taxes and affordability, helping our troubled schools and helping to correct the most corrupt state in the United States of America, New York state, as rated by The Washington Post last August.”
Politicians pander to their base on social media, he said.
“Without people having a way to enforce open government rules, without having public comments and public meetings, without having the politicians who can be held accountable ... you end up with broken government that has given us the highest taxes in America, that has given us a rising crime rate, that has given us a state where more people left than any other state in the United States of America ... last year,” he said.
HARRY WILSON
Harry Wilson said in a broken New York, the American dream should be available to all our children.
“That’s why I’m running. I will not let a failed class of career politicians destroy that dream. I think the combination of that ability to fix New York and hopefully win in November is what we need as a governor,” he said.
Wilson said the issues raised in the questionnaire are “no-brainers.” He talked about how he thinks about government reform and transparency more broadly.
“To me, the questions around government reform, transparency, accountability, which I think is hand-in-hand with those two issues, are essential to the foundation of a functioning government ...” he said. “I come to that view because, after dealing with 30 years of failing organizations, you see patterns. Typically, companies fail because there’s a failure in governance. There’s a failure in checks and balances. It is exactly what happens in Albany every day.”
Regarding government reform, Wilson said there are two primary elements.
“One was making sure we had better people in public life, including making it easier to run for office, greater accessibility to the ballot, both for parties and individuals, campaign finance reform ...”
The second part is increasing accountability, he said. That includes everything from term limits to replacing the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), which oversees and regulates lobbying in New York, with something that actually defends ethics from people who are determined to violate them.
“I would have this ethics body be a totally non-political body, not appointed by any elected official,” Wilson said. “Really make it a professional organization that would pursue ethics issues in state government. There should be real consequences and timelines on FOIL requests. We have to strike a balance so that nuisance FOIL requests are jamming up the system, but the vast majority of foil requests that I’m familiar with come from responsible media organizations and responsible citizens. To me, having an enforcement mechanism that involves both time and penalties is essential to that.”
Regarding mandated time for public comments during meetings, Wilson said it is common sense to allow people who are being represented to have the opportunity to speak.