Public. Information.

A flap over a “leak” of a Saratoga Springs mailing list holds lessons for public officials.

Maybe the next time a public official in Saratoga Springs thinks to make someone jump through hoops to obtain public information, they’ll remember the current kerfuffle over the Recreation Department’s mailing list.

There’s a lesson here, in fact, for public officials anywhere who see themselves as the gatekeepers rather than caretakers of public information.

As the Times Union’s Wendy Liberatore reports, the Spa City flap is over the “leak” of a list of email addresses of thousands of coaches, employees and residents whose children have participated in Recreation Department programs. Mayor Ron Kim says the list was sent in 2020 to a personal email account used by his predecessor, Meg Kelly, and then apparently used for several political purposes, including a campaign against a city charter change and promotion of certain school board candidates. The recreation department also used the list to send out an email trying to rally people against budget cuts. Former Finance Commissioner Michelle

Madigan, while not obtaining the list herself, had the department send out an email explaining her side of it.

The city certainly should have a discussion about whether it’s appropriate for a department to use taxpayer resources to defend itself from budget cuts. It’s worth noting that such self-interested politicking isn’t allowed in school budget votes; the city may want to have some clear ethics rules on what public employees can and cannot do on public time when it comes to trying to influence a city council action.

But the release of the list is a different matter. There may well be nothing legally wrong with it, nor should there be. This is simply data maintained by the city. The state’s Committee on Open Government says it’s a gray area — though in at least one case, involving the town of Greenburgh, a court overruled the town’s claim that releasing such a list was an invasion of privacy. And the city could put some constraints on the use of the information, such as not allowing it to be used to raise money, the committee says.

What’s disturbing is that when Saratoga Springs officials wanted to use the list, they didn’t have to file a Freedom of Information Law request. If a business, news organization, or other members of the public wanted it, they no doubt would have had to put the request in writing, and wait. And wait. Such requests are all too frequently slow-walked or refused by state and local governments, and the decisions are not always well-grounded in the law; sometimes they’re based mainly on some official’s desire to avoid embarrassment.

It’s this simple: Access to public information shouldn’t be based on some government official’s whim, nor should the public have to pry public information out of government’s hands. Rather, governments should be routinely posting as much public information on their websites as they can for the public to access it just as easily as former Mayor Kelly did.