Letting the public see

Sunshine Week, promoting transparency in government, started yesterday and runs until Saturday, timed to the March 16 birthday of James Madison. As they do every year this week, both houses of the Legislature in Albany will probably introduce and pass a bunch of different bills related to open government.

There’s a chance, perhaps, that one of the bills will be passed by both the Assembly and state Senate and then be sent on to Gov. Hochul, who hopefully will sign it, but more likely little will become law.

However, there is something that Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and her 62 colleagues can do on their own without the Assembly or the governor to let 20 million New Yorkers see how their government is working by adding all nominations before the Senate to the existing online public website.

Under the state Constitution, the Senate must confirm the governor’s nominations to the highest court in the state, the Court of Appeals, and the Court of Claims, which handles lawsuits against the state government. But there are also a great many other nominations, from Hochul’s commissioners at the various departments to members of all kinds of boards and commissions and task forces, from the MTA and Port Authority to tiny little things.

When the governor sends a name over to the Senate, nominations are reviewed and voted on by the corresponding subject committee and the Finance Committee. And then the nomination goes to the floor for a final vote.

But while every Senate bill and resolution is available to the public on their website, there is zero concerning nominations. No floor votes, no committee votes, no record at all that a nomination was even submitted. The U.S. Senate, the New Jersey state Senate and the City Council all receive names from the president, governor and mayor and those nominations are tracked at each stage, from the moment it arrives from the executive until the nomination is confirmed (or if the nomination fails along the way).

New York governors have a habit of jamming through scads of nominations in the waning hours of each session in June. A public database would show when a governor does that, as well as showing if the Senate is stalling. It is the public’s business.

While we hope the Senate will make this change, there already is some sunlight shining two weeks before Donald Trump’s first criminal trial. On Thursday, Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan issued an order about jury selection to protect the identity of the jurors, but he also wrote that “Access to the courtroom by the public and the press will not be tempered in any way as a result of these protective measures.”

That is very important as the Sixth Amendment says: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.” A public trial is not just a right of the accused, but of the prosecution and the public. We don’t have secret Star Chambers in this country (with the exception of the FISA court).

What is also critical is that the state Office of Court Administration published Merchan’s order on its website. All such documents, evidence and transcripts from Trump’s trial must go online as well.