EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

Jan. 29 Auburn Citizen (N.Y.) Inviting secrecy

The state Open Meetings Law is pretty clear in its plain text that the overwhelming majority of government board discussions have to be conducted in view of the public, with advance notice of when boards meet and what will be discussed.

Even when boards go into closed-door executive sessions to have private talks related to a narrowly defined set of exceptions — such as the employment history of a specific person or pending litigation — a public vote must be taken with an explanation of why the executive session is necessary. And any official action/votes arising from that session must be reported publicly.

But there’s a massive loophole in state law that allows for far too many local elected board decisions to be hashed out secretly, with no notice to the public. It’s the caucus loophole, and it’s time to make changes to stop its abuse.

The nonprofit New York Coalition for Open Government, which monitors transparency issues at the state and local government level, issued an eye-opening report last week on how far too many boards work out the public’s key business in caucus meetings, which allow elected board members of the same political party to gather in private and talk about anything.

Such meetings have been used by both parties in Cayuga County for many years, and as the coalition has shown in its report, the practice is common throughout the state.

“Elected members of the same political party are allowed to hold a private political caucus meeting, where they can discuss political party business and public business,” the report states. “The political party in control of a public body can hold a private meeting, bring in staff and department heads, run through the night’s public meeting agenda and work everything out before the public meeting occurs.

“These secret meetings, make the public meeting a sham as the real discussion has already occurred in private,” the report continued.

The coalition concluded its report with a recommendation to change state law to eliminate caucus meetings at the local level. One way to do this is to update Open Meetings Law to state that public transparency requirements apply any time at least two-thirds of a public body is meeting regardless of political party affiliation, unless discussion is specifically related to party business. …

We urge our local governments to give this a serious look, but that won’t happen unless local residents encourage their elected officials to pursue this recommendation.