Shelter Island Reporter Editorial
Have you ever had the experience of attending a public meeting only to be baffled because officials are referring to documents only they have access to?
So have we, and it’s high time boards and committees on Shelter Island recognized their responsibility to adhere to the state law on disclosure of public records.
When board or committee members discuss eliminating item number nine or changing the wording in item number 12, no one except the members who have copies know what that means. This is not just frustrating for the public and journalists — it’s illegal.
The State’s Committee on Open Government is clear in saying that boards and committees have an obligation to provide the public, in advance or at meetings, the same drafts given to members.
We congratulate Police Chief Jim Read and Deer & Tick Committee Chairman Mike Scheibel for providing the Reporter with a survey discussed by the Town Board at its Tuesday work session. We hope this is a policy that will continue for all boards and committees.
Exceptions to keep information private are when boards are discussing lawsuits, negotiations with organizations or specific personnel. But discussions of potential policies, regulations or ordinances are to be discussed in public and if there is printed material given to members pertaining to such discussions, the public is entitled to that information.
Basically, anything that can be obtained through a Freedom of Information request is to be made available to the public either before or at public meetings where issues are to be discussed. That may be done by posting the information on the town or school website or by distributing information at a meeting.
The Board of Education and school administrators here have generally complied with this law and on the few occasions where such information was not distributed, requesting it resulted in immediate compliance.
But that’s not the case at times with the Town Board or many of its committees.
For example, at its July 5 work session, the Town Board had a memo from the Planning Board pertaining to site planning for commercial establishments. Board members had the memo, but it wasn’t, as of press time, posted on the town website, nor was it distributed to the public before or at the meeting.
If Planning Board members failed to post their recommendations on the website, they were remiss. Certainly the Town Board was wrong not to have posted or distributed the memo when discussion of it was on its agenda.
We understand that the memo is a draft, not a policy adopted by the Town Board. As representatives of the community, this newspaper takes seriously its responsibility to inform its readers as thoroughly and honestly as possible. That’s difficult to do when we don’t have the necessary information at hand. Getting it after the discussion can complicate the process of understanding what is being said.
Perhaps the failure to keep people well-informed is because long serving, hard working members often don’t see many people at their meetings. They may have decided no one cares. That doesn’t excuse failure to adhere to the law.
