Open government group honors work of reporters, residents

May 20—There are fewer reporters on the beat these days, which is why it's all the more important for the ones that are left to be aggressive in the way they cover government missteps and residents' concerns.

That was part of the message delivered this week by Mark Mahoney, a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer and editor with the Daily Gazette in Schenectady who served as guest speaker during the annual meeting of the New York Coalition for Open Government.

"One of the problems we're having here with the open government is the declining the number of reporters and local journalism," Mahoney said.

Citing a 2022 article from the Columbia Journalism Review, Mahoney noted that the number of reporters in the United States, from 2004 to 2021, declined by 57% from 71,640 to 30,820.

"It's more than half the reporters gone," he said. "So not only do you have fewer reporters out in the field, the reporters that remain are tasked with doing a lot more work for their papers a lot more efficiently, which means maybe they won't take time to go to a meeting except for the big one, whereas a lot of times they would go to all of them."

Mahoney has attended a lot of meetings over the course of his career, which was punctuated with his Pulitzer Prize win for editorial writing in 2009. The Pulitzer Prize committee cited Mahoney's "relentless down to earth editorials on the perils of local government secrecy," which he continues to pen in his capacity with the Daily Gazette.

For years, Mahoney has focused his work on highlighting the shortcomings of local governments and elected officials when they fail to follow open government rules and Freedom of Information Laws.

During Wednesday's meeting of the coalition, which works to promote open government across New York state, Mahoney encouraged residents to continue to press public officials to follow the rules. He said it's equally important for reporters to do their part by not just reporting on what transpires during a public meeting but also whenever government officials attempt to conduct business in private that should be public.

"Let the public know that this stuff is going on and what these people are up to," he said. "You know you let the public know that you're aware, let the public officials know that you're watching them, because if they think no one's paying attention, they'll take advantage of that and some of them do it deliberately, and some of them do it, you know, incidentally. A lot of public officials don't know the law."

"When you stand up for your right to know, when a reporter reports a violation, it does have a ripple effect," he added. "It serves both to educate the officials, and also to keep them from violating the rules."

While some of them proved more stubborn than others, Mahoney said over the years he's found accurate reporting, coupled with timely, to-the-point, no-nonsense editorials can be effective in convincing public officials to follow the rules, uphold the law and respect the public's right to know.

"Embarrassment is a legitimate and effective tool," he said. "Nobody likes to have their name in the paper being called out, you know, for for being a not transparent or for keeping secrets, or whatever."

Mahoney lauded the coalition and its members for serving as an active advocacy organization not only for the public but for the press as well.

"I think this organization, particularly for a small and and relatively new grassroots group, has done an incredible job raising awareness," he said.

The New York Coalition for Open Government has been calling out public officials for failing to be transparent and for keeping secrets since 2016. Started by Amherst attorney Paul Wolf, the non-partisan group originally focused on open government and Freedom of Information Law concerns in Western New York and has now expanded its efforts statewide.

The coalition's annual meeting included an overview of the coalition's accomplishments from last year, including its efforts to organize a protest of Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino's repeated use of special meetings and a informational get-together held with the Niagara County Clerks Association to offer advice on complying with New York's open government rules.

The coalition also generated several reports on governmental transparency, including one that found 61% of New York counties failing to respond to Freedom of Information requests within five days as required by law and another that found 72% of towns were not posting meeting documents online and 25% meeting minutes or recordings of meetings, again as required by state law.

Wolf acknowledged that in New York, the last state in America to adopt open government laws in 1973, there's still plenty of work to do on the government transparency and access to public information front.

The coalition supports mandatory in-person meetings for governing bodies, with requirements that all meetings be streamed live so residents and others can participate via computer or telephone.

Wolf noted that while New York does have a state agency — the Committee on Open Government — that renders opinions on transparency issues, it does not have any true oversight agency or any penalties in place for public officials or municipalities when they violate the rules.

"We don't that here in New York and that's something that we really need," he said.