OPEN LETTER: Board of Ethics Meeting — Unacceptable Lack of Public Notice and Transparency
Dear Chairman Ortiz, et al.
I was pleased to learn that the New Rochelle Board of Ethics was finally going to conduct publicly noticed meetings in accordance with New York State law. Unfortunately, the manner in which today’s meeting was announced and conducted represents a deeply disappointing failure of transparency and public accountability.
I am subscribed to every available city notification system and follow the city’s social media accounts. Nevertheless, I received no notice whatsoever of today’s 10:30 a.m. meeting. The meeting announcement was difficult to locate on the city’s website, requiring someone to know what they were looking for and where to find it. The announcement itself did not even identify the meeting location.
That is not meaningful public notice. It is the bare minimum of disclosure, presented in a manner that makes public participation unnecessarily difficult.
More troubling is the decision not to televise, livestream, record or archive Board of Ethics meetings.
I am particularly familiar with this issue because I spent years advocating for the expansion of televised, streamed, recorded and archived municipal meetings in New Rochelle. Before those efforts, City Council meetings were the only meetings available to the public in that manner. I worked to change that, precisely because public access to government proceedings should not depend on whether someone can physically attend City Hall.
It is extraordinary that the very body entrusted with promoting ethical conduct, government accountability and public confidence should now distinguish itself by providing less public access to its proceedings than other municipal bodies.
The Board of Ethics should be setting the standard for transparency, not establishing an exception to it.
I find this situation disgraceful. It reflects an astonishing disregard for the public the board is supposed to serve and a fundamental failure to appreciate the responsibilities that come with public office. After years of operating without publicly noticed meetings, the board has finally taken a step toward compliance, only to adopt an approach that continues to limit public scrutiny.
The fact that these elementary expectations of openness apparently need to be explained to members of a municipal ethics board is embarrassing. The fact that further intervention may be necessary to secure the same level of public access already provided by other city boards is indefensible.
I intend to pursue the necessary legislative changes to require Board of Ethics meetings to be televised, livestreamed, recorded and permanently archived online, consistent with the practices established for other municipal bodies. I have successfully advocated for these changes before, and I intend to pursue them again.
I also believe the city should seriously reconsider whether individuals who demonstrate so little commitment to transparency and public accountability are appropriate choices to serve on its Board of Ethics. Public service is a responsibility, not an entitlement, and appointments to a body charged with enforcing ethical standards should reflect a genuine commitment to those standards.
I expect an explanation of why today’s meeting was not televised, streamed or recorded, who made that decision, and whether the board intends to correct this failure before its next meeting. I also request an explanation of why the meeting was not communicated through the city’s established notification channels.
New Rochelle residents deserve better. They should not have to rely on investigative journalism, repeated demands for public records and legislative intervention simply to observe the work of their own government’s ethics watchdog.
The Board of Ethics should be embarrassed by how it has handled this. More importantly, it should take immediate steps to correct it.
Robert Cox
Publisher, Talk of the Sound
