Open Government Experts: Trustees Should Conduct Budget Talks in Public

While it's yet to be determined if some of Port Chester's trustees violated the state's open meetings law when they drafted a revised budget in private, open government experts said such "clandestine" meetings go against the spirit of the law.

Four of Port Chester's seven trustees – three Republicans and one conservative – met privately over the weekend and drafted a series of amendments to Port Chester's budget. Those trustees sent their revised budget to the mayor and the board's remaining trustees on Monday morning, then passed the majority of the amendments during a budget adoption later that night.

The four trustees who drafted the amendments – Bart Didden, Sam Terenzi, Joseph Kenner and John Branca – did not detail the amendments during half a dozen public meetings on the budget over the past month, and they did not provide a copy of their revised budget to the public or the press before voting the amendments through on Monday night.

Port Chester Democrats and some residents accused the four of breaking the state's open meetings law, circumventing public input and ramming through the changes without proper vetting by meeting the weekend before the budget vote and submitting their changes hours before the vote. Trustee Daniel Brakewood, a Democrat, has called for an investigation, while Mayor Dennis Pilla said his hands were tied as the Republicans repeatedly voted as a bloc to pass their amendments on Monday night.

At one point, after a series of votes along party lines, Pilla threw up his hands and looked out to the audience.

"I'm trying here, people," he said.

The Republican trustees may not have broken state law because of "an incredibly awful provision in the open meetings law dealing with political caucuses," said Bob Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government. In 1985, state lawmakers changed language in the law because the legislature "wanted to protect its own caucuses," Freeman said. The result was broad legal language that allows elected officials to discuss virtually anything in private, as long as the vote takes place in public.

For many in Port Chester, Monday's vote represents a return to old-school "backroom politics" where meetings were little more than formalities and important decisions were made behind closed doors.

"The spirit of the law is very different from the result of this particular provision," Freeman said. "Obviously, the spirit of the law is that public bodies are supposed to discuss and deliberate in public and let the public know what's going on."

Elected officials have a responsibility not only to be transparent in their actions, but to allow the public enough access to learn "how and why the decisions are reached," Freeman said.

Although the broad language in the state's open meetings law may ultimately make the difference in a pending investigation, elected officials should not cut the public out of the decision-making process, said Roy Gutterman of the Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University.

"From time to time these [issues] pop up where government business is done quasi-clandestinely," Gutterman said. "Just because it doesn't violate the law doesn't mean that it's right. Government business in this country has to be done in the open unless it's about narrow issues like pending litigation, purchasing property or a legitimate personnel matter."

Those issues are often used by municipal boards and councils to justify executive session, which is closed to the public. Like other councils, Port Chester's board routinely holds executive sessions. But the budget adoption process is clearly laid out by state law, and Port Chester had scheduled a series of public meetings at the village courthouse and the senior center to hash out the budget and pending cuts with the public and taxpayers.

Although it's not clear how village Democrats will pursue an investigation, Trustee Daniel Brakewood said the uproar over the private meetings "doesn't end tonight."

"The ends do not justify the means," Brakewood said, "and we will get under the covers and figure out everything."

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