Perhaps the strangest aspect of the City of Plattsburgh administration is its penchant for treating a small municipality's affairs as if they were grave matters of national security.
The weirdest manifestation of this: labeling large swathes of public business as "confidential," and calling anything that gets into public view a "leak."
Bemoaning "leaks of confidential documents" makes people feel like they're playing on a big stage, I guess, but it's a disservice to the English language.
For instance, City Councilor Mike Kelly's recent email tirade against demoralized city workers and the Downtown Revitalization Initiative was described as a "leak" in the local press, and Kelly said he made his comments to the other council members "in confidence."
But an email chain on a city government server is tantamount to a public meeting. The public revelation of a city email is not a "leak" at all. It's a "forward." Or a "cut and paste." Usually, those revelations are "boring." But in this case, it was "news."
Nothing an elected or appointed official puts on public email in the course of public business has any guarantee of confidentiality. (That is how I treated my emails when I served on the city Charter Commission, by the way, so this is not just a whiny journalist talking--though partly it is. Anyone can FOIL those Charter emails. It's your right as an American, at least until Putin completes the takeover.)
The same thing happened when Read and Kelly were caught on the city streaming video feed prattling on about how sanitation workers aren't productive and how the City of Plattsburgh might be better off dissolving and how the Town of Plattsburgh is a bunch of Dick Tracy villains who stole $11 million from the city. (Or was it $1.4 million? Or was it negative $280 bajillion, after the city pays its legal fees? It's all so complicated, and only a great intellect can comprehend such maths.)
The video only existed because Read forgot to turn off the recorder thingy. But he wanted in the worst way to get at the dastardly "leakers" who circulated a publicly streamed video of a conversation about public policy between public officials in a public space. Did I mention that he forgot to turn off the recorder thingy? The point here: It's not a leak.
In fact, there really aren't many aspects of a small city's governance that are "confidential," or that could be "leaked"--especially not communications between Plattsburgh's wee legislative and executive branches.
We're not dealing with international espionage. Or ongoing law-enforcement investigations. Or family court or police personnel records, which are confidential under New York State law. (For a good primer on what stuff is and isn't public in New York, by the way, check out this Poughkeepsie Journal article.).
But the mayor wants to talk about them as if they are. And he really, really craves secrecy. So much so, in fact, that he apparently often labels emails to city councilors "Privileged Attorney-Client Correspondence – not subject to FOIL or forwarding." The sole arbiter of this "privilege" seems to be the mayor himself. He is The State, and will decide What Cannot Be Seen.
I made a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for those "privileged" emails to see what issues are so vital to Plattsburgh's interests that that they must remain hidden from public view. If I get any, I'll publish them.
Just don't call them "leaks." They're taxpayer property.
