"Happy Birthday to the blog": WGVA's Ted Baker Hosts Party for Bloggers

Capraro and Augustine did their monthly radio show with Ted Baker, 1240 WGVA, on Friday, March 21. (Click here to listen to the entire show.) Their on-air appearance featured a lively discussion with Baker on the state of open government in Geneva and the impact of NoStringsGeneva on the local political culture since it was launched one year ago.

The two bloggers observed that with blogs so much a part of the emerging political culture, they were surprised other blogs have not appeared. After all, there’s no shortage of material to write about and research as they “watch the river of local government and politics flow.”

The one year anniversary of the blog coincided with National Sunshine Week, a celebration and awareness week focused on open meetings laws and procedures for obtaining government records through Freedom of Information Laws (FOIL) requests.

In response to Baker’s question about why most governments seem to prefer operating behind closed doors, Capraro and Augustine listed the following reasons: concerns about appearances, maintaining power, pragmatism, and cynicism. In short, for some, it’s easier not to have the press and public looking over their shoulder or involved in the process. Unfortunately, that makes people suspicious of the process itself.

Baker noted a slight upbeat in the blog, with some complimentary posts even as the blog has maintained it critical approach in its fact based point of view on Geneva. Capraro and Augustine acknowledged some improvement in the handling of executive sessions and suggested the blog had impacted local media by making them more accountable to the people and, in turn, the local media more vigilant of government.

Closing with a quick review of the Seneca County ethanol plant post, Capraro and Augustine highlighted the role Geneva citizen and Lake Party member Ken Camera played in bringing the issue to the attention of the Geneva City Council and helping to frame it as, in part, a Geneva concern.

You can listen to this radio appearance and others, by visiting the NoStringsGeneva Radio Archive.

NoStringsGeneva.com Celebrates First Birthday, Receives Bloggy Award

One year ago, March 15, 2008, we quietly launched this blog as a fact-based point of view on local government in the City of Geneva.

Referred to by most locals simply as “the blog,” this site represents our collaboration which began with our service together on the Geneva City Council. We shared concerns about city government operations, specifically on the issues of accountability, open government, fiscal responsibility, and community-based decision making.

We realized that we needed a way to keep the public better informed and up to date on City government, beyond what the local paper was able to provide, and with greater independence. Capraro has since left the Council, but our work together continues, and includes a regular WGVA radio show hosted by Ted Baker.

Over the past year, we’ve logged over 20,000 hits, representing over 4,500 unique individual visitors. Our daily visitor count averages 80% returning, meaning they have been on the site before, while 20% are new, so visitor loyalty is high and new visitors continue to slowly grow our overall readership. Recent figures show about 2,000 visitors per month, and around 65 visits per day. The blog features regular responses from readers which must be signed and civil in tone.

To date, Capraro and Augustine have 88 posts on the blog, with 65 in 2007, and 23 so far in 2008. That’s about 7 per month or one every few days. Stories include information and commentary on current City business, research based entries on policy proposals, and a number of thoughtful pieces on the nature of local government in a democratic society. Most people read the newest article on the main page, but here are the Top 10 most re-read posts (in order of popularity):

1. Does Geneva Have the Highest Taxes in the Country?
2. Memo on Tax Exempts Now Available
3. Blog Gets More Hits that Dimaggio, Mantle, Ruth, or Williams
4. “Curfew” Not Really a Curfew, But It’s Still a Good Idea
5. Can We Expect Different Results From the Same Old Efforts?
6. Let the Sun Shine In
7. A Case Study in What We Call “The Back Room” and why it’s not always a good thing
8. Shouldn’t Council Have Access to Public Documents?
9. Rich Rising’s Rising Riches-- Part 1
10. Danny Boy, The Pipes Are Really Calling: Time to Stop City Subsidies for Town Water and Sewer Usage
    

Coinciding with the celebration of its first year, No Strings Geneva won a Bloggy Award in the political category. Reviewers found the site highly informative, well organized, and full of links to documents and other websites. We wish to thank our readers as we seek to make a difference for a better Geneva.

Council Does the Right Thing on Ethanol

Lots of men in suits aggressively tried to make the case that the possible environmental impacts of a proposed ethanol manufacturing plant ought to be of no concern to those who live within five miles of it, or within the Seneca Lake watershed. City Council, to its credit, asserted the community’s ‘right to know.’

In a 6-2 vote, with Councilors Cosentino and Greco dissenting and Councilor Alcock absent from the meeting, the Council passed a resolution requesting the Seneca County IDA to rescind its ‘negative declaration’ and work with neighboring communities to complete an Environmental Impact Statement for the plant. Councilors agreed that residents of Geneva needed more assurances about the nature of those impacts and deserved the opportunity to participate in developing strategies to mitigate them.

After all, Genevans draw their drinking water from the same lake that the plant would rely on (for intake and some discharge). Geneva’s downtown and residential neighborhoods lie along the railroad tracks that would carry hazardous materials. Residents’ air quality could be negatively effected by odor and other emissions from the two proposed 150-foot smokestacks. And, our roads and streets would see additional trucks hauling corn, water, feed, and perhaps the combustible fuel itself around the region.

The discussion on the non-binding resolution continued for at least two hours. Speaker upon speaker came to the podium to share a variety of perspectives on the issue. As one Geneva resident correctly noted, all those speaking in favor of the resolution were private citizens, all those who opposed Council’s action were either direct investors or would otherwise benefit financially or professionally as a result of the ethanol plant.

Seneca County IDA members wanted Council to ignore environmental issues and instead focus on job creation potential. But the City Councilors were able to point out that protecting residents’ safety and promoting economic development are not mutually exclusive. For instance, Guardian Industries was welcomed by Geneva with open arms, and an Environmental Impact Study, independently reviewed by Geneva and Ontario County was still completed. You can read all about the process the City underwent for Guardian here.

One of the biofuel company’s engineers was also present at the council meeting. He was able to clear up the confusion regarding the role of the DEC in this process. SCIDA members have repeatedly asserted that the DEC had “signed off” on the negative declaration. It was as if they were calling the DEC the “SEQR Police” who would have come in and overturned the decision if it was made in error. But as you can see for yourself on the DEC website, there is no such oversight. It is up to the lead agency to decide what should be required. And the engineer did not dispute a charge, made by Genevan Ken Camera, that the report submitted by the plant to the SCIDA listed regional benefits extending miles from the plant, but limited the discussion of possible negative impacts to a much smaller radius.

In this case, City Council stepped up to the plate and agreed that SCIDA should have required more, should have treated the project like other industrial facilities, instead of a like a residential construction project, should have required an Environmental Impact Statement (read what information an EIS provides here).

A new concern was raised at the council meeting that hadn’t been previously discussed. Genevan Dan Howard came to the podium to ask if council had a plan for dealing with a chemical spill or other accident at the plant that might effect the quality of drinking water. The question is twofold: 1. Who pays for cleanup; and 2. Where do we get clean water in the interim?

There was no answer to this question. As our previous post on this issue indicated, the discussions surrounding this resolution proved that many more answers were needed. In voting against the resolution, Councilors John Greco and Lou Cosentino seemed satisfied that Seneca County had done what was required. But they missed the point of the resolution. The vote was about the Geneva City Council doing what was required for its residents--and that’s to get those very important questions answered.

March 16-22 is "National Sunshine Week"

No, it's not time for daydreaming about the beach; it's time to recommit to "less secrecy and more democracy" by educating yourself about the Open Meetings Law and the Freedom of Information Act.

NoStringsGeneva is totally committed to improving government decision-making by demanding accountability, and public officials can only be accountable if their actions are open for public viewing! You may have already read about these New York State Laws in the NoStringsGeneva Document Library, but now we're pleased to be able to provide you a link to complete and entertaining videos on your right to know.

The League of Women Voters has a live webcast planned for Wednesday, March 19th at 1pm. You can register for it here.

For more information on Sunshine Week events, visit the official website. For additional information particular to New York State, check out Attorney General Cuomo's "Project Sunlight" website.

Sunday, the Democrat and Chronicle published an informative article about the frequency of FOIL requests in the area and the type of information people request most often. You can read that article here. Our first post, one year ago, was on this very topic. Join us on a trip down memory lane by rereading it here.

Better yet, celebrate Sunshine Week by filing a FOIL request of your own to access that record you were always curious about. Let the sun shine in!

Why Did Spitzer Resign? Notes on 'Public' and 'Private' in Civic Life

As soon as the sexual escapades of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer as high rolling “Client #9” and New York City call-girl “Kristen” were disclosed to the public, just about everyone assumed the governor would have to resign.

After all, who’d put up with a governor who spends close to $5,000 on a hooker in Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel, on Valentine’s Day eve? Sure enough, within 48 hours, he announced his departure from office.

The question is: “Why?”

Clearly, Governor Spitzer faces a number of allegations from a variety of constituencies concerned with various violations in multiple venues.
First, participating in prostitution is a crime-- for both the prostitute and her/his client. So is paying for such services by the unlawful transfer of funds. So, there is a criminal dimension to Spitzer’s misconduct. He was breaking the law, and people say we can’t have a governor who breaks the laws he has pledged to uphold.

More seriously, there’s the hypocritical aspect of his conduct. He’s been subjected to accusations of a profound lack of integrity—or, plain old bad faith. Throughout his career in government, as prosecutor, attorney general, and governor, Spitzer crusaded against all sorts of corruption. He’s best known for pursuing scoundrels, like Wall Street brokers who bilked their clients, and more recently, for drawing attention to lenders who exploited families through the ‘sub-prime mortgage’ sham. We think back to Spitzer’s inaugural address (read it here) given just 14 short months ago, when he took on all of government itself and solemnly pledged to “transform our government so that it is as ethical and wise as all of New York.”

His conduct as Client #9, people say, broke his promise to the people of New York. We agree. We can’t have a governor who lacks integrity and who has lost his credibility.

Finally, and most seriously in the public’s perceptions, Spitzer’s conduct represents a profound personal moral failing. If he did engage in sleazy sex, as it appears, then he’s in trouble on moral grounds. In having extra-marital sex (with a prostitute, no less) he has broken the bonds of his marriage and emotionally victimized his own family-- his three teenage daughters and his wife.

While his wife has literally stood by his side in his public appearances after the story broke, it is assumed his actions violated the terms of their marriage-- that he violated the sacred trust at the very heart of family. In short, he was a rat who was cheating on his family, and people say we can’t have a leader who cheats on his family.

But it’s interesting to not that these calls for Spitzer’s resignation were all based on charges of misconduct while governor, but not as governor. He wasn’t accused (at least as of this posting) of misusing any public money or a New York State airplane for ‘private,’ sexual purposes. Folks are concerned with his private behavior and are finding implications for his public standing. His private life is seen as somehow compromising his ability to govern.

Curiously, in President Bill Clinton, we saw a high ranking public official who cheated on his wife with a White House employee, and lied about it to the American people, to the judicial system, and to his own wife and family. He survived office, and his wife is now herself running for president. How were Clinton and Spitzer different? Apparently, President Clinton had enough political support to override his personal shortcomings. Or, people knew they were getting a morally flawed individual when they voted for him and therefore didn’t feel misled when he continued to give in to those desires while in office. Either way, some of the same people calling for Spitzer’s resignation now were rooting for Clinton to ‘hang in there’ then.

This discussion of Spitzer, and the claims that his private conduct should lead to his resignation from public office, re-visits the dichotomies embedded in our discourse about government, politics, and civic life: public vs. private; political vs. personal; policy vs. character; image vs. reality, and so on. In other words, what does it mean to be a public leader? Do we have higher standards for elected officials only in their public actions, or do we expect more from their private selves as well? Do they even retain a ‘private’ self or are they, by virtue of their post, in the public domain?

We often hear people say that it is right and legitimate to divide the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres of public officials and that we ought to keep them separate. At the local and the national level, people are quick to say ‘personal attacks’ against public officials are out of line. While attacks on the voting record or the position of an official on an issue are often misconstrued as personal attacks, in general, the taboo on personal attacks— i.e., criticism of the private conduct, or the personal behavior of the person is often said to have no bearing on public governance. Yet, the Spitzer resignation has now given supporters of that position great pause.

While No Strings Geneva is widely read and highly regarded as a fact-based point of view on local government, a handful of City Councilors and some editorial staff of the local newspaper say we ‘cross the line’ in holding public officials accountable for all aspects of their public life.
For example, even though she never gave any evidence or cited any particulars, Editor Anne Schuhle cautioned candidates in last fall’s local election against affiliating themselves with this blog, lest they be seen as lacking in ‘integrity.’ Her editorial board endorsements readily dismissed ‘private’ failings of ‘public’ officials, as though private conduct didn’t matter at all. But are those same people now telling the media, elected officials, and general public to back off and not criticize Spitzer’s ‘private life’? No. In fact, the Finger Lakes Times has used a lot of ink in reporting on the scandal and calling for Spitzer to leave office, quickly.

Are they wrong to do so now, or were they wrong before? Should public officials be subject to public scrutiny about their conduct, or should they not? Does public office carry a higher expectation or doesn’t it? These seem to be ongoing questions.

For now, we can say that the Spitzer resignation has revealed general support for the idea of the ultimate indivisibility of the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ actions of public officials. A commitment to open, honest, and transparent government (the fundamental conditions for accountability) also means a commitment to open, honest government officials. We cannot imagine giving a thumbs up to a governor who, in private, doesn’t practice what, in public, he preaches.

To Shadow Means to Follow or to Shade

In some U.S. political circles (mostly those on the far right), people claim we have a national shadow government. They say there is a group of powerful people who are not in government, but who actually make all the major decisions of government-- and make them in their own interest, with no accountability.

They point to a small group of people who, as the members of this shadow government, run organizations affiliated with, but not directly controlled by, elected leaders. They are concerned that doing business this way circumvents the United States Constitution. That’s because non-government actors are free from the various constitutional constraints which legally restrict the actions of government officials.

In the British parliamentary system, there is another sort of institution, known as the shadow cabinet, which actually exists. The shadow cabinet consists of elected leaders and other members of the minority party, the party not in power. Its job is to critique the leaders and policies of the majority party.

For each actual cabinet position occupied by a majority party member, there is a corresponding shadow cabinet position filled by a minority party member. The shadow members track their counterparts in the actual cabinet, and draw attention to actions and policies that are of concern. You can read about the current Conservative Party shadow cabinet here.

A shadow government is illegitimate and harmful to democracy because, as the very name implies, it operates outside of the sunshine of the democratic process. But a shadow cabinet as described above, despite its unfortunate name, serves a legitimate democratic function.

The shadow cabinet is the very definition of the loyal opposition. Its members often oppose the policies of the majority, but it is done out of loyalty to the laws of the country and in the spirit of the system, which demands thorough discussion and debate in decision-making.

In other words, a shadow government is a small group of well-connected people ‘pulling the strings’ of government, while a shadow cabinet is about open and accountable debate in the public interest. So, a shadow government would be more appropriately be called a shady government, and we hope there’s nothing like that at work in Geneva. But, we think, a shadow cabinet is not such a bad idea.

Accidental Bloggers

We didn’t set out to create a web log-- blog for short. We wanted to extend a discussion we were having with our colleagues on Council. With little public debate on the issues at meetings, and more and more business being conducted in the back room, and less and less information being made available to Council, and the coverage of Council activity by the Finger Lakes Times leaving more and more to be desired, we attempted to engage our colleagues by e-mail and stepped up our own research.

What we were trying to achieve was an open and honest conversation, and one that didn’t pull any political punches. Newsletters have a long production process, cost a lot to mail, and are not interactive. We couldn’t find any on-line forums that allowed discussion of local issues without careless, anonymous statements. So we sought out a medium where we could make our views known in a highly accessible way, keep them all together in one place so that anyone could read them at any time, interact with readers, and keep a steady flow of timely commentary and information. Turns out, those are the critical features of a web log and that’s how we became bloggers.

It appeared to be a novel concept; elected officials blogging about city issues, asking questions and analyzing decisions. It was certainly unusual for Geneva. The Finger Lakes Times has reported about the rants against it by a handful of angry City officials who were the reason it was started to begin with, but no article has delved into the reason that thousands of readers logged on keep coming back. As it turns out, many other communities have embraced the concept of local government blogging.

This Los Angeles District Councilor’s blog is an example of the kind of informational site that is maintained by council staffers (if the council has staffers!) which are mostly links to newspaper articles with some brief statement of the councilor’s position on the issue.

Some blogs are also campaign websites, like this one in Portland, Oregon or, this one in Dallas, Texas.

There are city councilors across the country who even include reprints of council e-mails to frame their analysis of issues, like this one in Pensacola, FL. What a great idea.

A Greensboro North Carolina native started this blog when she served on city council and continued it when she became a neighboring township’s administrator.

The Peoria Pundit has many good examples of blog posts that spark discussion, as evidenced by the long string of comments following most topics. Locally, a site called Rochester Turning is a great example of citizen participation in local government discussion.

The award for “Best Local Government Blog We’ve Seen” goes to Kent360. Get this: It is maintained by the City Manager of Kent, Ohio! It is supremely well-organized, and a comprehensive resource for all city issues. Their City Manager provides the public with links to the weekly updates that his council receives (much like those that Geneva City Councilors receive marked ‘confidential’), to work-session summaries, memos distributed to council, expert resources, community surveys, and his commentary on a variety of topics. Talk about open government--this is a site to aspire to!

The guy out in Kent, Ohio is not the only city manager that values direct and frequent communication with the people. A quick google search of ‘city manager blogs’ turns up many results, including strictly informational ones like this one from West Des Moines, Iowa to those intended to provide commentary on local issues from a staff perspective, like the City Manager of Davison, Michigan does (see the Jan. 4th entry), the City Manager of Ventura, California, and this blog written by the City Manager of Lowell, MA. In Eden Prairie, Minnesota, even the Fire Chief has a lively blog!

Of course, our blog, No Strings Geneva, cannot (and should not) be all things to all people. Instead, we urge the Geneva City Council as a whole to look at the City’s overall web presence, to consider ways to better engage residents in the decision-making, to inform people of council’s deliberative processes, and to provide ongoing opportunities for good ideas to be shared. No Strings Geneva might have been the first of its kind in Geneva, but we hope it’s not the last.

Who Gets the Most Votes? Rethinking Representation

The Ontario County Board of Elections posted vote counts on their website for the Geneva City Council Elections, held November 6, 2007.
The actual make-up of the new Geneva City Council, in order by position in the total votes received is:

1. O’Malley (councilor-at-large)
2. Einstein (mayor)
3. Alcock (councilor-at-large)
8. Valentino (councilor, ward 3)
9. D’Amico (councilor, ward 2)
11. Augustine (councilor, ward 1)
12. Cosentino (councilor, ward 4)
15. Greco (councilor, ward 6)
16. Hagerman (councilor, ward 5)

The Mayoral race, with three candidates, and the at-large seats, with four, are an accurate representation of residents’ priorities around the city, but if you were to order the ward councilors by percentage of support within the ward (votes received/votes cast), the rank order would be:

1. Greco (unopposed)
2. Valentino (70% of ward voters)
3. Augustine (65% of ward voters)
4. Hagerman (62% of ward voters)
5. D’Amico (60% of ward voters)
6. Cosentino (52% of ward voters)

This is not merely an exercise in numbers. What it illustrates is the disparity in ward mapping. Every 10 years a US Census is conducted, and the Geneva City Charter
states (sec. 2.11) that “as soon as practicable” thereafter, “the City Council shall review the results of such census with the existing wards and districts of the City to determine if a new plan of apportionment should be adopted.”

When it comes to Council votes, each of the nine members of Council gets one vote, which means that, regardless of the number of votes they received in the election, they each got a seat on Council and they each get the same number of votes on Council, namely one. It means, also, that candidates who received more votes than some seated members of Council get no votes on Council, because they were not seated (for example, Dowd who did not win a seat for the second ward, received more votes in total than Augustine received in winning a seat in the first ward).

Another way of describing these features of our local government is that there is no proportional representation on Council. Proportional representation means, in general, there is a correlation between votes received (the voters) and seats won (the representation). Councilor Greco, for example, ran unopposed and received a total of 207 votes, yet he is seated on Council and is entitled to the same one vote on Council as Councilor O’Malley, who ran against three opponents and received a total of 1,530 votes. Greco and O’Malley both have the same weight in voting on city business as any other member, including Mayor Einstein.

To balance representation, the City might re-draw the ward boundaries so that each of the six wards has approximately the same number of residents. Another possibility would be to keep ward boundaries intact, but weight votes according to the number of residents represented by each seat. Members of Council who represent more residents would be entitled to a more heavily weighted vote on Council. Weighted voting is a feature of the Ontario County Board of Supervisors.

Immediately following the 2000 Census, Augustine suggested that Council take up the charge issued in the Charter. With the first, fourth, and fifth wards home to some of the oldest housing in the City, populations within those boundaries are not likely to vary much. However, other areas of the city have experienced significant new construction since the adoption of ward boundaries (which predates the 1960s-era city charter). However, that was the first year of a new council, and the search for a new city manager--Rich Rising-- was underway, so that work order didn’t make the cut.

We are not suggesting that the council take up the reapportionment issue immediately, however, the next decennial census is on the horizon (only 2 years away) which means that the reapportionment discussion could potentially take place in 2011, an election year. To avoid any partisan-driven decision-making (or even the appearance of such) it might be wise for the Council to take up the issue sooner, based on the 2000 data and projections of what 2010 will find.