If you’ve ever shown up to a town, village, school board or county committee meeting only to find a dark building and an empty parking lot, you already understand why this editorial is necessary.
Over the past three years, The Reporter has repeatedly encountered meetings that were moved, rescheduled, or simply cancelled - with no public notice. Sometimes the only clue is word of mouth. Sometimes there isn’t one at all. And when public bodies fail to inform the public, they aren’t just being discourteous. They’re skirting New York state law.
The state’s Open Meetings Law is not ambiguous about notice. Section 104 requires that when a meeting is scheduled at least a week in advance, public notice of the time and place must be “given or electronically transmitted to the news media” and “conspicuously posted” at least 72 hours before the meeting. For meetings scheduled on shorter notice, the law still requires notice “to the extent practicable” and posting “at a reasonable time prior thereto.”
A recent example illustrates the problem. On Monday, Nov. 18, I traveled to Walton for a county Mental Health Committee meeting scheduled for 12:30 p.m., only to learn that the meeting had been cancelled the previous Friday. Committee members - supervisors and Behavioral Health staff - had been notified, but the county website still listed the meeting as scheduled, even after its start time had passed. The building clerk/receptionist was also not aware the meeting had been cancelled.
To help prevent similar situations, I emailed Clerk of the Board Penny Bishop and Public Information Officer Shelly Johnson-Bennett multiple times requesting that cancellations and rescheduled meetings be publicly posted in compliance with Open Meeting Law and that media be placed on the notification list that meeting participants are on. Those emails were neither acknowledged nor answered.
In 2023, lawmakers went a step further: if a public body has a website, notice “shall also be conspicuously posted” there. In other words: if you have a website, you must use it.
What the law doesn’t say - but should be obvious - is that when a meeting is cancelled or significantly changed, that information also needs to be communicated in the same way. Otherwise, the “notice” becomes meaningless in practice. The public, the press, and even other officials are left guessing.
This is not a technicality. When residents do not know when or where their government is meeting, they lose their chance to comment on budgets, zoning, water and sewer projects, road work, law enforcement contracts, and policies that affect daily life. When newsrooms show up to locked doors, the public record of those meetings disappears, too.
Most of our local officials are not acting in bad faith. Many are juggling small staffs, part-time positions and limited resources. But “we’re busy” is not a legal exemption from the Open Meetings Law. Transparency is part of the job, not an optional courtesy.
If municipalities want to improve - and avoid complaints, appeals, or even litigation - there are practical steps they can take:
• Standardize notice procedures. Designate who is responsible for sending notices to the news media, posting in physical locations, and updating the website. Write it down. Follow it every time.
• Treat cancellations like meetings. If a meeting warranted a public notice, then a cancellation warrants one, too - through the same channels: website, bulletin board, and notice to the media.
• Use the tools you already have. Many towns now stream meetings, maintain Facebook pages, and send email blasts. These do not replace legal notice, but they can complement it and reach more people.
• Plan for backups. Clerks get sick, storms happen, and last-minute changes are sometimes unavoidable. Every board should have a backup person and a simple checklist for notice.
We also have responsibilities as a newspaper. When we learn of a meeting, we publish it. When we learn of a cancellation, we will publish that, too. When public bodies fall short, we will continue to report that fact plainly and accurately - not to embarrass, but to inform and to encourage compliance.
This is not about catching towns, villages or the county “doing it wrong.” It is about making sure residents have a fair opportunity to see their government at work - and, when they choose, to stand up and be heard.
Open government is not created by slogans or resolutions alone. It is built in the details: in the calendar, the agenda, the timely notice on a website, before someone drives 30 miles round trip (or more) to find out a meeting was called off.
Our ask of local boards is simple and entirely consistent with state law: Post your meetings. Post your changes. Let the public know.
In a small, rural county where trust is our most important civic currency, democracy should never feel like a guessing game.
* Lillian Browne is the editor of The Reporter and can be reached at editor@the-reporter.net
