Per the Post Standard: Proposed NY law would require documents to be made public before meetings.
Amen to that idea! All too often members of the public that are concerned enough to attend city or town council meetings have no idea what their representatives are discussing because proposed legislation is been distributed solely amongst the representatives.
In this day when almost any individual can publish information and make it available to the world on the web at virtually no cost, there is simply NO EXCUSE for legislative bodies to not make this material available to the public in advance of meetings by posting it on the Internet. It is actually less time consuming and labor intensive to publish on the web than to print and physically distribute materials.
According to the article, the Governor has until today to sign this into law. Let's hope that he does.
2 comments:
This proposed law is long overdue. However, what baffles me is where Assemblywoman Tenney, who represents the 115th Assembly District, voted it down! In the Post Standard article Tenney said that “she voted against the amendment because its language seemed vague and the directive would be overly burdensome to small library boards, school districts and villages.” WHAT??? In Westmoreland the School District use to have the public comments prior to the Board discussing any of the agenda issues. This meant that the public was not allowed to comment or make any inquiries on any of the current issues until the following month’s Board meeting. Important issues were voted on absent of any public participation. Moreover, Assemblywoman Tenney was never seen at any of these Board meetings. So where is she basing her justification for her negative vote? Apparently canvassing the constituency for their input also escapes the Assemblywoman’s comprehension of “government by the people.”
Pretty sad when we have an Assemblywoman who does not care for transparency at any level of government.
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