Daily Gazette Editorial Skewers Commissioner Dillon Moran
[JK: This editorial speaks for itself]
We know Saratoga Springs is world famous for its water. But we’re starting to wonder what’s in it, at least at City Hall, given the latest rash of unethical, criminal and outright baffling behavior of some city officials.
Last month, it was two city officials charged with misdemeanors in connection with allegations they had city employees come to their homes or the homes of a relative to do some plumbing work. Drano was apparently involved.
Rather than just admit they did wrong, one of the officials’ lawyers is trying to shift the blame for the alleged theft of public services to those who had the temerity to bring the matter to the attention of the public and authorities.
Now we’re reporting that Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran has been charged with three non-criminal counts of unlawful prevention of public access to records for allegedly lying about the existence of public records in response to a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request from a private citizen.
He apparently didn’t want the records to be made public, so in response to the FOIL request, he said he conducted a diligent search but couldn’t produce the records the person was seeking.
Keeping secrets is, effectively, lying by omission. But if this allegation is true, this was outright deliberate lying to deny a member of the public records to which they are — by law — legally entitled to have.
That’s why we have a Freedom of Information Law – because public officials like to keep things from the public in order to avoid embarrassment or public disclosure of nefarious or incompetent conduct.
The public in many ways might never learn of this conduct without the laws that are in place.
This latest case highlights a couple of things — one of which is that something is clearly making public officials in Saratoga Springs act screwy, in defiance of the law and in direct opposition to their oath to serve the public. Maybe it’s the city water. Somebody in that city voted for these guys.
The other point this highlights is that the state’s toothless Freedom of Information Law needs to be strengthened. Moran is charged essentially as an individual with falsifying a document.
The Freedom of Information Law itself needs to give judges more legal authority and discretion to punish public officials and their governments with fines and awarding of legal fees whenever they fail to honor legitimate requests for information or when they impose unnecessary delays on the release of information.
Whatever the reason(s) for what’s going on in Saratoga Springs, it has to stop.
Public officials owe their constituents honesty and integrity. Those are traits that seem to be seriously lacking these days.