44.2 F
New York
Friday, March 29, 2024

Pressure Mounts on DeBlasio for Transparency Policy in Administration

Related Articles

-Advertisement-

Must read

Mayor Bill de Blasio is facing increasing pressure regarding issues of transparency and secrecy. (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

On the morning of Friday, September 9, during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s weekly radio appearance, he was hit with a barrage of questions regarding issues of transparency. 

WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer threw questions about secrecy at de Blasio for 10 minutes. He pressured the mayor to reveal his views on police disciplinary records and reasons for refusing to reveal specific texts and emails between himself and outside advisers.

These questions were sparked by a lawsuit, filed in state court on Wednesday, September 7, by organizations challenging the de Blasio administration’s denial to reveal the content of those communications.

A big issue for the critics is that the New York City Law Department is fighting multiple battles in court to keep the city records of officers’ past misconduct out of the public view.

Referencing a 1976 state law that protects police personnel records, de Blasio told Lehrer, “On the police records, I have a clear position that I want to see the state law changed and I want us to be able to release those records.”

According to the New York Times, “Defense and civil rights lawyers have long complained of attempts to extend the state law, Section 50-a of the Civil Rights Law, to shield all manner of law enforcement actions from public scrutiny.

In federal court, city lawyers have gone so far as to request that an attorney’s letters be sealed or redacted, even after the settling of a case, if there was even the briefest mention of an officer’s disciplinary history. In state court, the city filed appeals to stop the disclosure of a summary of disciplinary records in the case of Daniel Pantaleo, the Staten Island officer who placed Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold in 2014, and also in the case of a Queens officer, Jason Maccaron, involved in a violent arrest.”

Last month this became an issue for the mayor after the Police Department decided to change a long lasting policy of posting certain disciplinary information on a clipboard in its public information office at Police Headquarters. The alteration happened to coincide with the Legal Aid Society filing a request for a Freedom of Information Act.

Legal Aid’s staff attorney, Cynthia Conti-Cook, said, “For the past two years it’s become increasingly clear that the lack of accountability in police-involved deaths and other abuses is germane to the public interest.” 

Mayor de Blasio insists that until the law is amended by Albany, the city is required to maintain the secrecy of the records. Regarding the certain outside advisers, de Blasio said, “when some individuals are very, very close advisers, that it is appropriate to have a private relationship with them.”

NYT reports, “Officials at City Hall have maintained for months that emails and texts with a select group of outside advisers — including those whose firms have clients with business before the city — can and should be kept from public view if they contain advice for the mayor of the sort that his top city aides would provide. (For emails to City Hall related to advisers’ clients, officials have said those records would be turned over when requested.)

Mr. de Blasio’s position gained a kind of political infamy when in May his then-counsel, Maya Wiley, deemed the advisers ‘agents of the city.’ Reporters have sought through Freedom of Information Act requests to pry open those records; NY1 and The New York Post began their court challenge this week.”

The city’s corporation counsel Zachary W. Carter explained that the city was attempting to put “a legal framework on something that has existed since the beginning of time.” He said that “the appropriate line drawing is a challenge, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth the effort.”

Carter added that, the only common thread between the city’s position on police records and the mayor’s email is the issue of transparency. He said, “It’s apples and — forget oranges — it’s apples and elephants in terms of a legal issue.”

By Mark Snyder

balance of natureDonate

Latest article

- Advertisement -