A Conspiracy To Avoid Public Involvement

COMMENTARY

It's unfortunate that the only example of bipartisan agreement in recent memory is the nearly unanimous approval on the Common Council to purchase, in two fabricated parcels, a new computer system for the Police Department and the city dispatcher.

Let me begin by saying again that I believe the software is necessary to give the Police department, the fire department and ambulance services the necessary communication and record-keeping tools to provide for the best in public safety.  I approve of the purchase.  I don't approve of the process by which the purchase was made.

In the end, representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties admitted that they manipulated the process to avoid laws which would inconveniently force them to involve the public in the process.

Four years ago the city purchased similar software and borrowed $400,000 through bonding to pay for the purchase.  We're still paying off that loan.

It's obvious now that the system the Police Department bought was a failure.  The city's Information Technology director who was involved in that purchase hinted during a special Common Council meeting Thursday that he acquiesced to former chief Lynn Baldoni's wishes to purchase the system because the decision-making "was different back then."  He is on the record as recommending that purchase.  As is Chief of Communications Wayne Bartolota, Mayor Sebastian Giuliano, the Public Safety Commission, the Finance and Governance Committee and the Common Council.

The mayor has said that it would be easier to handle matters manually than to continue to use the current system.

Under questioning at the recent meeting Bartolota claimed that there are several risks each day that a new system is not in place.  Apparently we have been under those risks for the past four years, and will be under them until a new system is purchased and installed, and personnel are trained.

We've been "at risk" for four years, but it's only now that a sense of urgency convinced the mayor and Council members to move hastily toward a purchase and not be delayed by anything so annoyingly democratic, and legal, as a referendum.

With the public safety at risk for that long, it's indeed unfortunate that discussions of the problem were kept private.  The Public Safety Commission only discussed problems concerning the old system, and purchase of a new one, in executive session.  While some of their discussions were probably legitimate under the Freedom of Information statutes, other parts most assuredly were not.

Same goes for the Common Council.  In their executive sessions they discussed the terms of the agreement with the vendors, the bidding process and numbers and the names of vendors.  All of these discussions should have been public, and not reserved for the privacy of executive session.

Eventually some general details of the process were made public, but only after this newsblog complained.

An argument has been made that public discussion of the problems with the current system and negotiations for a new system might have threatened public safety and security.  That opinion comes from the same people who bought the wrong system in the first place.

One is left to surmise that private discussions were necessary to avoid embarrassment about the purchase of a system that is now a declared failure.  Private talks are also convenient for saving face. City officials who often declare their responsibilities as financial stewards now are forced to expend another million and a half dollars after spending $400K on the original system.

There's nothing wrong with private discussions when they are truly necessary.  But when our municipal leaders call for secrecy when it's not necessary, they're not only violating the spirit and letter of the law, they're insulting a public which has the right to know the details of an important and costly expenditure.