Village of Fredonia
New York State has an Open Meetings Law. A new report from the state Coalition for Open Government suggests that doesn’t matter much, since there is no enforcement and if you don’t know what’s coming up at the meeting or don’t know what happened afterwards, how valuable is it?
The study says almost all of a sampling of villages statewide don’t pay much attention to the Open Meetings Law and this means the public doesn’t know what’s going on.
"The real problem here, as we mentioned in our report, is the lack of information being provided to the public," said Coalition President Paul Wolf. "So if you’re not posting meeting minutes, I, as a concerned citizen, if I missed the meeting, I don’t know what happened. If you’re not posting your meeting agenda and I’m a concerned citizen, I don’t even know what you‘re talking about. Maybe there’s something I’m interested in, but how do I know?"