[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.
Saratoga Springs Politics 
We get it — it’s The Thing in Moreland Commission land, and its focus on “housekeeping”.
Bharara seizes the Commission’s records, Trump fires him a year-later.
Don Quixote.
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[I am suspicious that this comment was generated by artificial intelligence (AI)
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often and for the same reason”. – Mark Twain
Governing is hard. It’s hard because we’ve made the business of government more complex with myriad rules and regulations. It’s hard because progress requires new programs. It’s hard because the reach of government has gone well beyond protecting us from each other; government now feels it necessary to protect us from ourselves. And it’s hard because localities are at the end of the pipe states use to flush mandates, many unfunded, down to local government.
Kudos to John Kaufmann for his in-depth reporting and analysis of the inner workings of Saratoga Springs city government. It’s not often we can open the hood and get this degree of visibility into all the moving parts of the engine of politics and bureaucracy. Readers can draw many conclusions from perusing the rich content of Mr. Kaufmann’s blog. One theme that’s clearly evident to me is this: Your elected officials have the uncanny ability to take something that’s fundamentally challenging and make it impossibly difficult to the point of dysfunction and failure.
Some might respond to this by saying Mr. Kaufmann’s blog is biased, rendering my observation incomplete or flawed. I don’t believe that’s the case, but I suppose it’s a possibility and that’s why it’s important to draw insights from multiple sources. If we ask Artificial Intelligence (AI) to mine its vast sources of available information, here’s what it tells us, or anyone else who cares to ask, about your City Council:
This unedited AI summary is sobering. It’s like holding up a mirror to your leadership and seeing an image of ugliness in all its offensive detail. If this is what “artificial” intelligence is saying, can you imagine what people with “real” intelligence think? I suspect this is not the way you’d like your community portrayed to the world. This should be a slap-in-the-face wake-up call for City Council members. It creates the perception that you’re failing to govern, you’re failing your city, and you’re failing your constituents. Not a good look personally and professionally. I’m certain that’s not what you intend. This is a problem crying out for attention.
The propensity of some Council members to engage in uncivil discourse and destructive behavior is another recurring theme of Mr. Kaufmann’s reporting. Indeed, our AI query flagged this as an ingredient in the stew of City Council dysfunction. It calls to mind an admonition offered by a Wall Street Journal columnist: “For those who operate on any level of our public life, hear this: Some of our problems can be resolved or made less dramatic and assaultive by an old-fashioned concept that used to exist in public life. It is called tact. We are in an epidemic of tactlessness, which is an absence of respect for the other side, for whoever is on that side. It is an utter lack of generosity and sensitivity”.
For those Council members and their political operatives inflicted by the epidemic of tactlessness: You and your constituents know who you are and there are steps you can take to learn how to “play well with others”. Perhaps a counseling intervention is in order. That’s not an unreasonable request if it results in a City Council that can work more collaboratively to conduct the people’s business and tackle the big issues to keep your city moving forward. For those who don’t have what it takes to do the job you were elected to perform, acknowledge your limitations, get off the struggle bus, and step aside. You and your constituents know who you are. Your constituents deserve better.
One more thought: There’s another potential cause of the dysfunction you’re experiencing. Practitioners of organizational design, corporate CEOs and experienced government leaders know when an organization’s structure and operating model are not mission appropriate, that misalignment can have the unfortunate consequence of causing good people to behave and perform badly. Perhaps a more in-depth and broader review of the contents of Mr. Kaufmann’s blog spanning multiple administrations and Commissioners will offer useful insights to help answer the question about the root cause of the dysfunction. Is it simply a case of the electorate occasionally choosing badly behaving or inexperienced people to run their government? Perhaps their choices are severely limited? Or is it the more fundamental issue that your city government’s organization structure and operating model are ill-suited to the task at hand and have made it difficult, if not impossible, to assemble a leadership team that can establish a shared vision, align their intentions, find common ground and bring to the table the experience necessary to navigate the growing complexity of governing? I think this is an itch worth scratching.
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The Gazette editorial isn’t wrong in pointing out the recent problems that we have seen with certain City officials. And yes, voters are ultimately responsible for all the problems that we have seen over the past few years. I don’t think it’s the City water as the Gazette editor (tongue in cheek) suggests. We do have very real problems and people in the community need to ‘take their heads out of the sand’ and start paying attention.
An immediate solution would be for the City’s Democratic and Republican Committees to each put up five serious candidates for the 2025 local elections. We need candidates who know, understand and respect our community and who are willing to communicate effectively with their colleagues and with the people they are elected to represent.
This might also be the time to finally admit that our Commission from of government doesn’t always work so well. We should at least look into a form of government that would encourage talented, concerned citizens to actively participate. A separate body of legislators could be the answer.
I would disagree with the Gazette editor’s statement that we have FOIL because ‘public officials like to keep things from the public in order to avoid embarrassment or public disclosure of nefarious or incompetent conduct’. That is an unfair generalization. I don’t believe that the majority of public officials behave this way.
In fact, I have a criticism of the media from my experience on the City Council and in City government. I can recall trying to get facts out to the media in order to clear up misconceptions and misinformation. It was sometimes like talking to a wall. I came away with the very disappointing realization that the local media at times refuses to let facts get in the way of a juicy story.
Chris Mathiesen
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[JK: Chuckery, I am giving you one last bite at the Apple. No more AI after this.]
Mr. Mathiesen’s insightful comments teased an important suggestion: “This might also be the time to finally admit that our Commission form of government doesn’t always work so well”. Indeed, my earlier comments suggested that Saratoga consider the possibility that the dysfunction you’re experiencing could be the result of a governing model that no longer fits the needs of your growing community.
Your commission form of government is going the way of the dinosaur. It has largely been replaced in modern municipalities because of inherent inefficiencies and its inability to adapt to larger, more complex governance needs. Holdouts typically include smaller cities and towns such as Mechanicville, New York (population 5,200), West, Texas (population 2,600), and Baker, Montana (population 1,800). Portland, Oregon (population 641,000) is the large city exception. However, Portland is moving away from the commission form of government due to long-standing concerns about its inefficiencies, inequities, and lack of clear accountability (sound familiar?). The city expects to have a Council-Manager system in place in 2025.
If you expect, as Mr. Mathiesen suggests, that the commission system doesn’t always work so well for Saratoga, there are a variety of telltale symptoms you can look for to validate his suspicion that it may be time for change:
Lack of Clear Leadership—Since power is distributed among commissioners, there may be no single executive leader to coordinate efforts effectively, even in situations where a Mayor chairs a Council of commissioners. This can lead to inefficiency and slow decision-making.
Conflict of Interests—Commissioners often head specific departments (e.g., public safety, finance), leading to conflicts when their departmental interests compete with the broader needs of the government. Siloed operations drive up the cost of government operations when “back-office” functions like procurement, human resources, and information technology are duplicated across departments.
Fragmented Accountability—With no central executive authority, it can be unclear who is responsible for failures or mismanagement, making it harder for voters to hold officials accountable.
Inefficiency in Decision-Making—Decisions require agreement among all commissioners (or a majority), which can lead to deadlocks or compromises that weaken policy effectiveness.
Specialization Issues—Commissioners may lack expertise in the departments they oversee, leading to ineffective management and flawed decision-making, especially during times of crisis. When commissioners lacking in operational experience feel an obligation to roll up their shirt sleeves and direct operations, risk of failure increases dramatically which, in turn, translates to greater liability and expense for the municipality.
Potential for Parochialism—Commissioners may focus too much on their departments and/or be influenced by the ideology of their political party, neglecting overall municipal issues or long-term strategic planning. Infighting is often the norm when elected commissioners are affiliated with different political parties.
Change of this nature is not easy. We’ve seen resistance to change frustrate realization of improved governance, cost efficiencies and enhanced service delivery across the country when voters say “no” to consolidation of public safety dispatching, shared services for fire and police operations, and school district mergers (voters nixed the merger of two financially struggling school districts because they couldn’t agree on which of the two school’s mascot to keep!).
Should you choose to go down this path (again), expect to experience continued resistance from the old guard (“why change, we’ve always done things this way”?), from stakeholders with the misguided notion that the commission form of government is at the root of Saratoga Springs’ prosperity (I suspect many other factors have led to your prosperity despite the dysfunction you see), and from those with the short-sighted view that other forms of government will cost more (not true if you factor in risk-related costs associated with multiple points of weakness and failure associated with the commission system AND consider the tangible benefits you’ll derive from a more modern and effective form of governance).
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Note to JK: To address your suspicion that my earlier comment was generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), you are partially correct. The bulk of my commentary flowed from my own pen, with the exception of the three italicized bullet points describing City Council dysfunction. That content was wholly generated by an Artificial Intelligence algorithm based on its search and analysis of publicly available reports and records.
In the limited instances I use AI models in my research and writing, my standard practice is to carefully review the output and modify the content, as necessary, for accuracy and tone. In the case of my earlier comment, I chose to present the AI model’s raw results in the bulleted list of dysfunctions to illustrate what anyone with access to AI will see if they query the Saratoga City Council.
Thank you again for your diligent reporting. In addition to exposing the good, the bad and the ugly of Saratoga politics, your blog provides a rich source of information to help inform the important work of political scientists and scholars of public administration. Perhaps Saratoga will someday be hailed as an exemplar of good government. That won’t happen without fundamental change. When it does, take pride in the contribution your reporting made to progress. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword in effecting political and social change.
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