Last month, Ulster County Comptroller March Gallagher issued a subpoena to my office. Comptroller Gallagher’s subpoena demanded that the County Executive’s office turn over all records of whistleblower phone calls over a four-year period and the details of a confidential personnel report.
The County’s labor counsel responded to Comptroller Gallagher’s subpoena with a letter explaining that the subpoena was improper under State law and the County Charter. The Comptroller is the chief auditing officer of the County; her authority does not include the right to demand personnel complaints and whistleblower records unrelated to the auditing of financial books, records, and accounts. The generality and open-endedness of the demands were also concerning. The subpoena would have granted the Comptroller the right to trawl through years of non-financial communications and documents for no stated reason.
I believe I have a productive working relationship with Comptroller Gallagher, and my office has been far more responsive to her frequent document requests than any of my predecessors. I am absolutely committed to transparency and openness, and I don’t believe it is appropriate for any branch of government to guard information from the public unnecessarily. However, some types of records, like personnel files and whistleblower records, are necessarily confidential. If we want the County government to function properly and safely, employees and residents must feel safe reporting inappropriate or illegal behavior. Confidentiality is not confidentiality if the records can be turned over at any time, for no stated reason.
Comptroller Gallagher disagrees with the labor counsel’s decision, and is now suing me and the County to compel disclosure of whistleblowers’ identifying information. This is a waste of time and taxpayer money, but it is the path Comptroller Gallagher has decided to take. We will each make our case in New York State Supreme Court, and the court will decide whether the Comptroller has carte blanche to demand all County records and peruse employees’ personal information, or whether her authority only extends to records relevant to County finances as stated in the County Charter.
We are in this conflict now because of my insistence on process and procedure, but that is a firm stance I am comfortable taking. Process and procedure protect the function of government from individual political or personal motivations, and ensure that government can fulfill its true and intended purpose: serving the people.
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