December 7, 2016 at 4:14 p.m.
The Buffoonery Factory
The Buffoonery Factory
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away from our planet - the Oneida County Courthouse - a few good old boys were sitting around behind closed doors doing what good old boys do, you know, figuring out the latest way to screw the people, when suddenly they became concerned.
What would happen, one of them wondered, if anybody ever looked into what they were actually doing behind their closed doors? What would happen if they were caught breaking the law?
God forbid, they might actually be punished. An action plan was clearly needed in case anybody ever wanted to hold them accountable.
Maybe they just needed a good way to get away, which prompted one good old boy to describe his long-ago ride on a hot-air balloon.
"Maybe we need a hot-air balloon to fly us away, like in the Wizard of Oz," the good old boy said.
"What's that you say?" asked his hard-of-hearing good-old-boy colleague (it is axiomatic that most good old boys are hard of hearing, especially when it comes to hearing the wishes of the people).
"I said, a hot air balloon," the good old boy repeated.
"That's right, a hot-air balloon," said another.
"Precisely," said the hard-of-hearing colleague. "That's exactly what we need, a hot-air buffoon!"
And thus was born the position of Oneida County district attorney. Rather than escape physically with a hot-air balloon, the good old boys decided to escape legally with a hot-air buffoon.
It has worked exceptionally well. Through the years, the county's district attorney's office has produced a parade of stellar buffoons, matched by few, so much so that it is known far and wide - affectionately, of course - as the Buffoonery Factory.
All of which brings us to the current district attorney, Michael Schiek. When it comes to the law, all buffoons have their special area of clownery. Mr. Schiek's is the open records and open meetings laws.
He's produced some real laughers. Remember when he covered for good-old-boy Sonny Paszak, who apparently destroyed public records and otherwise wouldn't give requested records up because he said they were available elsewhere.
Schiek thought that was pretty good reasoning and concluded that an official didn't have to release requested records if you could get them by asking somebody else. So, if more than one official had a record, every official could just say it was available elsewhere, and nobody would ever have to turn any records over.
Brilliant! It takes a Very Special Buffoon to think that way.
Oh, remember the time the Oneida County district attorney's office arrested a person twice - not once but twice - for a crime the person did not commit, due to an error by an assistant district attorney.
That wasn't Schiek and it wasn't about open records, but it was buffoonery of the highest order, and so Schiek properly rewarded the prosecutor who wrongly charged the person more than $1,500 in bonus pay shortly after the assistant mistakenly filed the erroneous charges for the second time.
Now, get ready for more buffoonery. As we report in today's edition, this newspaper has filed an open-meetings complaint against members of the county's Labor Relations & Employee Services Committee for improperly discussing routine benefits issues in closed session, and for discussing an open-records request made by this newspaper without putting that discussion on the agenda.
We've been here before with Schiek, and so we can see his answer coming a mile away. Several years ago, this newspaper filed similar complaints against Lakeland Union High School. One involved a closed session by the school board in which an item not on the agenda was discussed.
In his findings, Schiek said he found evidence that the school board did violate the open meetings statute, though he said it was arguable. In any case, he said it didn't matter because he was convinced the board did not knowingly do so, if they did.
So, no citation. On Schiek's planet, if you don't know you're breaking the law, it doesn't matter that you're breaking the law, and we'll let the whole thing go.
In his mind, it's the knowledge, not the act, that's important, at least when it comes to good old boys. Tell that to their victims.
Buffoonery at its finest, but there are problems with this thinking in the real world. First, there's the old adage that ignorance of the law is no excuse. That's especially true when it comes to elected officials, who as lawmakers and policy makers must be held to a higher standard.
It's not the same as a person on an unfamiliar highway who may not know the speed limit and goes too fast. It is not the same because it is the elected officials' job to know the open meetings law. It is part and parcel of the territory of holding public office, and so ignorance of what's allowed in closed session is not ignorance only, it is malfeasance, and it should be punished.
Schiek was wrong then; we'll see if he repeats his lame cover up for the good old boys again.
Of course, he could find them knowingly guilty - after all, committee chairman Ted Cushing has acknowledged the violation - but simply refuse to cite them or exact any consequences. He did that in our second allegation against LUHS.
In that case, in which we alleged that the high school improperly deleted emails before the records' retention period expired, Schiek did find a violation. And what was the consequence? No citation needed, just tell us you've taken steps to make sure it never happens again.
The problem is, when a prosecutor loudly announces that he doesn't consider open meetings or open records violations serious enough to cite or serious enough to impose the statutory penalty for those violations, he is announcing to the world that it is OK for them to break that law.
As we have written, any law for which there is no consequence for breaking is in effect no law at all. It's a mirage, always seemingly there in the distance, teasing you with thirst-quenching protection, but never quite materializing when you need it.
While there is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion, that discretion should err on the side of the people, not in favor of the good old boys. Refusing to exact consequences for transparency violations leaves public officials to act as they please with no accountability - either to being knowledgeable about the laws they are sworn to obey or to assuming responsibility for protecting public records - and it leaves the public vulnerable to mischief.
The only way to stop open records and open meetings violations is get tough about prosecuting infractions. It is not so much how large the fine is, but the certainty that a fine will have to be paid, along with the cost of bad publicity, that is important. Study after study shows that what's important in deterrence is not the severity of punishment, but the inevitability of it, particularly in so-called white-collar crimes and in breach-of-duty offenses.
Certainly, certain punishment is what is warranted in this case.
Will Schiek himself act any differently in dealing with this complaint? We hope so, but we have grown accustomed to his protection of the good old boys. We're only really waiting to see what Good Old Boy protection device he will use this time.
Perhaps they didn't know they were violating the law when they discussed an item not on the agenda, despite having a current and a past county board chairman on the committee. Or maybe making them promise not to do it again is punishment enough.
Or maybe Schiek will come up with an entirely different reason to cover the bad behavior of the good old boys.
After all, he's the hot-air buffoon, and that's what the hot-air buffoon is for, to provide the escape route for the good old boys to evade accountability for their misconduct.
OK, maybe we did make up the story about how the position of hot-air buffoon came to be, but what is not made up is the actual buffoonery over the years in the district attorney's office.
Maybe one day voters will write a different story. Maybe they will close the Buffoonery Factory and open a factory that manufactures truth and justice.
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