Greene County leaders now say staff are free to talk to the press after multiple county employees said they were previously gagged under county "policy."
Those leaders, who have denied there ever was such a policy, were prompted to speak after First Amendment lawyers and advocates sent a letter to the county supervisors last month demanding they rescind the policy.
"It remains a mystery how Greene County employees came to believe they were strictly prohibited from speaking to the press if no such thing was ever communicated to them,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the New York-based Freedom of the Press Foundation and one of the letter’s signatories, told The Daily Progress in an email.
In their letter, Stern and 10 other free speech advocates told supervisors in plain terms just where they got their policy wrong: “Courts have consistently struck down government policies that broadly ban public employees from talking to members of the press without authorization, because they are prior restraints that violate the First Amendment.”
The policy is not only unconstitutional, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled employees do not give up their First Amendment rights when accepting public employment. County employees, therefore, have the right to speak on matters of public concern.
Greene County leaders maintain no such policy existed, despite
“There is no policy and there has never been a policy prohibiting staff members from speaking to the press,” Steve Catalano, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, wrote in an email to Stern.
“I believe this is a misunderstanding based on some of my prior off-the-cuff comments,” Catalano wrote. “The Board of Supervisors (unanimously) desired the County Administrator to remind staff that it is the elected Board of Supervisors who have the responsibility to determine policy. When staff are asked about the County’s official position on policy matters, they are to represent the majority position of the Board or defer the question to the Chairman. This is a common practice because conflicting positions coming from the County erodes the public’s trust."
But that is not how county employees nor First Amendment advocates see it.
Multiple county employees informed The Daily Progress they could not respond to inquiries because of a county policy prohibiting contact with the press.
“Per our media policy, please contact Board of Supervisors Chair Steve Catalano with any questions about Greene County Government," reads employee responses to Daily Progress correspondences.
Moreover, county employees said they also were required to label any information provided to the press as "opinion."
According to Stern, this second part of the policy also violates the First Amendment. Like censorship of speech, compelled speech — when the government forces an individual to express certain messages or adopt certain viewpoints — is just as unlawful.
There may have been some confusion as county leaders and staff said there was no written policy, but unwritten policies are still policies, according to Stern.
Stern urged Catalano and the board to put some policy in writing, making it clear and specific to avoid violating employees’ rights.
“Don’t restrict employee speech and instead engage in the public discourse and correct the record when you think someone got something wrong,” wrote Stern.
Caroline Hendrie, executive director of the Society of Professional Journalist and Society of Professional Journalists Foundation, said full transparency is not only beneficial to the press but to the public.
“Contrary to what some folks seem to be asserting, squelching candid communication about matters of public concern does not enhance trust in government. Instead, efforts to suppress such honest exchanges serve to undermine that trust,” Hendrie told The Daily Progress in an email. “The public is better served by a commitment to transparency and accountability than by unconstitutional efforts to enforce a uniform message or unanimity of thought."
Ironically, the county’s new media policy was originally developed as a means to temper supervisors’ correspondence.
At the start of the year, the Greene County Board of Supervisors considered adopting new social media guidelines for themselves after one supervisor, Francis McGuigan, was reprimanded by his colleagues for using his Facebook account, which he has christened the Greene Sentinel, to suggest a dam in the county was on the brink of “imminent failure.” The dam itself did not collapse, and there are no residences in its flood plain.
On Jan. 14, the board was presented a seven-page social media policy outlining how different county departments’ messaging should be managed, how officials should respond online during an emergency and how all county leaders can maintain decorum while using social media — a landscape rife with misinformation and disinformation.
Supervisors balked, claiming the policy would “muzzle” them and violate their First Amendment right to free speech.
The policy was redirected at staff, and Catalano was made the county’s “point of contact,” the only person permitted to speak with the press regarding county business.
That is, according to Catalano at least, no longer the case.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com