Bethlehem's Planning Commission and Zoning Hearing Board each have monthly meetings. To promote transparency and accountability, the city's web page traditionally includes links to their agendas.But for the last two months, the ZHB agenda has been unavailable online. And there was no online agenda for the Planning Commission May meeting. Ironically, that's when the Planning Bureau unveiled their new, "user friendly", zoning ordinance.
Last month, Zoning Officer John Lezoche was surprised to learn there was no online agenda for April, and told me someone must be sick. That omission was repeated again in May. Planning Bureau Director Darlene Heller explains that there is a protocol, and someone obviously failed to notify the IT department of the Planning Commission's May meeting .
These are understandable oversights, but illustrate why governments should never be trusted to inform the public.
Over the past four-and-a-half years, Pennsylvania legislators have introduced no less than 26 bills to take public notices out of newspapers' hands and into those of the government.
"It costs too much," say some government officials. And it does. "Trust us to post these notices on our municipal web pages," plead others. They pretty much had me sold.
But government, being government, inevitably fails, as demonstrated by Bethlehem's failure to post the meeting agendas of two separate boards.
That's why those legal notices really do belong in the newspapers.
If you'd like to check these notices periodically, I've created a link to Public Notices on my left sidebar.
5 comments:
What's johnny boy hiding?
TH bending even more rules
But I don't subscribe to any locally over priced and lacking of real news newspapers?
Can't we get it both ways? Online & for those who still support a dying medium?
in today's world, there is no reason that there can't be an independant office in state gov't that acts as a clearing house for these notices (or something on this line, let's not get hung up on the specifics). We have the office of open records that seems to be doing a decent job of opening up the dusty files that were once off limits... why can't we have an office of open meetings to open the dusty closets.
Newspapers are the biggest opponent of these changes. Why, you ask? B/c they charge $100 for each ad. They don't want to lose the advertising revenue. In other words, newspapers rely on gov't money and they don't want to be weened off of it.
all this comes under TH's asleep at the wheel watch another mismanager employed by the boy mayor
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