The topic of transparency has been a focal point in conversations about the former College of Saint Rose campus. In recent weeks, both the Times Union and the Albany county executive have highlighted development plans for that choice piece of real estate in the capital city.
Then, the newspaper called out the county for its surprise announcement that a charter school was showing interest in two academic buildings once central to the college’s operation. And the county executive shot back on social media.
As we have seen lately at the national level, elected officials are trumpeting their allegiance to transparency while simultaneously demonstrating behaviors that would not be construed as transparent.
When it comes to Saint Rose, transparency is of great importance. After all, a once treasured city resource, a 100-year-old college — with a wide reach — left a gaping hole when it shuttered in 2024.
Saint Rose journalism students spent years producing stories about the college as it was hemorrhaging in real time. It was excruciating. And efforts on the part of the college’s administration to stifle reporting there resulted in cries of censorship.
I observed all of it then as a journalism professor and chair of the communications department. And I watch it now as a one of the citizens scrutinizing the rebirth of the campus. In fact, hundreds of interested people attended the various public meetings held in September, October and November.
Decisions around the campus reconfiguration are now under observation, with good cause. The decision-making process does not telegraph a sense of transparency.
Take a very minor example concerning the scores of new blue banners that were installed in the spring, festooning the campus with notice of Albany County’s seeming “colonization.”
It felt like a cart-horse scenario. Before public input, the county was claiming and naming buildings around the property. No evidence of any private investor interest has emerged, at least not publicly, and instead, a property that might actually yield tax revenue appears slated to remain a non-taxable property in a city already rife with buildings and lots generating no income for Albany.
Not long after the signs were installed, I filed a records request under the state Freedom of Information Law on June 12 to find out how the whole sign process materialized. I used the county’s online records request portal to ask the county’s Comptroller and Purchasing departments to share any documentation about the ordering and installation of the new blue signs.
I asked for the dates the signs were let out to bid, order dates and accompanying documents concerning the name and address of the vendors chosen to supply the signage, the cost of the signs, and the documents connected to whomever installed the signs on campus and the dates and cost of installation. I also asked for any documents connected to the county legislature’s actions concerning this purchase.
In a June 27 response, the county directed me to check with the Albany County Legislature, the county’s Department of General Services, and even to query the county executive’s office. So I did.
On July 1, the county office of General Services reported that it had no records pertaining to any of these requests.
On the same day, the county executive’s office tagged the request as a duplicate, and did not respond to the actual request for information.
Before long, I was told that “after a review of available records, the Albany County Legislature does not possess any documents responsive to your request. The Legislature was not involved in the ordering, purchasing, design, or installation of the signage in question. Additionally, we have no records of any legislative action or decision-making process related to these sign purchases.”
On July 15, I asked the Advance Albany County Alliance for the same information about the signs.
A day later, I sent another Freedom of Information request to the Pine Hills Land Authority asking for specific information about the blue signs hanging on the Saint Rose campus.
On July 30, “staff” at the county responded with the following statement: “after a diligent search, no responsive records were identified. The signs were paid for by the Pine Hills Land Authority.”
Then, several weeks later, the Pine Hills Land Authority held its first public meeting at the college. The CEO of the authority, Kevin O’Connor, who spent years on the Board of Trustees of The College of Saint Rose, a body charged with the fiduciary or financial well-being of the college, told WAMC that the Land Authority did not buy the signs. Here’s O’Connor that night:
Brown: “…I filed some freedom of information requests, There are signs, new signs on the campus that have a county connection. Where did those signs come from? The blue signs.
O’Connor: Those were put up by the county themselves.
Brown: “So how do I find out who made the signs, and where they were ordered from and how much money they cost? And who paid for them?”
O’Connor: “I assume you would have to ask Albany county. We didn’t put those up.”
So after the mixed messaging from the county, I contacted a lawyer at the state’s Committee on Open Government and then submitted an inquiry to both the Albany County Attorney, Jeffery Jamison, and to Thomas Owens, the lawyer for the Pines Hills Land Authority. I notified these entities that the county contradicted itself when it stated both that the Pine Hills Land Authority did and did not buy the signs.
Two and half months later, on Aug. 28, the county finally answered the question about the signs.
After all of that, the county supplied two invoices and said that the Pines Hills Land Authority paid a total of $4,300.80 for signs around campus, including seven County Executive signs, two Office of the Aging signs, three signs for the Office of Parks & Recreation, two veterans signs, an Assigned Counsel sign and one Assigned Public Defender sign. The money was paid to a vendor called Conceptprint in Nyack, New York.
This sign quest was all before permanent signage was erected on my old department building, the Hearst Center, where a number of signs for the Albany County Sheriff’s Department now ‘deck the halls’ – as it were.
One has to wonder: all this effort to track down a $4,300 expense for signs. What might the public expect when the real money gets invested? The night of the first neighborhood meeting, when I introduced myself to the Land Authority’s O’Connor, he called me a “pain” in the – a word I can’t say for FCC considerations.
Name-calling – a pastime the current U.S. president directs at female reporters – sounds more like a diversion tactic than like an effort to share factual public information. Isn’t it just easier to adhere to the rules and then tell the truth?
Cailin Brown, an editor at WAMC, has taught and practiced journalism for decades.
