Maybe it comes with time in office, but two stories that came out of Auburn City Hall last week are disheartening, but not a surprise. The first was about an illegal meeting held in 2006. The other was the continual movement of some city leaders to curb public input.

In both cases the rationale seems the same #- “we have to do this to get things done.” They are wrong.

In the first case, three members of the city council Mayor Tim Lattimore and councilors David Dempsey and William Graney played a game of going in and out of a meeting, to avoid having a quorum, on hooking up city services for Home Depot in exchange for a greater slice of Cayuga County's sales tax pie.

In the end, the meeting was not only illegal, but while the city gave sewer and water services, it didn't get a bigger slice of sales taxes in return.

That story came out on the eve of city officials continuing to do their best to curb public input at their meetings.

First they cut the “Public Be Heard” out of their work sessions and then cut the second “Public Be Heard” out of their remaining by bi-weekly meetings. Last week they were looking at ways to make sure that no one can talk about the same subject but once every 90 days, among other changes.

Gadfly Mary Lou Picciano might be right in thinking that such a change is directed at her, because of her continual harping on the Mayor Timothy Lattimore, the council and other city officials over the treatment of her son, a skateboarder. Yet, whether they like to hear her or not, the format has been a valuable venue for the public to vent their frustrations and also give advice to their representatives for decades.

Yes, some, as Ms. Picciano has, will abuse it, but for the vast majority of this community, the podiums on the other side of the brass rail at City Hall are their domain.

The rationale for changing the current rules is that “addressing city council is a privilege, not a right.”

When city officials start to make that type of rationalization, it is time for them to leave government. They may be legally right, but they have missed the bigger picture #- that they work for the public, not the other way around.

Now, on the eve of what is likely to be a raucous election season, the mayor and the council need to table all discussion of curbs on public input and modifying the public be heard rules that could occur at this Thursday's meeting.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com