Ever wonder who the most powerful person is on a board or commission? Your initial gut reaction is likely the chair or the treasurer. In delineated and formal powers that may be the case - they either run the meetings of the organization or control the purse strings.

Yet, for anyone who has ever sat on a board or been elected to office, it is often the person who has the job no one wants - recording clerk or secretary. Since most boards and commissions rarely audio or video tape their proceedings, it is left to those who put together meeting minutes of an organization that are its formal record and the basis for looking back at the history of the decision making process. Good ones have the ability to meld several discussion points into one formalized record. If they do their job well, they get it all. If they don't they can either intentionally or unintentionally distort the record making sure that their point of view gets emphasis.

With that in mind, it is remarkable that local governments, whether they are town or village boards, all the way to the Cayuga County Legislature's committee system do not record, either through audio or video tape or digitally, their proceedings.

While much has been made of the regressive step that Montezuma took last month in dispensing with tape recordings of their town board proceedings, taxpayers and voters should question anybody that does not keep an audio, digital or video record of their proceedings. If anything, local taxpayers should rightfully expect that such information is immediately streamlined on the Web or downloadable for quick review by interested parties.

It is tough to buy that “keeping” written minutes and a tape of the proceedings could create “confusion” argument. If anything, they let us understand the logic (or illogic) of a decision we can't get from a sentence on a piece of paper. We have seen that the city has effectively recorded their proceedings (sans the outbursts and rantings of recent councils). In fact, knowing that you are on tape may preclude you from saying something stupid - not “stifling free speech.”

One can only wonder, for example, if the proceedings of each of the Cayuga County Legislature's multitude of committees had been taped, someone might be able to see if the asbestos debacle would have provided proof up the proverbial ladder of whether others knew. The same can be said about what has gone on in the brouhaha of the roles of the Legislature and Community Services Board.

At the beginning of the 21st century, taxpayers should be asking why their local boards do not put their proceedings not only on tape, but on the Web within hours of happening. They should expect nothing less.

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