Governor needs to be more open
A few weeks ago, as he and his wife were walking along the beach in Cape May, Gov. James E. McGreevey made the mistake of not looking where he was going. He tripped and broke his leg.
On March 26, as he was unveiling his proposed $23.75 billion budget, Gov. McGreevey made the mistake of muzzling his state treasurer, thereby infuriating a press corps that already has come to consider the McGreevey administration secretive and evasive. If he persists, the governor might as well shoot himself in the foot.
What happened last Tuesday was this:
At the press briefing that traditionally accompanies the governor’s budget message, Paul Aronsohn, the governor’s press secretary, told reporters that John McCormac, the state treasurer and principal architect of the budget, would answer their questions only if they agreed not to quote him by name. The details of the governor’s budget proposal would have to be attributed, Mr. Aronsohn said, to an anonymous administration official. And, in an unprecedented move, all tape recorders, cameras and video equipment were barred from the briefing.
When the reporters balked, the administration officials called a halt to the briefing and left the room, never to reappear.
Later, during a radio interview, Gov. McGreevey was asked about this incident, and the contentious relationship that has developed in general between his administration and the press. Such tension, the governor said, is normal. No, it isn’t.
What’s normal is the press being able to quote senior administration officials on the record on subjects about which they are presumed to have some knowledge and expertise. What’s normal is cabinet officers making themselves available for interviews and briefings. What’s normal is requests for interviews and information being responded to in a timely fashion. What’s normal is phone calls being returned.
None of this is happening these days in the State House. While Gov. McGreevey, during his first two months in office, has been as visible and accessible as any governor in recent memory, the rest of his administration has had a bunker mentality. The governor’s advisers, cabinet officers and other senior officials have been largely sequestered from the public and shielded from the press and for no apparent reason.
It is understandable, and common, for a handful of senior officials in the early days of a new administration to reserve unto themselves the power to make virtually all the important decisions and many of the unimportant ones as well. It is also common for appointees who are more than a step removed from the governor’s inner circle to think twice before treading into the public domain, lest they say anything that might be contrary to administration policy.
But in this administration, it isn’t just policy questions that go unanswered. It’s virtually every question.
It isn’t just the press that’s denied information by an unresponsive administration. It’s the public. And last week’s budget briefing fiasco was not some isolated incident. It is symptomatic of a larger problem the governor needs to remedy before the tension between his administration and the press and, by extension, the public starts to reach Nixonian proportions.