“The people must be able to remain informed if they are to retain control over those who are their public servants.”

— New York State Open Meetings Law

“Stop fighting,” an elderly citizen told the Knox Town Board members at their May meeting.

We concur.

We believe everyone at the dais in the Knox Town Hall wants to serve the public, but they need to learn to work together.

The new supervisor, Vasilios Lefkaditis, a hedge fund manager, ousted the longtime incumbent who had a courtly, quiet manner. Lefkaditis has a freewheeling, forceful style and a sense that he has a mandate to make changes.

He says the town has saved $50,000 since he took office and he’s proud of it.

Lefkaditis is not a consensus-builder; he works swiftly and often on his own.

He seemed taken aback on Day One on the job when, with the popular vote behind him, he expected to replace the town’s long-time attorney and planning board chairman. But he didn’t have the board votes to do it.

He and the attorney, John Dorfman, have been at odds ever since.

The town board members, for their part, are all relatively new. Two of them have less than a year on the board. As Lefkaditis, in his first three monthly meetings, made cost-saving proposals on everything from town telephones to fuel, the board unanimously passed the resolutions without much discussion or investigation.

That changed at the April meeting when the four board members challenged Lefkaditis on statements he had made about workers’ compensation the month before (see related story). The four board members voted to rescind the March motion on the insurance carrier with Lefkaditis casting the sole dissenting vote.

Councilman Eric Kuck calls Lefkaditis’s style “chest-thumping.”

Deputy Supervisor Amy Pokorny has said the board members have trouble communicating with Lefkaditis. “It’s difficult because he flies into rages sometimes,” she said. “It’s hard to have a reasonable and temperate conversation.”

For town government to work well, the board members, who are elected to serve the people just as the supervisor is, need to have a say. The board needs to have a frank discussion on how to divide up the work so that matters can be thoroughly and thoughtfully investigated before decisions are made.

Lefkaditis told us, in explaining how he had forgotten a letter, buried in his to-do pile, that the supervisor’s job should be full-time. If he shared the workload, it would be better for everyone.

A two-person recycling committee formed by Kuck and Pokorny is a good example of how productive work can be done; the findings can be reported back to the board, which should wait until its next meeting to take action on any proposal so that there is time for communication and reflection.

What happened instead was the wrong move. The four board members, without Lefkaditis, met illegally on May 8, two days before their scheduled public meeting to discuss health insurance for highway workers.

“The meeting was helpful to us,” said Pokorny. “We were able to sort through and prepare for the public meeting.”

She felt she had nothing to hide because she thought the meeting was legal. The board had consulted with Dorfman, who researched Open Meetings Law cases, but came to the wrong conclusion.

To his credit, Dorfman told The Enterprise of the board members, “They relied on my legal representation. If anyone erred, it was me.”

The state’s Open Meetings Law has an exemption for political caucuses that was amended in 1985 to allow members of legislative bodies, like the Knox board members, to meet privately with other members of their political party and talk about public business.

“It may be legal but it doesn’t mean it’s good,” said Robert Freeman, director of the state’s Committee on Open Government.

We agree; the law should be modified so that the public can watch its elected officials as they deliberate. This is an issue not just at the local level but in the county and state legislatures, too.

However, in Knox’s case, the meeting wasn’t even legal.

The case Dorfman based his advice on involved Schoharie Republicans holding a caucus but, that case isn’t on point for Knox because not all the Schoharie supervisors were Republican.

In Knox, all of the board members, including Lefkaditis, are Democrats. The only relevant precedent is a 1992 case where The Buffalo News sued the city of Buffalo as the newspaper sought to cover the Buffalo Common Council “caucuses” on the city’s budget. The News won because all of the Common Council members were Democrats.

“There was no opposing member to whom strategy could be telegraphed,” explained Freeman. If the exemption doesn’t apply, the Open Meetings Law does.

 The Knox meeting where board members worked through an understanding of the health insurance for highway workers should have been open to the public. Lefkaditis found out about it “by accident,” he said, when a broker mentioned that he’d be available for the meeting.

Of course the broker thought the town’s chief financial officer would be there — as he should have been. And just as importantly, the meeting should have been advertised so the public could be there, too.

Following the May 8 private meeting, a councilmember emailed the other board members, suggesting a meeting with the highway workers on health insurance should also be considered a “caucus” so that board members could “focus on the task at hand.”

This would be a bad path to follow. Democracy can be messy, it can be unfocused, but it is through give and take — and the public’s ability to witness and judge the exchange — that our salvation as a society lies.

“None of us are trying to do anything nefarious,” Kuck told us. We believe him.

This didn’t have the marks of secret meetings we’ve exposed over the years where the participants are unwilling to share what was discussed. We believe the board was genuinely misinformed.

“Everyone is motivated to do the best for the town, as I am,” said Dorfman.

To do the best for the town, the board members — all five of them — need to commit to free, civil, and honest exchanges in open session to conduct the public’s business.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer