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Publication Date: May 2d, 2025
In Hudson, transparency is a team sport - except one player never shows up.
The City Clerk dutifully logs, tracks, and responds; the Mayor, by contrast, leaves no trace. Either he governs by osmosis, or he’s channeling Pete Hegseth, running a small American city like a covert Pentagon op. Odd, though, how only his office is allergic to records - while others manage just fine.
As for tools: no emails, no calendars, no texts (judging by the FOILs). Just vibes, and perhaps Signal, set to self-destruct.
The persistent non-responsiveness of the Mayor of Hudson’s office to legitimate FOIL requests raises serious concerns about compliance with New York State’s public records law. Unlike other city departments and Columbia County offices - which have provided timely and detailed responses - the Mayor’s office has become a black hole for information.
There is no central IT governance or compliance oversight within the city; each department operates at its own discretion. This structural weakness creates significant risk of records being withheld or destroyed without trace. Given the possibility that official communications are being conducted via ephemeral messaging platforms such as Signal, the Columbia County District Attorney should investigate whether public records have been improperly deleted or concealed, in violation of state law. Without systemic oversight, it may already be impossible to account for what has been lost.
This issue is particularly troubling given that the Mayor cohabits with a direct report and rents his private residence from the city’s largest beneficiary of tax abatements under Hudson’s PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) programme. Such entanglements heighten the need for transparency, not its absence.
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Last edited/updated:
August 4th, 2025
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