Jason Molino

Without discussion, but with one dissenting vote, the Batavia City Council tonight approved a 2.8 percent pay raise for City Manager Jason Molino.

The vote came following a closed session and before the vote, Council President Charlie Mallow read a statement expressing the council's support for Molino.

Councilman Bill Cox voted no and said after the meeting his decision was based on a "personnel matter" and wouldn't reveal the reason for his no vote.

"I felt at this time a raise was not in order and that's all I want to say," Cox said.

Mallow characterized the pay increase as a cost-of-living raise that Molino wouldn't have gotten if he didn't deserve it.

Prior to the vote, Mallow said, each council member submitted a review of Molino's work.

“The city is in good shape and a lot of that has to do with our city manager," Mallow said. "The council supports the city manager and that’s the reason for the raise."

The motion passed 7-1, with Council Bob Bialkowski absent.

Molino was also not at the meeting.

UPDATE: Councilman Cox released this statement this morning:

"The primary reason that I voted against the raise for City Manager Molino is the same reason I voted against the raises for the other non-union staff previously, which is economics.

Our citizens and taxpayers have heavy burdens of property taxes, school taxes, and water/sewer taxes. We have property owners and citizens who have lost their jobs due to the economy. We have retired people on pensions that have been reduced and those same retired citizens have lost health benefits or had them reduced in many cases.

When you are in a position of senior management and leadership you should demonstrate to the people that you understand the dire circumstances many are under and forgo a raise until the economy turns around."
 

Among the items on the agenda for Monday's City Council meeting is a resolution authorizing a pay increase for City Manager Jason Molino.

The resolution states, "WHEREAS, the City Council of the City of Batavia wishes to grant a wage adjustment to the City Manager for the current year based on his performance evaluation."

If approved, Molino's base pay would go up 2.85 percent to $83,487 and would be retroactive to April 1.

The Batavia Daily News seems intent on teaching City Manager Jason Molino a little lesson after getting scooped on Fire Chief Tom Dillon's resignation. The lesson: Don't fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

Friday, Batavia's "paper of record" published an editorial slamming what they called City Manager Jason Molino's secrecy.

It was pretty harsh.

City administrator Jason Molino, isn't talking, and neither are ''his'' employees -- we say "his" because that is how he refers to them, even though taxpayers pay their salaries.

In the editorial, they say Dillon's resignation became public only because a help wanted ad was spotted in the Democrat and Chronicle. That's not, shall we say, accurate.

The Batavian broke the story and it had nothing to do with an ad appearing in the D&C. If you read the original post, you'll see, we didn't even know about the ad when we first posted our story. We got the story the good old-fashioned way -- by talking with sources.

Of course, the Daily can't give credit where credit's due -- that would violate Tom Turnbull's mandate that the newspaper never print The Batavian's name (well, they did have to take our LLC ad).

Yet, the staff there pays attention when we get stories before them, and the Dillon scoop seems to have particularly rubbed the "newspaper of record" the wrong way.

Today, the lead story is about the fire chief but it doesn't tell readers much new. We already know that Molino would handle interim administrative duties for the department and that the four captains turned down the interim position. That takes care of the first two paragraphs of the story. From there, we're treated to the details of the Daily trying to get more information from the city and Molino's unresponsiveness.

The Daily News had asked City Manager Jason Molino what the city's plan was in lieu of a chief. He did not return phone calls or e-mails. Cox forwarded questions from The Daily News to Molino, who then sent a reply to all councilmen. He still has not replied to The Daily News.

After explaining the 211 waiver situation (again, nothing new here), we get more back-and-forth on the Daily's attempts to get more information from the city. Then we read again the fiction that the public wouldn't have known about the situation if the Daily hadn't asked:

The Daily News had also sent an e-mail last week to all City Councilmen to find out why the public was kept in the dark about Dillon's departure. The news was publicized only after The Daily News asked Molino and Dillon about Dillon's employment status.

Now, I can certainly sympathize with the editorial staff's frustration at getting shut out of communication with Jason Molino and city staff. We've made those complaints public ourselves, and perhaps with a tad too much arrogance and pettiness, but some honest reporting is in order here. The Daily got beat. It happens in a competitive news town. Between the Daily, The Batavian and WBTA, we've all had our own scoops in the past several months, and we will all continue to develop our own sources and stories and get some of them first. That's the way it goes. Unless a source deliberately burns you, there's no point in getting upset with government officials because another news outlet did its job and got the information.

UPDATE: I just saw the print edition -- this story is banner headline on the top of the front page.  Meanwhile, Pagent of the Bands folding after 35 years, and the Daily put most of that story below the fold. That's a huge story in a community like this.  Nice scoop. Wish I had it.

The first hint of  trouble came in early May, when The Batavian was but a sprout on the Genesee County media landscape.

After initially welcoming The Batavian enthusiastically, we found out that Batavia City Manager Jason Molino told city employees not to cooperate with The Batavian. We could not even get copies of City Council agendas.

We eventually overcame that specific disability, but we've had an ongoing problem with getting answers from Mr. Molino to basic questions related to city governance, and a general lack of full disclosure form the city and its staff when we've sought it.

Two weeks ago, we took our case to the Batavia City Council. The response was, shall we say, tepid.

And we're disappointed.

Here's our position: The Batavian is a legitimate news organization. We may be web-only; our approach to news may be non-traditional; we may be new to the community, but the First Amendment doesn't address any of those issues. It merely enjoins government agencies to respect press freedom.

To us, that means not merely the right to publish as we see fit, but to have free and unfettered access to the government taxpayers support.

For the past several months, we've found that while the city manager will willingly speak with the Daily News and WBTA, he has completely cut out The Batavian as a channel for information to the citizenry on his positions, policies and actions.

He also maintains an inexplicable and unusually tight reign on the tongues of other city staff members.

At first, we hoped for improvement, but with none forthcoming, we began documenting Mr. Molino's failure to respond to interview requests. We documented 13 such instances, including instances where he would later be quoted in other media on the same topic, as well as an instance where Mr. Molino had the new fire chief cancel a video interview with The Batavian.

We've kept quiet about this issue because we were hoping for a friendly resolution to the disagreement over fair access, but since the council meeting two weeks ago, we've been trying to get a lunch appointment with Mr. Molino (The Batavian will pay:  Larry's Steakhouse, any afternoon on 24 hours notice). Mr. Molino has declined the invitation.

Given his lack of willingness to fairly discuss this issue, we've decided it is time to offer readers of The Batavian full disclosure about what has been going on.

As a matter of fairness to readers of The Batavian, we believe we are obligated to keep them informed on any issue that inhibits us from fully and faithfully gathering and disseminating information of public interest. While we regret withholding information about this lack of access until now, we hope readers will understand we did so only because we were seeking to settle this issue amicably long ago, and have persisted in this effort in good faith.

The readers of The Batavian have the same rights as the subscribers of the Daily News and the listeners of WBTA to have a representative of this news organization call upon city officials, ask questions and get answers.  It's a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution.

Clearly, not all city officials agree.

When we first launched The Batavian, we were happy to find in Mr. Molino a welcoming attitude to the expansion of Batavia's media choices. Unfortunately, only days later, he clammed up. In fact, he told all city employees not to cooperate with us in any manner, including denying us access to routine government documents, such as City Council agendas.

Upon further investigation, we learned that City Attorney George Van Nest had told city officials that The Batavian was not "official media" therefore not entitled to any communication from the city.

That was a curious statement for an attorney to make, so I called Mr. Van Nest and confirmed that he did indeed make that statement. I reminded him that under the First Amendment, there is no such thing as "official press."  After much discussion, he agreed to allow the city to release routine government documents to us and promised full and fair access.

We have not gotten it.

After our presentation to the Council two weeks ago, only one council member spoke to the topic of our speech.  The lack of interest by the Council may, frankly, have owed to the degree to which we placed the burden for lack of access on Mr. Molino.  We've since heard that some council members objected to that tone of the presentation, even those who had encouraged us to make a public plea for greater access, not just for The Batavian, but all of the local media (Mr. Molino does not allow any city staff to speak to any media).

The lone council member to speak on the topic was Bill Cox. He made the clearly contradicted statement -- he had in front of him contrary evidence at the time -- that The Batavian was receiving the same access as any other media outlet.

Since we've reached what seems to be an insurmountable impasse, we think it's only fair we bring this subject to the attention of our readers.

We're not looking for a fight.  We could, if we wanted, start posting Jason's phone number and e-mail address every time we had a question and ask readers to get the information needed; or, we could openly encourage city employees to give us anonymous tips on city business; or we could file a lawsuit. 

The first two options would only serve to cause further hard feelings, and a lawsuit, costing taxpayers money, would subvert our goal to do what is best for Batavia.

So we are left with but a third option: To just drop the issue.

We're doing quite well without the city manager's cooperation, and we imagine we will continue to do quite well whether Mr. Molino favors us with a word or two from time to time or not.

We're not here to be the "official" news source of Batavia. We're quite happy to let the Daily News carry the mantle of "paper of record."  We just think it would be nice to get questions answered when we are curious about an issue or event. If Mr. Molino is unwilling to do that, we think in the long run he is causing more harm to the city than he is to The Batavian. If we're right about that, our best course may be just to let well enough alone and trust that eventually, Mr. Molino or his successor, probably many years from now, will find it counter productive to give any media the silent treatment.

I've uploaded two related documents to our position -- a PDF of court cases that support our position, and a letter from the New York Newspaper Publishers' Association specifically encouraging the city to cooperate with The Batavian.