When the City of Salisbury acknowledged that it maintains “informal policies,” The Watershed Observer sought a straightforward answer: What are those policies, how are they communicated, and what records exist showing how they guide government operations?
The response from the city raised a much larger and more troubling question.
Rather than identifying a handful of examples of informal practices, the city said the request implicated such a broad collection of records that it could require more than 100 hours of staff time to search. The city reported that a preliminary search returned approximately 18,079 potentially responsive emails across nine mailboxes.
For government transparency advocates and public policy experts, the issue is not simply the size of the search. It is what the size of the search appears to reveal: a government acknowledging that informal practices exist, while indicating that those practices may be so extensive, widespread, or poorly documented that their full scope is not immediately known.
That distinction matters.
The existence of informal policies itself is the central concern raised by the experts. Policies are the mechanisms through which government exercises authority, establishes expectations, and affects the public. Government employees and contractors cannot create their own secret rules for how government will operate, how residents will be treated, or how public services will be delivered outside the processes through which government authority is established and made accountable to the public.
When policies exist outside an adoption processes, without public notice, public debate, or meaningful oversight, and are obstructed from public knowledge, they create a system in which government power operates counter to the contract of democratic governance.
A democratic government cannot function on a system where the rules governing public action are created internally, known only to officials and employees, and revealed only after a resident encounters them.
Experts said that while government employees may exercise reasonable discretion in carrying out their responsibilities, discretion cannot become the authority to create new rules or policies outside public accountability. Once government establishes expectations that guide decisions, shape interactions with residents, or determine how services are provided, those expectations represent an exercise of governmental power and must be transparent, accessible, and subject to oversight.
In a democratic system, policies are not merely instructions for employees. They are the rules that define how government interacts with the people it serves. When those rules are created outside public processes and hidden from public knowledge, the public loses the ability to understand, challenge, participate in, and ultimately consent to the exercise of government authority over their lives.
The request was submitted after the City of Salisbury referenced the existence of “informal policies” in a previous public records response. In response, The Watershed Observer filed a Maryland Public Information Act request seeking records of “informal policies.”
The response was issued by City of Salisbury Public Information Officer Hannah Long.
“The City’s Information Services Department has estimated they will need at least 100 hours to complete a search for records potentially responsive to this request,” Long wrote.
For experts who spoke with The Watershed Observer, that admission itself became the central issue. Their concern is that a government operating through informal policies, expectations, or standards outside the formal processes of democratic governance creates a system where residents may be subject to rules that were never publicly debated, adopted, or disclosed.
The issue becomes particularly concerning when those informal policies are so extensive that their scope is unclear even within the government itself.
Wicomico NAACP President Monica Brooks said transparency is especially important because government power has historically been used in ways that created unequal outcomes, particularly for marginalized communities.
“Government and government policy have been weaponized throughout America’s existence,” Brooks said.
Brooks said the danger arises when policies or practices can affect people’s lives without the public understanding that those policies exist.
“If I have the ability to create legislation that has some sort of impact that can prevent, block or hinder a group, or if I’m creating said policy without transparency, where people are not aware that something is supposedly a policy or a thing until the gotcha moment, then it absolutely is important,” she said.
Brooks emphasized that significant government practices should not emerge without public awareness.
“There should not be new policies that are of significance to people, especially if it affects people of color, that are not highly publicized,” Brooks said. “There should be public hearings on. Every effort should be made to ensure that people are aware.”
She said the concern is magnified when informal policies become so numerous that even the government itself struggles to identify them.
“If this is happening with the level of frequency that there’s tons to go through, then that’s problematic,” Brooks said. “Because that does not allow for oversight.”
Brooks said transparency is one of the mechanisms that prevents government authority from becoming detached from the people it serves.
“You listen, this is something I learned from my accountant,” Brooks said. “He said, never put people in a position to test where their fortitude lies.”
Brooks said that principle applies to government as well.
“You have to have checks and balances in everything,” she said. “That does not mean that anyone is doing anything untoward. However, we have to be able to see what’s behind the curtain.”
The phrase “behind the curtain” captures the broader concern raised by the experts: that democratic governance depends not only on what government does, but whether residents can understand how and why it is doing it.
Josh Hastings, a local public policy expert, County Councilperson, and candidate for State Delegate, similarly questioned the role of informal policies in government.
Hastings, who holds a master’s degree in public policy focused on public management, said government should strive for clarity because unclear processes weaken public trust.
“I think government should be as crystal clear and transparent as humanly possible,” Hastings said. “There should be no ambiguity.”
Hastings said unclear policies create the perception that government is operating according to rules residents cannot see.
“When you have policies that are not clear, the public’s going to think that you’re hiding something or that you’re not being transparent or respectful of the taxpayers or the individuals that live in that jurisdiction,” he said.
While Hastings acknowledged that government operations are complex and involve many employees and departments, he said that complexity cannot become an excuse for unclear governance.
“There’s no reason why, especially on the elected official side of things, or our administration, that you can’t be as crystal clear as possible as to what policies are,” Hastings said.
Hastings said restoring public trust requires governments to create systems where residents understand how decisions are made.
“We all need to continue to do better to put systems in place to make people believe in government again,” Hastings said.
He said the danger of unclear government systems is not only frustration, but disengagement.
“The public is absolutely fed up with ambiguity,” Hastings said. “They’re fed up with feeling like governments are hiding things from them. They want clear results. They want a responsive government.”
John Dedie, a professor in the Political Science Department at Community College of Baltimore County, said the city’s response raises concerns about whether bureaucracy itself has become a barrier to accountability.
Dedie said public records laws exist because democratic governments require outside scrutiny.
“When you do stuff like that, what you’re trying to do is discourage the media from getting the information and you’re putting up as many roadblocks as possible,” Dedie said.
He said the cost and complexity of obtaining government information can intentionally discourage members of the public from continuing their efforts.
“Media organizations don’t have deep, multimillion-dollar pockets, and citizen journalists don’t have that money either to get that information,” Dedie said. “So what happens is they figure, we’ll get you discouraged, you won’t get involved in it, and you’ll go away.”
Dedie said the city’s explanation that it may need 100 hours simply to identify informal policies raises questions about government efficiency and transparency.
“If it’s true, it’s extremely over bureaucratic,” Dedie said.
The City of Salisbury’s official response came from Hannah Long, the city’s public information officer. Long’s official city communications have been observed developing patterns of entering objectively false statements into public records, including statements contradicted by the City’s own records.
The significance of the current response, however, extends beyond any individual statement or records request.
The central concern raised by experts is that democratic governance depends on more than elections. It depends on transparency in the daily operations of government, including clear rules, publicly understandable procedures, and accountability for the decisions that affect residents.
Experts say informal policies that shape government operations, affect residents, or guide decision-making without public awareness create a fundamental democratic concern.
A democratic government cannot effectively be held accountable for rules that residents cannot see, understand, or challenge.
Brooks said transparency is not an obstacle to government effectiveness. It is the foundation of public trust.
“Transparency is our friend,” Brooks said. “It should be through every process so that people are aware.”
“It’s also a protection,” she added. “Not only for the public and the community, but it’s a protection for those individuals as well who are elected officials, who are business owners, community leaders, et cetera.”
For the experts who spoke with The Watershed Observer, this occurrence illustrates is precisely why transparency matters. The existence of unseen rules, they say, creates the possibility of governance occurring outside the democratic systems designed to ensure public accountability.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.