Reduced Local News Competition is Hurting Government Transparency Efforts (Opinion)

With Hagerstown’s TV station WDVM relocating and focusing more on the DC market, as well as our local newspaper the Herald-Mail reducing its staff by 31% since 2021, Hagerstown and Washington County have been losing a lot of our local news coverage, even with Radio Free Hub City trying to help fill the void. Unfortunately, even with us covering local news the best we can (we’re all part-time here at RFHC), this reduced news coverage has resulted in some of our local governments reducing the information they provide to the public.

By the way, this is by no means a jab at WDVM or Herald-Mail for their business decisions to reduce their focus on the Hagerstown market. We absolutely understand that regional and national news coverage is much more profitable from an advertising perspective. However, that doesn’t mean local government should reduce their transparency, just because local news media isn’t keeping them accountable anymore.

Take for example, the Maryland State Police Hagerstown Barrack. For a rather long time now, MSP has posted requests for the public to help identify suspects in thefts, burglaries, shoplifting, etc. While this is not only useful in helping identify suspects, it also keeps the public informed of what’s going on in their community.

However, recently the MSP has stopped informing the public what these crimes are, and referring to them only as “incidents”. The public has no idea what the incident was, or why they’re looking for the person. Was it a theft? Assault? Attempted murder? We don’t know. All we now know is that “something” happened. This is poor communication from our government.

Unfortunately, this trend doesn’t stop with the Maryland State Police.

As we’ve recently covered, Washington County Government has started reducing the amount of information provided in their news/press releases as well.

Washington County used to provide very detailed press releases, telling you exactly what was going on. For example, the following press release for a road closure due to pipe installation.

Compare that press release to more recent road closure press releases.

We still know the road is closed, and that it’s something to do with the weather. However, we have no idea what is actually happening. Are they resurfacing the road? Repairing a guardrail? Installing drainage pipes? Working on the bridge? Investigating the person from the “incident” at Walmart? We don’t know.

Now, readers may be at this point saying “well it’s just a road closure, what does it matter?” And you’re right, by itself, not providing the details of a single road closure doesn’t matter a whole lot. However, what does matter is that this appears to be a pattern in local government entities over the past few years that visibility and transparency is slowly decreasing.

Prior to FY2017, the Washington County budget contained accomplishments and goals for each department. As an example, we’ll use the Sheriff’s Department Patrol Division.

However, starting with FY2017, the accomplishments section disappeared, only highlighting goals for the upcoming fiscal year.

Then, with FY2023, the goals section disappeared completely, leaving taxpayers in the dark as to what funding is truly going towards. We reached out to the Budget and Finance department requesting if a copy of the budget was available with departmental goals like previous years, and were informed this was decided to be removed from the budget going forward.

Washington County Sheriff’s Office has also started occasionally publishing rather vague releases as well. For example, their release that several robberies may have occurred within the area but have gone unreported, involving an unidentified suspect in an unidentified community. We typed up a news article on that release to prove a point, and received several inquiries if the article was intended to be satire. Fortunately this does not appear to be an ongoing trend for the Sheriff’s Office yet, as most of their press releases are still very informative. However, issues such as the encryption of police dispatch radio still persist.

And of course, let’s not forget the fact that Washington County Government had a “cybersecurity incident” on Thanksgiving Day, 2022, which they still have not disclosed the details of.

Fortunately not all local government entities are diminishing their transparency. For example, take a look at this recent road closure notice from the City of Hagerstown.

This release goes above and beyond to make sure that taxpayers are clearly informed of what is going on in the community. And fortunately Hagerstown is not the only entity that is performing well when it comes to communicating with the public.

So what can residents and taxpayers do to help better encourage local governments to be more transparent in how they’re using our tax dollars?

• Ask questions – When local government provides vague press releases, reach out immediately and ask for more details. If enough people do this, local government will hopefully begin including more details so that they aren’t constantly overwhelmed with questions.
• Get involved – Attend local government meetings in-person or virtually. If local government isn’t being transparent with their actions, express your concern over this during the public comment period of these meetings.
• Use the legal tools available – Familiarize yourself with the Maryland Public Information Act and start filing requests with local government to better understand how your tax dollars are being spent. Reach out to us if you’d like help with this – our requests can often fall under “public interest”, which means that fees may be waived for requests related to potential news stories.
• Hold them accountable – Also familiarize yourself with the Maryland Open Meetings Act. Understand that there are a very limited set of circumstances where local government can hold a closed meeting session, and file appropriate complaints with the compliance board when violations occur.
• Help cover local news – Here at Radio Free Hub City we have a unique compensation model. We believe in readers directly compensating our independent contributors. We take nothing from these contributions, and only run advertisements on the site to cover ongoing operating costs. Would you like to help cover news? Contact us to become an independent contributor.

By working together, we can help keep government transparent and accountable, ensuring the best usage of our tax dollars.

Opinion article by Ken Buckler, President. All opinions are his own, and do not reflect those of our sponsors.