Still open
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- July
- 17
One thing hasn’t changed from the Spitzer to the Paterson administrations: the official marching orders for agency public-information officers are to be “helpful” and “transparent.’’
That was the message PR head Risa Heller delivered at a meeting of the agency flacks this week.
Such a stance may not seem extraordinary – and it was essentially what the doctrine was during the Spitzer administration as well – but is in stark contrast to the doctrine of the Pataki years (1995-2006) when the so-called public-information officers would routinely deflect questions, or not return calls or merely parrot a canned response.
Those were the orders from the top, one veteran spokesman recalled today.
“Now, there’s not much interest in trying to control the message,’’ he said. “They want us to be open.’‘
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 3:29 pm by Jay Gallagher.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
