Is refusal to answer questions a character flaw, political ploy or miasma at City Hall

Rochester Mayor Paul Callghan (City of Rochester screenshot)

About 20 minutes before the ceremonial groundbreaking for The Rapids on Cocheco last Wednesday, we spotted the mayor standing alone a few feet from me and decided to walk over to him to ask a question.

"So Mr. Mayor, what do you think about City Councilor David Walker's idea to try to get the Codes and Ordinance committee to hammer out a proposal to make the Fairgrounds an overlay district, so they can have grandfathered events without having to get a variance every time?"

"I don't want to talk about that," he snapped.

"I'm just asking ..."

"No comment!" he said stomping off.

The experience felt vaguely familiar, so when I got back to my office I googled "Callaghan refused to answer question from The Rochester Voice."

Here's what I got near the top.

https://www.therochestervoice.com/people-want-their-leaders-to-be-brave-courageous-and-thats-not-hizzoner-cms-20369

In fact, there's a whole litany of such tomes near the top of the Google heap that document our mayor's penchant for ignoring tough questions that we deserve from our politicians.

We're still not sure whether this is a character flaw, a political ploy or just the miasma that infects City Hall.

Here's another example of the mayor's reluctance to answer a tough questions.

https://www.therochestervoice.com/heres-the-forum-to-answer-the-questions-mr-mayor-cms-21613

This article describes how hizzoner allowed a sitting city council member to publicly denigrate three fellow council members.

I'm sure the mayor was not happy about this article. Just the same, The Rochester Voice won a Distinguished Journalism Award from The New Hampshire Press Association for a series of article chronicling the sordid affair.

"Government stories like this are why journalists are the watchdogs," judges agreed. "Great job at relaying to the community how the policy was violated."

It is clear that hizzoner, who sits in the city's highest political office, is part and parcel of a small coven of political and bureaucratic bullies who wield far more power than they deserve.

Shame on you, Mr. Mayor, for not taking questions from a free press.

Your policy to avoid, evade and deflect questions from a free press is an existential threat to our democracy, which depends on a free press to hold government accountable.

So here's another question you probably won't answer.

"When are you going to learn that?"