Of the 934 towns in New York state, 562 serve a population under 4,000. Of these, 332 towns have a population under 2,000 — and more than 100 towns have a population under 1,000.

Officials in these small New York towns, including my hometown, the town of Colden, may do a good job providing routine public services: plowing snow, maintaining roads and collecting trash.

But when faced with non-routine public welfare decisions, the same part-time officials, many lacking relevant training in and regard for the principles of democratic governance, may be ill-equipped to navigate a complicated, divisive policy-making process.

To prevent the arbitrary exercise of power, for example, the rule-of-law principle calls for the duties and responsibilities of all public officials, elected and appointed, to be defined in established laws.

Let’s see how this principle played out when Colden town officials tackled this question: Do the health and safety risks associated with high volume, hydraulically fractured (HVHF) oil and gas wells — popularly called fracking — warrant banning HVHF drilling in our town?

To buy time to decide what to do, the Colden town board enacted a moratorium on HVHF oil and gas drilling in the town, stating that the town “has under review a Local Law governing the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing for gas exploration.”

With this declaration that the town officials were considering legislation that would impact the natural gas industry, members of both the planning board and town board were obligated by the town’s existing ethics law, Chapter 11, Section 4E, titled, Disclosure of Interest in Legislation, “to publicly disclose, on the official record, the nature and extent of any direct or indirect financial or other private interests they have in the legislation,” that is, any interest in the natural gas industry.

This never happened. None of the five members of the elected town board, nor the seven appointed members of the planning board, publicly disclosed their interests in the oil and gas industry, as required by the town’s own law.

State laws do not require — though they authorize — towns to create an independent executive branch to implement town laws. Most small towns, like the town of Colden, have not formed an independent executive branch of government. This leaves elected town board members, the town’s lawmakers, responsible for enforcing their own laws — or not.

During the HVHF drilling debate in the town of Colden, officials chose to ignore their own ethical transparency law. This left the town’s citizens wondering: Are town and planning board officials basing their HVHF drilling decisions on what is good for the community or on what is in their own private interests?

This question took on added significance since New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation records showed that during the HVHF debate, two members of the Colden planning board maintained gas wells on their property — an apparent conflict of interest.

The town also established a committee to study HVHF drilling issues and “compile a list of zoning concerns to be incorporated into our zoning ordinance.” This committee’s written report to the town board stated that in addition to serious health and safety risks for its citizens and environment, industrial-scale HVHF drilling is incompatible with the town’s adopted master plan and zoning ordinance. The committee recommended that the town’s zoning ordinance be amended to prohibit HVHF drilling in the town of Colden.

The town board then referred the HVHF committee report to its advisory planning board, requesting that the board “prepare recommendations for a zoning ordinance as it pertains to HVHF and the town of Colden’s Master Plan.”

The planning board — including two members with gas wells on their property — chose to stonewall the town board’s request and effectively bury the HVHF committee report from further consideration.

What happened here? The absence of a trained, independent executive branch in the town of Colden with the responsibility for implementing town laws and conducting the town’s policy-making process in accord with these laws, is an invitation for abuse of power by concentrating all decision-making powers in the five-member town boards.

When town boards are dealing with complex and divisive public welfare issues — as was the case in the HVHF drilling debate in the town of Colden, where the private interests of a few large land owners was pitted against the interests and welfare of the entire community — it is too easy for the town board and planning board members to place themselves above the law and violate a fundamental principle of American democracy: the rule of law.

What to do? In a 2006 report titled “Outdated Municipal Structures,” New York state’s comptroller wrote, “The vast majority of our cities, towns and villages were established prior to 1920. … Starting from scratch, no expert or group of experts would design the ‘system’ of local government operating in New York State today.”

Why do outdated government structures persist? SUNY New Paltz Professor Gerald Benjamin, in a report titled “The Evolution of New York State’s Local Government System,” says, “Government arrangements are sustained by the inertia always attendant to the status quo, by the stake large numbers of local officials have in them; by sentimental attachment in local populations to government entities that may well no longer be needed.”

What citizens living in small New York towns need is a local government they can trust and one that governs according to democratic principles.

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., is a former member of the Colden Environmental Board and chairman of the HVHF Committee.