I have been blocked from commenting on Supervisor Josh Wojehowski’s campaign page. I am not the only one. Several other Cornwall residents have been shut out of that page, and the pattern is hard to miss: they are the people who ask hard questions about how this town is run.

I want to be exact about the law here, because precision matters more than outrage.

In Lindke v. Freed (2024), a unanimous Supreme Court held that an elected official who blocks a resident from commenting engages in unconstitutional state action when two conditions are met: the official has actual authority to speak for the government on a subject, and the official was purporting to exercise that authority in the posts at issue. Critically, the label on the account does not decide the question. The function does. A sitting Supervisor announces town business, defends town policy, and answers constituents about town matters is doing the work of the office, whatever name is on it.

That is the question Cornwall residents should be asking. If the Supervisor is using that page to speak as the Supervisor, then blocking taxpayers because he dislikes their questions is not a personal preference. It is a public official using the reach of his office to decide who is allowed to be heard.

Set the courts aside for a moment.

This country was built on an old and simple idea: the people who pay for the government get to criticize it, loudly and in public, without being punished for it. Not a screened audience. Not a friendly one. New York wrote that same principle into its own Constitution, and then wrote it again into the Open Meetings Law and the Freedom of Information Law. The theory behind all of them is identical. Government belongs to the governed, and the governed are entitled to see it and to speak to it.

Blocking a constituent is the opposite instinct. It says the comfort of the official outweighs the voice of the resident.

There is a simple remedy. Unblock everyone. Answer the questions, or decline to answer them, but do it in the open where the rest of Cornwall can watch. An official confident in his record does not need a mute button.