Why Is Josh Riley Hiding From Hiding Constituents?
Welcome to Josh Riley Watch.
The mission of this podcast, I hope it’s plain, is to watch Josh Riley, a member of the United States Congress whose job it is to represent New York State’s 19th congressional district. The people of Ithaca, Tompkins County, and the rest of the district deserve to have information about what Josh Riley is doing in the US House of Representatives.
This week, however, we are facing an obstacle to accomplishing the mission of this podcast. In order to watch Congressman Josh Riley, we need to know where Josh Riley is. Right now, there’s no way for us to tell where Josh Riley is and what he is doing.
It’s a Thursday today. That makes it a work day, but we know Congressman Josh Riley is not on the floor of the House of Representatives.
That’s okay. Congress is in recess right now. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson ordered the United States Congress not to be in session. The purpose of a congressional recess, though, is for members of Congress to travel back to their home districts in order to meet with constituents.
Removal of events information
Is Josh Riley meeting with constituents? If so, which constituents is he meeting with, and where?
We don’t know. We can’t know, because Congressman Josh Riley has removed information about events he is attending as a member of Congress from his official congressional web site.
There was a dedicated web page on Josh Riley’s official congressional web site when he took office in January. It took almost a month for Riley to place any listings on that event calendar, but it was up and running for a short while.
Now, it’s gone.
Some time over the last couple of weeks, Josh Riley had his events calendar taken down from his congressional web site.
There is no listing of Josh Riley’s events on any of his social media accounts either.
So, if Josh Riley is meeting with any constituents during this congressional recess, there’s no way for anyone to find out about it.
Perhaps Congressman Riley’s staff is sending out private invitations to certain constituents in certain parts of the district, so he can have private meetings with them. It’s impossible to know.
The impact of this secrecy from Josh Riley is that even if he is meeting with any constituents, he’s getting a very biased idea of what people in New York’s 19th congressional district care about. If Josh Riley is listening to anyone at all during this recess, he’s only listening to voices that he and his staff have chosen ahead of time.
That may be convenient for Josh Riley, but it’s an obstacle to representation for the rest of us.
Strictly speaking, the events page on Josh Riley’s web site still exists. It’s just that Josh Riley arranged for all links to that events page to be removed from his congressional web site.
Here’s the link to the page on Josh Riley’s congressional web site showing the congressman’s events.
You’ll notice that it hasn’t been updated since last month.
Removal Of legislative information
This decision by Josh Riley to withhold information about his events from constituents comes at the same time that Riley has created another obstacle for constituents looking for information about his activities as a member of Congress.
Congressman Riley has removed the link on his congressional web page to information about his votes, as well as sponsorships, and consponsorships of legislation. A link to that legislative information page was there at the beginning of Josh Riley’s term in office, but sometime a week or two ago, Josh Riley took the link down, so that constituents looking for that information can no longer find it on his web site.
It’s still possible for constituents to find information about Josh Riley’s legislative activities, but constituents now are forced to go to the main site for the US Congress at Congress.gov or the site for the US House of Representatives at House.gov, and figure out how to find the information there. Both those web sites are much more convoluted than Josh Riley’s congressional web site used to be. Finding information there is challenging, requiring quite a bit of poking around.
Fortunately, as with Josh Riley’s events page, the page listing his legislative actions still exists. It’s just that Josh Riley has removed any way to find that page from his web site.
Here’s the link to that page summarizing Josh Riley’s votes, sponsorships, and co-sponsorships.
Why did Josh Riley remove the link to the page showing his legislative activity?
Is Congressman Riley ashamed of some of his legislative actions? Does he want to keep his constituents in the dark?
I don’t have access to Josh Riley’s psychological motivations of course, but a pattern in the way he has been communicating about his activities is suggestive.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a small but telling dishonesty in the way that Josh Riley was talking about two pieces of legislation. Riley claimed to be “leading the way” by introducing H.R.1376 - the Healthy Poultry Assistance and Indemnification Act, and H.R. 1355 - the Weatherization Enhancement and Readiness Act. The truth was that Josh Riley wasn’t leading anything with these bills. He didn’t write them, and he didn’t introduce them. He just came along afterwards and added his name as a co-sponsor, a little legislative move that is about as difficult and impactful as adding your name to an online petition.
This week, Josh Riley is at it again, boasting about having introduced two pieces of legislation, two minor agricultural bills. This time, Congressman Riley’s is deceitful in its technical accuracy. Procedurally, Josh Riley did indeed introduce H.R. 1952, which continues previously existing grants and fellowships for food and agricultural sciences education, and H.R. 1951, which reauthorizes rural cooperative development grants that already exist.
Josh Riley was allowed to put his name down on a form identifying himself as the primary sponsor of these bills, but he absolutely did not write them, and was not the organizing force behind their introduction. These pieces of legislation are line-by-line, number-by-number absolutely identical to two bills that were introduced to the US House in 2023.
Someone else wrote these bills and did all the legwork to get them ready for reintroduction, but allowed Josh Riley to put his name on them as a favor, so that Congressman Riley can claim them as a legislative achievement of his own. Riley issued a self-congratulatory press release bragging about how these bills show that he’s “fighting” to change the status quo, when in fact, he’s just standing in line, waiting for his opportunity to promote legislation that was put in his hands by someone else.
In his press release, Congressman Riley linked to the text of these bills, but didn’t include the numbers of the legislation. That omission creates extra work for any constituent trying to see for themselves what these bills are and where they actually came from.
The removal of links to Josh Riley’s legislative activities and events information is not an accident, or a decision imposed by House leadership. It’s a purposeful design choice made by the congressman and implemented by his staff. We know this because other members of the US House still have pages on their web sites that provide information about their legislative activities and schedule of events.
It should be the job of a member of Congress to help constituents to obtain information about their work on Capitol Hill and find ways to communicate. Josh Riley has done the opposite, editing his congressional web site in order to create obstacles for transparency and accountability.
These changes suggest that Josh Riley and his staff regard the people of New York’s 19th congressional district as a source of trouble. Just two months into his first term in office, Josh Riley already seems to have forgotten where he came from. The people of this district are the source of his power, not a nuisance to be kept at a distance.
Josh Riley should be helping us find him, and find out information about his work. Instead, he’s getting in the way, making it more difficult for his constituents to get the information and assistance they’re looking for.
These difficulties have nothing to do with partisan politics. It’s a simple matter of effective leadership and respect for the people Congressman Josh Riley is supposed to be serving.
