It's my lunchbreak, and there's two new posts up today about the library settlement.  The first post, with a Robert Slager byline, does not have any reference to "In This Corner", so it's presumably a "news" report that should be free of opinion statements.  The second is a very-much-related "Jeer" towards the bottom of the page. 

Epic Hypocrisy - The amazing part is that he includes a quote from Savageau saying that he was "shocked and surprised that representatives of the trustees are making public statements at this time when they were specifically admonished by a federal judge not to do so concerning an agreement that hasn’t even been signed yet".  This quote is clearly included to make the former trustee look irresponsible for making a comment. Yet Savageau provided comment on the issue.  Additionally, and this is the most important part, somebody told Slager about the $250k loss, which is the entire focus of his post.  Where did this info come from?  Presumably it was not from one of the former trustees, because they wouldn't want to make themselves look bad.  So then was the leak from the Board?  That would be the safe assumption, given the previous cozy relationship between Slager and the board.

I wasn't sure where to put this one, but Hypocrisy seems to be the best option.  Have you ever noticed Slager's use of the word "allegedly"?  Any time there's a report of something bad being done by the Board or its supporters, it was an "alleged" occurence, implying that it might not have actually happened but all of Slager's opponents are painted as factually having done something.  Some examples (my emphasis added)

The former trustees responded with a lawsuit, claiming their civil right had been violated by selectmen, who were allegedly retaliating against them following a budget battle in 2007.

The town counter-sued for conversion of public funds after the Observer reported that the former trustees had sent at least $75,000 to the private account of the Spinney Memorial Library building project.

From older posts:

Brady spoke of the disrespect Sauvageau had allegedly showed him in an e-mail exchange between the two. In an e-mail sent from his personal e-mail account, Sauvageau had called Brady “dim-witted” and “a clown.”

So it's a fact that Brady was called "dim-witted" and "a clown", but only alleged that such statements are disrespectful?

George Dionne, head of the Wareham Police Union, sent a letter to selectmen and the interim town administrator heavily criticizing Crime Watch’s authority to write parking tickets. He noted numerous complaints allegedly directed toward Coleman.

The complaints were directed towards Coleman.  That's a fact.  The content of the complaints may have been an allegation, but the complaints WERE directed towards Coleman

Pillsbury’s husband Charles is a Wareham police officer who once pulled over Sauvageau’s wife for allegedly having an invalid registration.

If Brady got pulled over for having a busted tail light, would Slager say that the tail light was "allegedly" out, or that it was out?


Selective non-inclusion of facts - This is evident right from the headline.  By saying "Ex-trustees settle" as opposed to "Selectmen settle" or even "Ex-trustees and Selectmen reach agreeement", the implication becomes that the Ex-trustees were in the wrong, and were forced into the settlement.  This has every appearance of being a deliberate tactic, and not anything that happens by accident.  It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad.

This $250,000 loss that is claimed - with no context, it's completely irrelevant.  Was it $250k out of $1 mil?  If so, that's pretty damn good in the recent market.  Heck, if it's $250k out of $500k, that's about in line with the recent fall in the market.  *Everybody* has lost money recently - such is life.  The lack of any context around this either most likely means that (a) Slager doesn't have the information necessary to fully report on it or (b) the information itself is devestating to Slager's agenda, so it was intentionally not included.  Either way, the information about the loss is not at all relevant to the settlement situation, no matter how much Slager tries to connect the two.  In the Jeer to follow, Slager claims that the sole reason this entire fiasco occured was because the trustees were trying to hide this loss.  That's.......ridiculous.

Slager states "The battle began in the summer of 2007 when the Board of Selectmen asked the library trustees to reapply for their positions because they were never properly appointed under the terms of the Town Charter", but doesn't mention the "without prior notice" part of the situation.  Again, selectively dropping particulars of the situation change the reader's interpretation greatly.

Slager notes that the town's insurance carrier is paying $40k of legal bills for the former trustees.  While he presents the entire situation as a clear, rousing victory for the Selectmen, he fails to note that victorious parties very rarely pay the legal bills for the losers.  He also fails to comment on the implication that this insurance payout will have on future insurance rates.  Think about it - last time you got into a car accident, what happened to your auto insurance?

In relation to the payment of $40k, Slager includes a couple of anonymous estimates of the overall costs which make it look like the selectmen threw a bone to the trustees, and covered just a smidge of the payments.  We know he reads this site (as he references some recent posts in his "Jeers"), but he failed to add the quote from Nora Bicki:

I have seen each legal bill, and I can tell you that the statement that the bill estimate of being "well over $100,000" is also not true. The money paid to the library trustees and foundation for its legal bills from the town's insurer represents a significant portion of the library organizations' overall bill. Furthermore, the Friends' bills were completely covered by its liability insurer and we, at no time, asked for reimbursement.

Misrepresentation of facts - The entire Jeer is pure conjecture.  He starts with "it appears the former library trustees were really interested in only one thing - hiding the fact they lost $250,000 in donations by investing the money poorly".  Well, that's just plain made-up.  If that was truly the case, they wouldn't have settled if that meant disclosure of that fact.  As I stated above, everybody has lost money recently.  Such is life.

They didn't want people to know that $250,000 in private donations to the library were squandered recklessly.

What?  I thought the investments were lost?  "Squandered" money is wasted, or spent thoughtlessly.  Which one is it, Mr. Slager?

and the trustees will have to fork over $50,000 of thier assests to the new board

Since he's going to make an update anyways, I just thought I'd point out that, even though the rule says "i before e except after c", there's always an exception, and "their" is one of those exceptions.

The rest of the Jeer is commentary based on misprepresented facts, so the whole thing really gets thrown out the door.

How much were the town's legal bills through the whole situation?  Who's paying those?

There's more, but it's time to get back to work