#1 2010-02-12 13:03:15
The first is a guest editorial in this week's Courier in which Peter Baum (Onset) brilliantly dissects the methodology of the CRC. Try to get your hands on this one and stay with the series. I know for a fact that Peter has been researching for this series for weeks. Anything Peter says here is "something you can take to the bank." If you want to get an authoritative look at the CRC shenanigans...read this series.
The second is the lead editorial in today's S-T. By the time you reach the end of the editorial our beloved BOS have been skillfully carved up into bite sized chunks. It's the best one page documentation of what ails Wareham that we've had so far, and is a virtual guarantee that more is coming down on the BOS from the State level.
"Shock and Awe" in Wareham !
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#2 2010-02-12 16:33:34
Note To the Standard-Times: Your pay-per-view policy is self defeating. Expect your enterprise to turn toes up and die.
Standard-Times, 2010-02-12
Hold them to it
Wareham has not complied with DA's conditions
Most selectmen, if they were found guilty of 16 Open Meeting Law violations in a single year and compelled by the district attorney to read the findings aloud, would add some sort of apology, or say it was an accident, for political reasons if nothing else.
Not in Wareham.
The Board of Selectmen's acknowledgment of the findings at Tuesday's
meeting was reluctant at best. Some members' actions reveal a troubling disdain for the principles of open government embodied in the Open Meeting Law.
Acting Chairman John Cronan read two letters from the office of District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz. Though Cronan said in the briefest possible fashion that town counsel had answered the letters, that was it — no apology, no explanation, no defense.
The unlawfully closed-door meetings involved the hiring of a new town administrator — essentially the town's CEO — and the launch of a covert search of town computers.
The latter was an outrageous breach of public trust passed off as an"audit" of all non-school computers owned by the town.
In reality, members of the board were trying to ferret out employees who posted negative comments about them online — not because the employees were making personal use of town computers, but to identify political enemies. In one of the illicit meetings, a selectman called a pair of employees the"two biggest rats that work for the town."
If the selectmen had legitimate aims, they could have discussed computer use at a public meeting. Surely residents would have appreciated a good-faith effort to stop employees from wasting time surfing the Internet. But that wasn't the selectmen's goal.
Even if the audit were legitimate, it would not have been a legitimate reason to go into closed-door session. The exceptions to the state's Open Meeting Law are specific, and the law itself was designed specifically to prevent the type of secret government the Wareham selectmen have been practicing.
Tuesday was the board's time to make amends, in word if not deed, by admitting to Wareham residents that the meetings did not comply with the Open Meeting Law and pledging not to make the same mistake again.
In fact, one of the conditions set by the district attorney regarding hiring was that the board"announce publicly in open session that it will not conduct such screening and interview processes in this manner in the future,"but the board did nothing of the kind.
Selectman Jane Donahue went so far as to attempt to diminish the violations by repeatedly calling them technicalities. "Yes, it's a violation of the Open Meeting Law, technically," she said. Hiring a new CEO in secret is a technicality? The assertion is laughable.
Further, she seemed to argue that the end justified the means, saying, "The bottom line is we got a great town administrator and we don't have to (conduct the search) again." On the contrary, the bottom line is Wareham selectmen continue to thumb their noses at the public's right to know what their government is doing.
Until they meet the district attorney's conditions, the matter is not closed. Cruz and his staff should hold the selectmen to every letter of those conditions and contemplate further action if the board does not comply.
Last edited by billw (2010-02-17 11:57:41)
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#3 2010-02-17 11:27:40
This entry needs to be edited to read that the quote attributed to Brenda Eckstrom is really Jane Donahue speaking. The S-T jumped on the mistake with a re-edit on their site and with repeated retractions/corrections in The Standard Times and are understandably concerned that our entry keeps the mistake "alive".
I haven't heard back yet from mystery folks who run the site, so this is just a "stop-gap" correction by a card carrying techno-klutz who doesn't know how to do the correction himself.
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#4 2010-02-17 11:37:42
Oh, Brenda..take a "chill pill"..your "Employee of the Month"..spreads lies, edits stories without letting anyone know, hardly ever makes a retraction..Y' know, he's basically a "menace to society"..but the ST attributes a quote to the wrong Selectman, quickly rectify it..and it's a "Total Outrage"!!! Get a life. Recall, anyone??
TAKEBACKWAREHAM
VOTE4CHANGE
April 6, 2010
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