EDITORIAL: Say it to my face

Cooler heads seem to be prevailing as town leaders resume following through on their pledge to minimize the harm caused by youth substance use in response to the town’s most recent tragedy, the crash that cost 13-year-old Savanah Gatchell her life. For that, we are grateful — the topic is too important to let the conversation get derailed by personality conflicts or breaches of protocol.

But before we turn the page, it is worth reviewing the conflict involving Board of Health member Tom McMahon, Police Chief Dennis King and Select Board Chair Dan Fox, as there are lessons for how to best get to a better place, not just on this issue but future challenges as well.

To review, McMahon came to his board’s Nov. 24 meeting armed with a statement and a seemingly damning statistic. Since 2017, the town had issued no fines under the state’s Social Host Law, G.L.c. 138, §34, McMahon reported. The law makes it a crime for adults to serve or provide alcohol to underage guests or to allow them to drink alcohol in their home or on other property they control.

When people are charged criminally, the state law provides for fines of up to $2,000, imprisonment for up to a year or both, though Town Clerk Robin Michaud indicated that the town’s fine schedule for civil violations is $150 to the adult in charge of the home and $25 to each underage person at the party.

McMahon then stated, “This lack of action comes from the style of the police chief. That style is counterproductive and ignorant. It needs to stop.”

King was not in the room at the time, nor did he apparently get a heads up that his practices would be a topic of discussion at the meeting.

That drew a rebuke from Fox, who criticized both the content of McMahon’s critique and the “method used to deliver it.”

“Publicly leveling unvetted accusations at a televised meeting does not foster cooperation; it undermines trust, damages working relationships and does a disservice to the public,” Fox wrote.

McMahon responded to Fox on Facebook. While he pledged that he was “ready to move forward… cooperatively with the Select Board and police chief,” his message also included a warning, “Saying that you won’t work for a solution because you don’t like my ‘methods’ likely won’t fly with Marblehead residents who want to see improvement, even if they don’t agree with my methods.”

However, those “methods” do warrant criticism, though perhaps not for the reason McMahon is thinking of.

The issue is not that he is being “impolite”; it’s that he has chosen a method that is doomed to undercut efforts to address a problem McMahon sincerely wants to resolve.

One of the more memorable lines from the 2024 presidential campaign was one candidate goading her opponent into a debate with the phrase, “Say it to my face.”

The “Say It to My Face” rule should be table stakes for town officials, especially ones paying lip service to wanting to collaborate with those who share a common goal — in this case, keeping young people safe.

As this situation illustrates, failing to do so is inefficient at best. Rather than having a real-time dialogue, McMahon forced this conversation to be “asynchronous,” which is not the best way to engage the principals or the public in an important discussion.

McMahon explained that he deployed his chosen method because he feared that town leaders were once again going to “brush under the rug” the underage drinking issue. But ambushing the police chief in absentia was not the only way McMahon could have brought renewed attention to the issue. He could have followed the model of Congress, which quite often brings people before it — like college presidents, for example — when it wants to focus the public spotlight on a particular issue.

While King may not have relished appearing before the board to face tough questions, such a session would have arguably garnered more attention than McMahon’s soliloquy.

We cannot read McMahon’s mind, but one of the reasons political actors sometimes disseminate information in ways that preclude dialogue is that they are trying to control the message. To update an old saw often misattributed to Mark Twain, “Spin can travel halfway around the world while a nuanced understanding is still putting on its shoes.”

Is it fair to characterize McMahon’s data about the lack of citations since 2017 as “spin”? Well, for one thing, it lays at King’s feet years’ worth of enforcement (or lack thereof) that predates his arrival in Marblehead in the summer of 2021.

For another, as King would later explain, local bylaw citations are not the only way the Social Host Law is enforced. Criminal complaints are also used. For example, King previously told the Current that a juvenile was charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor related to the 2022 crash that claimed the life of James Galante, a consequence not captured in McMahon’s report.

“When education and redirection will more effectively prevent future harm, we use those tools as well,” King added.

McMahon’s statistics may loosely fit into the category of information often described in journalism circles as “true but not accurate.” In other words, the information may not be incorrect, but the lack of context runs the risk of creating a misleading impression.

In his statement, McMahon apologized to two people, one member of the Recreation and Parks Commission and one member of the School Committee.

“They both care deeply about this issue and are dedicated to finding a solution,” he wrote, implying that others who have recently engaged on this issue do not share that commitment.

But there is little to be gained from dividing people into camps, those who are going about things in the “right way,” in McMahon’s view, and those who are not. In this battle, everyone is a potential ally.

All that said, McMahon has brought some important points to the fore. If it is, in fact, “the same houses over and over again” furnishing alcohol to minors, it is more than fair to scrutinize how such repeat offenses are being handled and explore whether a change in course might be prudent.

That is a conversation we should absolutely have. But as much as we can, we should have it face to face.