The winter holidays may be known as the “most wonderful time of the year” (thank you, Andy Williams), but for local news outlets, Town Meeting and election season is perhaps the most important stretch on the calendar.
It is a time when voters are demanding reliable information to help them make informed decisions. But thanks to social media and individual agendas (some more benign than others), it can be hard to separate the news from the noise.
Town meeting has been called the “purest form of democracy,” but “pure” only means “most direct.” Messiness is an intrinsic part of Town Meeting — indeed, that’s part of its charm. The same holds true for contested elections for Select Board, School Committee and other local offices.
Local news outlets play a vital role in minimizing the mess. One of the best ways a news outlet can do that is to be clear-eyed about its principles and policies, and then to apply them consistently and uniformly.
That brings us to the Marblehead Liberty Foundation.
This week’s edition may be the first in which the Marblehead Liberty Foundation is mentioned in our pages, but the Current has been hearing from it throughout the budget season.
Back in February, the Current and other news outlets received an MLF press release that suggested that “spending, not inflation” was the root of Marblehead’s budget challenges. We immediately detected that the MLF’s data analysis was flawed. Still, we did not dismiss the press release altogether. We reached out to the Liberty Foundation, offering to interview someone. But we had one requirement: Tell us who you are. The foundation did not respond, and we dropped it, given our concern that the information in the press release would confuse rather than illuminate voters.
Another Marblehead news outlet made a different choice, publishing the press release verbatim and making no effort to “unmask” the Liberty Foundation. That decision earned it a strong rebuke from one of its readers.
The next press release we received from the Liberty Foundation related to the fact that Marblehead is paying 83% of the health insurance premiums of its municipal employees, a larger percentage than neighboring communities. Unlike the MLF’s first press release, we thought this raised an important issue, an assessment Finance Director Aleesha Benjamin confirmed when she reported that the town could save $1.2 million by negotiating a new 75-25 split of those premium costs with town employees. So, we wrote about it.
However, we still did not mention the Marblehead Liberty Foundation because it was continuing to be coy about its membership.
Another news outlet in town made a different choice and received comments on its Facebook page that ranged from puzzled to annoyed. “Why are you giving an anonymous group cover and attention?” asked one commenter.
The commenter added, “Not a great look in trying to stay non-partisan unless that’s not the goal.”
News outlets next heard from the Liberty Foundation this past week. This time, the organization was announcing that it planned to try to scuttle the Town Meeting article proposing a multi-tiered override of Proposition 2 1/2 — a proposal that Select Board member Erin Noonan noted had evolved through numerous public meetings going back to November — by pitching a special town meeting, at which it planned to propose a smaller, stopgap one-year override.
By then, the Current and at least one other outlet had discovered that the Liberty Foundation had registered as a charitable organization with the Attorney General’s Office. That gave us a name — Jack Buba — as the foundation’s “primary contact.”
Buba, a former Finance Committee member, has become well-known over the years as an opponent of override proposals. He also rallied support for last year’s referendum that undid Town Meeting’s approval of Marblehead’s plan to comply with the MBTA Communities Act.
So, for the first time, the Liberty Foundation’s name appeared in one of the Current’s stories, along with Buba’s. We would love to tell you more about your other neighbors who comprise the Liberty Foundation, but Buba has deflected questions about that.
Now that the override has advanced to the ballot, however, the Liberty Foundation may have to register with the state as a municipal ballot question committee before it engages in further lobbying, which would bring additional disclosure requirements. We will keep an eye on that.
The point of this detailed peek behind the curtain is to illustrate how seriously we take our responsibility to ensure that the local democratic process is as fair as it can be. We may not always agree on the best solutions to the town’s challenges, but we should be able to agree to some basic rules of engagement.
Of those rules, none may be more important than requiring those who wish to participate in the public debate to identify themselves. That’s what the town moderator asks of those who step up to the Town Meeting microphone. That’s what we ask of people who write us letters to the editor. And that’s what we will continue to demand of those who seek to make “news” in service of their own political agenda.
The town deserves nothing less.
