When Citizens 'Attack'

I know, I know.

I'm supposed to be off fishing somewhere.

But one of the problems with going fishing, and not catching any fish, is it gives you a lot of time to think.

So, despite my best efforts, I started thinking about Wednesday night's council meeting.

I was thinking about Borough Council President Dan Weand's response to the issues raised last month by school board member Thomas Hylton.

Hylton, using W-2s he obtained from the borough through a Right to Know request, said spending on employees had jumped more than 30 percent -- or $2 million -- in just four years.

Weand responded that Hylton's figures were "misleading" and, reading from a prepared statement, explained how that conclusion had been reached.

(You can see video of Weand reading his entire statement below:)



But it wasn't the specifics of his response so much that caught my attention. After all, council has been responding to Tom Hylton for years.

But it was that dynamic and one particular word upon which I dwelled as the fish ignored my bait. (This is a metaphor obviously as the only fish I ever see are in an aquarium or on my plate.)

The word in Weand's response that I kept coming back to was "attack."

A citizen raised a comparatively well-informed concern about spending at a public meeting (and yes, in the newspaper) and the response is to call it "an attack'?

I thought about it and wondered what would people think if you took the names (and wel-known personalities) out of the equation.

This can be hard, I know, because as former council Ron Downie once said, Pottstown executes "policy by personality." In other words WHO is speaking or acting is often more important than WHAT they say or do.

So here is the thought-experiment I thought up on my metaphorical fishing boat written, of course, in the form of a narrative:

A tax-paying citizen of the Borough of Pottstown recently raised concerns at a public meeting about spending on personnel.

The citizen had taken the steps of using the Right to Know law to obtain w-2 forms to get the fact as best they could be determined, and had taken into account the fact that the borough had gained and lost employees in the past four years.

The citizen even went to the trouble of putting the figures in a spreadsheet to determine, as accurately as he knew how, what the financial impact of the last four years of borough employment had been.

When the citizen saw the results, he brought those concerns to the publicly elected officials of the Borough of Pottstown and expressed them to said officials.

In what is unquestionably an unusual step, the citizen also went to the trouble and expense of outlining his concerns in a paid advertisement in the local newspaper, to ensure his concerns were shared with a wider number of his fellow citizens.

The elected councilman, chosen earlier in the year from among his peers to head the council, tasked the borough's finance department with examining that expenses and (because these instructions were not given in public, we don't know exactly what the finance department was instructed to do).

We do know the result, that at the next public meeting, the elected councilman provided a response which raised several reasonable responses, including that overtime expenses had been high due to unavoidable circumstances like being down 14 police officers and a winter that beat down hard on overtime budgets at the highway department.

(The citizen responded that taxpayers pay over-time too, and when those 14 missing police officers were replaced, that was unlikely to lower the police budget very much, but I digress).

Up until this point in the narrative, things have gone about as well as one would hope in a representative democracy. A citizen, who took the trouble to educate himself as best he could about a cost to all taxpayers, brought that concern to his elected officials in the hope of spurring a desired course of action.

The elected official responded that the local government had taken a look at the matter and did not quite see it the way the citizen did.

And then, with one word, "attack," the whole thing goes off the rails.

Instead of thanking the citizen for caring enough to take an interest in his borough, and go to the trouble to research a potential problem and form an informed opinion instead of just showing up to complain "my taxes are too high" as so many other speakers -- who are often thanked for their input -- often do, the elected council categorizes the exchange of views as "a direct attack."

 Why?

We know why.

Because the citizen raising those concerns is Tom Hylton.

And because Tom Hylton, a citizen of the borough of Pottstown, so often raises matters of public concern -- concerns elected and appointed officials often would rather not confront --  they respond defensively.

To be fair, the borough weathers a pretty staggering amount of criticism, whether in The Mercury, word of mouth, or the seemingly endless number of borough critics living in cyber space. Being a little defensive is understandable.

Nevertheless, the job council members are elected to do is to represent the citizens of Pottstown in overseeing their local government.

And there seems no more striking example of the kind of oversight with which they are charged than to hear concerns from the citizens about the costs of that government and its impact on the taxes they pay.

That's the job elected officials asked voters to give them, so they had better learn to like it.

But, "if you’re attacking the borough, or the finance department, you’re attacking me,” is how Dan Weand, the elected official, chose to respond, paradoxically, right after he said "I love getting comments."

Does that strike you as the kind of response that will encourage other citizens to get informed on subjects, and bring their informed concerns to their elected officials for a public airing, as those officials so often say they so desperately want?

Or rather, does it demonstrate exactly the kind of response that might convince a concerned citizen they shouldn't even bother because "they're never going to listen to what I have to say anyway."

While it is admirable to defend the borough's employees and endeavor to correct what you see as an inaccurate depiction of their pay, is it among the best practices for a local government to describe the raising of such inquiries or concerns by a citizen as "a direct attack?"

For goodness sake, if you can't show up at a public meeting and raise concerns about public spending without it being characterized as an attack, let's just do away with the pretense of living in a representative democracy.

One of the lesser quoted clauses of the First Amendment, I was recently reminded, prohibits the government from making any law that would abridge the right of the people "to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

While the elected borough council has passed no such law, as of yet anyway, the response would suggest council is not overly fond of citizens showing up to exercise their First Amendment rights -- particularly if they are Tom Hylton.

The State of America's First Freedoms

Graphic by Newseum/USA Today

July 4, 1776 may be when America's freedoms were born, but it wasn't until Dec. 15, 1791 -- 15 years later -- that those rights were finally defined.

And so in honor of the day (and in absence of fireworks) we thought we would spend some time as we sometimes do, ruminating on patriotic subjects.

The Bill of Rights outlined those definitions at the insistence of those at the Constitutional Convention who worried about the federal government assuming too much power. They were opposed by those who worried that defining rights might limit them.

We're going to focus on only one of those Amendments to the Constitution today for two reasons.

First, its a holiday and we recognize your attention span is limited.

Second, this is the only Amendment which comes with its own handy status report that we could find. Also, it deals with subjects close to our hearts.

The status report comes in the form of an annual survey produced by The Newseum in Washington, D.C. and USA Today.

You can read the full report by clicking here.

The findings are not so much revelatory as they are worrisome.

For example, nearly 40 percent of the Americans surveyed could not name a single freedom outlined in just the First Amendment. (One suspects those figures would be somewhat higher for the Second Amendment.)

Fully 50 percent of those without a college degree could not name a single one.

And yet these are the freedoms among which Americans hold most dear -- freedom of speech, assembly, the practice of religion and, perhaps somewhat less dear, the press.

How does a person fight to preserve rights she does not know she has?

Another worrisome statistic is the dwindling number of people who believe the freedom to practice one's religion -- no matter how extreme -- applies to all.

In 2011, 67 percent of those polled believed freedom of religion in the U.S. was absolute. In 2013, it dropped to 65 percent and it now stands at 59 percent.

Religion, as it is everywhere, is a complicated topic for Americans.

Some say America was founded as a Christian nation and, if you date that founding to the Puritans, they're right -- so long as you practiced EXACTLY their kind of Christianity. You might want to ask Roger Williams how having a different form of faith was received in Plymouth.

At the same time, however, you could date the founding of the nation to the Virginia colonies, which might lead to the argument that America was founded as a commercial nation, since those folks were there as part of an investment.

Or, we could stick with the founding document, which uses different language for
religion than it does the other rights.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom

Notice that with freedom of speech, press, assembly and petitioning the government, the First Amendment says no law shall prohibit them.

But with religion, the primary fear was an official government religion. It already had a toehold in North America, with Virginia landholders being taxed to support the Anglican church.

Luckily, the founders were among that increasingly rare group of Americans capable of learning from history and its past mistakes.

They were familiar with history of hundreds of years of religious wars in Europe,

The practice of government-sponsored religion,
Spain, circa 1480

the Protestant reformation, the Spanish Inquistion, the Crusades, and they knew the dangers inherent in dictating belief.

Today, we seem to be drifting dangerously closer and closer to judging, jailing, prosecuting or killing people for their beliefs, instead of their actions.

We are also drifting in the direction of a country in which accusation equals guilt.

Witness the growing number of people who believe the government should have the right to force companies to unlock smartphones to allow for the examination of data collected by those accused of terrorist acts.

In the survey, a majority, 66 percent, said government should have the right to force companies to provide that information.

Let's remember that accusation is not proof and it is not conviction, and that there are rules for search warrants.

Prosecutors must usually provide a judge with some trail of evidence that provides a valid reason for the search, as well as a general idea of is being sought. And no one calls up the company that made the front door lock, or the lock on the file cabinet and says you must provide the keys.

However, in further proof that the majority of Americans are irony-challenged, almost the exact same percentage of those surveyed replied that they are "concerned about the privacy of personal information on the Internet."

In other words, Americans believe the right to privacy of information on their electronic devices does NOT apply to those accused, but not convicted, performing a terrorist act. Accusations are easy to make, convictions less so.

Rights are there to be applied to and protect all, particularly individuals and those not in the majority. THAT is supposed to be the American way.

The Donald captured as he is overcome by a spirit

of bi-partisan compromise.

And speaking of terror -- Donald Trump.

See? Your heart jumped there for a minute.

Yes, we've come to that sad portion of the survey where we deal with freedom of the press and the public's increasingly dim view of how that freedom is practiced.

Just over half the Americans surveyed -- 51 percent -- believe the media is giving Trump too much coverage.

This one is a hard one for those of us in the media. Our first reaction is "ONLY 51 percent? My God it's All-Trump all the time!"

But there is a part of our brain that says, you can't let the outrageous, false and consistently contradictory things he says go unremarked. We hope, pray, it will lead to Americans rising up in opposition to the xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic things he says regularly.

Instead, a disturbing number of Americans are embracing those statements and rather than being Trump's revealers, we have become his enablers.

Such inherent self-conflict is probably one of the factors behind the finding that very few Americans who responded to the survey believe the press reports in a bias-free manner.

Less than one-quarter of those surveyed believes the media "attempts" to report the news without bias.

We've apparently abandoned the idea that bias-free reporting is actually possible, and now we're delving into motivations, with most Americans believing we don't even try to be bias free.

We have often told anyone who asked, that of course we are not without bias. We're human beings, a species generally recognized to hold beliefs, views and character traits.

For example, longtime Mercury Reporter Evan Brandt is a smart-ass, plain and simple; whereas Fox News morning anchor Steve Doocy is simply an ass with a silly name.

What matters, in our view, is whether the reporting is fair. There is a difference.

Reporting may lead to a conclusion, often the result of doing due diligence to understand all the sides of an issue.

Some believe reporters should give equal time to both sides of an issue. That smart-ass Evan Brandt has even found himself counting sentences when covering political campaigns to ensure equal time.

But sometimes the close examination of an issue reveals that one side is just wrong, or stupid, or dangerous.

Then a reporter must ask herself whether or not her first obligation is to the truth as she has come to see it as a result of more research than most of her readers (listeners/viewers) will undertake; or to a bias-free standard we must truthfully acknowledge is impossible to achieve.

In our view, the answer is to err on the side of truth, with the understanding that yes, truth is often subjective, which is why the attempt must be made to be as fair as possible.

When the muckraking reporters of McClure's magazine -- Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens and Ray Stannard Baker -- revealed the abuses of Standard Oil, political corruption and union violence, they took a side.

They revealed the truth. But their careful documentation of that truth gave them credibility such that Americans were convinced what they wrote was true. And America changed for the better as a result.

But in yet another example of America's irony-challenged character, although most survey results indicate the media is biased, nearly three-quarters of them -- 73 percent -- believe the media is "very" or "somewhat" accurate in its coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign.

It is also ironic that as more and more Americans drift away from professional journalism as a source of information, more and more of them believe that the media should act as "government watchdogs" -- fully 71 percent, up 2 percent from the last survey.

This particular function of journalism is close to that smart-ass Evan Brandt's heart. In fact, he considers it the single most important function of journalism.

Your Local Government Watchdog at work

In fact, he has more than once been heard to say "the First Amendment was not adopted to give us the inalienable right to cover car crashes and fires."

That people love to know about those things is undeniable. But as he sees it, that
coverage is what pays the bills so the expensive, time-consuming, necessary and singularly less-sexy work of making sure elected (and appointed) government officials behave honestly, honorably and do not squander tax dollars gets done.

But as newspapers -- the root source of so much of the news in the world -- struggle to survive, it begs the question: "Why do you want us to be government watchdogs if you'd rather watch cat videos on Facebook?"

It must be America's sense of irony.

Prayer, Graduation and the Law in Pottsgrove

Photo by Evan Brandt

A Pottsgrove School Board member's view of last night's special meeting on whether to continue to allow prayer at the high school graduation.

It's hard to know where to start when writing about last night's school board meeting.

Things started off pretty civilly, people quoted the Constitution, the Bible, the founding fathers; rules of conduct were set up and largely followed; three high school students were among the most well-spoken speakers of the night.

It began with embattled School Board President Rick Rabinowitz making a statement, which I've posted here:




Many other people spoke, and their comments as reproduced roughly in Tweets and some video, can be seen in the Storify down below.

But then, after nearly three hours of civil conversation, what Upper Pottsgrove Commissioner France Krazalkovich called "a marvelous civics lesson," or something to that effect, the personal attacks began.

The first came from resident Danielle Walsh, whose comments about School Board President Rick Rabinowitz's handling of this issue required interruption from the chair -- and obscene shouting from the audience.

Here is some video from that: (Be warned, there are some naughty words)



I don't have any more video, and deadline loomed.

But as it turns out, after I left things got a little dicey again, with school board member Patricia Grimm calling on Rabinowitz to resign.

I don't know much more than that, but isn't that enough for one meeting?

Anyway, here are the Tweets, helpful links and all the videos:

Three Thoughts

A photo grabbed from the video I shot at Tuesday's borough council meeting. Shown are three plain clothes police officers confronting the bearded man on the right who attempted to comment on the appointment of Police Chief Mark Flanders as Pottstown's new borough manager. He had failed to follow council's procedure and sign up to speak at the beginning of the meeting and he was asked to sit down and quiet down.

So I think it's fair to say, that I've been to my share of public meetings.

More than most.

And I also think it's fair to say that I've been at meetings where audience members were "disgruntled."

But it's not often that I see a plain clothed police response used to deal with  a disgruntled audience member.

Capt. Rick Drumheller

But that's what I saw Tuesday.

"Disgruntled" was the word Police Capt. Rick Drumheller used when I asked him why he had asked members of the police department's Community Response Unit to be at Tuesday's meeting.

“I thought there might be some disgruntled members of the audience,” Drumheller told me Tuesday when I asked why police were there.

But more I thought about that answer, the more questions it spawned.

The first one that sprang to mind was "since when does 'digruntled audience members' require a police presence?"

In more than 25 years of municipal reporting, I have seen borough council presidents, school board presidents, solicitors,township supervisors and managers of all stripes deal with irate members of the public without the need for police intervention.

It's in the job description.

Heck, in the Reporter's Handbook, "irate" and "audience member" are often listed as synonyms.

Let's face it, most people don't come to a municipal meeting, as thrilling as they are, unless they're pissed off about something.

On rare occasions, when an item on the agenda is controversial, I can understand it.

Rick Rabinowitz addresses the Pottsgrove School 

Board. At police presence at meetings like this, 

could be rationalized.

For example, I recall Rick Rabinowitz archly noting the presence of Lower Pottsgrove Police Officers at a Pottsgrove School Board meeting at which the "centers" approach to elementary education was to be voted upon.

It had been controversial for months, and some meetings had ended in shouting.

But what was on council's agenda Tuesday that was so controversial that plain clothes police officers were required to blend in to the audience, as Drumheller described it, to deal with .... what? A riot? Unlikely in the extreme.

The second thought that came to mind was that in addition to Flanders and Drumheller, I counted at least three and possible four police officers in the room.

There are only two possibilities. They were being paid, or they weren't.

If they weren't being paid -- which is unlikely when you consider their contract does not allow them to even work the Pottstown Halloween Parade without getting four hours overtime -- then, as Flanders explained during the parade debate, they were not authorized to use any police powers.

I suppose its possible they were just there for fun or out of civic curiosity and were asking the man trying to ask council a question to be quiet and sit down as fellow citizens ... but then since so few of our police officers live in our town they wouldn't really have standing as "residents."

Which leads me to conclude they were being paid.

If so, I have to wonder if having three or four on-duty officers attend a public meeting at which the most crime that is likely to occur is overly boring political speeches, is a terribly good use of taxpayer resources.

Who was on the street? Was the borough council meeting the top crime priority in Pottstown Tuesday night?

Given that, at least until April when he resigns as chief, every single person in borough hall will answer to one man, I would certainly hope this display of police power is not going to become the norm.

Which brings us to my third thought, perhaps most important one in the long haul.

Much like the ham-handed Pottstown School Board, which complains about a lack of public involvement and yet shuts the public out of every issue in which it actually takes an interest, borough council has been heard to complain that it can't get volunteers for its boards, or interested residents at its meeting.

I would venture to say that the elderly gentleman, whose name I wish I knew, who stood up in the back of council meeting room Tuesday was an interested resident.

No where on the agenda or in the meeting room, does it indicate that if you want to address council, you must sign up to do it at the beginning of the meeting.

Those of us who have spent years at such meetings sometimes forget this.

Also, as an aside, I think that asking people to comment on items before its clear what's going to happen with them, is not really the best way to get the most insightful comments from your constituents.

Number 4 on the agenda was how Flanders' appointment was listed.
How is a member of the public supposed to comment intelligently
on this matter when its contents are a mystery until the
comment period is over?

Case in point, although we had reported several times in The Mercury that Flanders was likely to be appointed, Tuesday's agenda mentioned only a motion to name "an individual" as the new borough manager.

What's the rationale for secrecy? As Council President Stephen Toroney noted in his own carefully noted time line of events, Flanders was made an offer in early October. Not only did council know, but, apparently, the police force knew.

Why is the taxpaying public purposefully kept in the dark and, when it's finally clear what the vote will be, told it's too late to comment?

Which brings us right back to my third thought.

As a veteran audience member of countless council meetings, I frequently have witnessed Toroney ignore the rules he cleaved to Tuesday night, to allow people to address council out of turn.

The aim of meeting rules should be to facilitate

useful participation by the public, not prevent it.

And, as someone in the audience noted Tuesday night, council has the ability to vote to waive its own rules and could easily have allowed that gentleman to express his thoughts, or ask his question.

Any member of council could have made that motion and, as a privileged motion, it would have taken precedence and required an immediate vote.

It's a sad truth of Pottstown civics, and probably everywhere else too, that people don't pay attention until the last minute. But that does not release public officials from their responsibility to seek and bend over backwards to hear what their constituents have to say -- particularly in a public setting.

Certainly, council veterans like Toroney learned this long ago. And if, as they so often say, they want to hear what people think, that sometimes means listening when the people want to say it, not just when its convenient for council to hear it.

It was, to unearth an old cliche, the loss of a "teachable moment." As a teacher at the Western Center for Technical Studies, one would hope that Mr. Toroney would recognize and act upon such moments when they occur.

What possible conclusion could that man reach when he went home Tuesday night, but that council is more interested in its rules than his thoughts? Or, worse, that the rules are designed to prevent useful comment rather than to encourage it.

Why would he ever show up at another meeting to participate in his local government or, perhaps more worrisome, trust that the police will be interested in what he has to say should he require their services?

The incident, which I recorded on a video I have posted below, was also evidence that, if only because it was inconvenient, council was not interested in allowing or hearing more public comment on their decision to appoint Flanders.

I just hope the police weren't there for the same reason.