BY MATT HERSH
After a complaint from a Budget Committee member, the Salem Board of Selectmen have been asked by the Deputy Attorney General to familiarize themselves with the Right To Know law.
Stephen Campbell, a recently elected member of the town’s Budget Committee, said he filed a formal complaint against the board because he believes they might be making decisions and having additional meetings in private.
He recently met with Deputy Attorney General Orville Fitch who wrote a letter to the town saying they should brush up on the law to make sure they’re not breaking it.
Campbell said his suspicions were started when a job listing for a new town manager appeared on the town’s Web site advertising the position at a salary range of $115,000 to $125,000. Campbell said the salary range was never discussed or voted on in public.
After Campbell pressed selectmen about what had happened and why the list had appeared before a formal vote had taken place, selectmen Chairman Everett McBride said the listing might have appeared too early, but the board didn’t break any laws. The board voted to set the salary range soon afterward.
But Campbell said the problem goes beyond the salary issue. He said he believes selectmen are regularly discussing town business before and after public meetings based on a conversation he had with newly elected Selectman Pat Hargreaves.
“(Hargreaves) had a conversation with Selectman (Elizabeth) Roth and she said that the board ‘discussed the agenda’ upstairs in the town hall before going downstairs to start the posted meeting,” Campbell wrote in his complaint.
Campbell’s complaint also says that Hargreaves told him that other selectmen have stopped their discussions when he walked in the room, leading him to believe something secret was taking place.
Campbell said this type of private meeting breaches selectmen’s oath of office and is a disservice to the public.
“You’re supposed to be educating the public because at some point they’re going to be voting and your opportunity to persuade people is at the public meeting,” he said. “If the selectmen are meeting privately to discuss town business elsewhere, it’s illegal.”
Still, selectmen have defended their actions, saying there seems to be some misunderstanding about their gatherings.
Roth said the board does congregate shortly before their public meetings so they can sign manifests and other documents. They keep their conversation away from business, she said.
“Never did I say that we talk about motions,” she said. “Usually the topics are bland and it’s just a casual conversation. Stephen Campbell is pretty much harassing the town manager to the point that it is interfering with his job.”
Hargreaves said in a letter to the town that there are inaccuracies in Campbell’s complaint. Hargreaves now says he misunderstood the nature of the gatherings, and he has not seen any wrongdoing.
Campbell said he’d like to see the board discontinue their gatherings, and he hasn’t decided whether or not he’s going to take further legal action against the board. If he does, it will likely require him to hire a lawyer and pay for the suit out of his own pocket.
“They should admit they did something wrong, and try extra hard not to do anything like it again,” he said of the town manager’s salary issue. “People who are unwilling to admit they made a mistake worry me greatly.”
Roth said the accusations will do nothing but slow down a board that has always done things by the book.
“It’s trying to make something out of nothing,” she said. “The sad part about this is that you have a Board of Selectmen that have probably been the best one for many years in terms of getting things done, and we don’t need to get distracted.”