Caught on a hot tin roof…Narkewicz and Reckman take to the friendly air waves

"What’s that smell in this room?" The late great Burl Ives referring to mendacity in his performance as cancer stricken Harvey "Big Daddy" Pollitt in Tennessee Williams’ Oscar nominated 1958 movie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Apparently Councilor Elect Robert Reckman’s leaked email becoming public fodder seems to have set off a round of refutations by some local media types and politicians. Who knew? Aside from further theatrical performances of sound and fury signifying nothing, and some mendacious verbal battery being tossed about, nothing has changed.

Northampton’s Ward Two City Councilor Paul Spector telephoned me the morning of December 21 while I was apparently being vilified as a "bad blogger" by WHMP’s radio persona Bill Dwight, because I posted the leaked email here on Redoubt. Paul and I spoke regarding the leaked Reckman email and what it meant, and how people might interpret it. For the record, Paul said he did not "deliberate" with any other councilor regarding the M. LaBarge amendment and that he did not see the leaked email I posted here on Redoubt until Wednesday last. Paul further added that he wasn’t sure if he still has Reckman’s first email inquiry.

I think making Reckman’s initial email public would go a long way toward accounting for what happened. Of course that would entail someone personally examining the computers of Reckman and members of the Council in order to view their respective in-box, sent, and delete bins. This is not out of the question if Councilors are using their personal computers to conduct city business. Even then, the Councilors and Reckman could purge email correspondence from their computers, thus requiring technology experts to extract the data, as an email can be edited when forwarding.

Reckman appeared and asserted on the Dwight show December 20 that he composed and sent emails to eight Councilors individually. Since it is obvious that these emails were not intended to be made public, a reasonable person might assume that sending one bulk-email would be easier, and that would mean that a quorum of councilors would have received their copy of the email at roughly the same time, with knowledge that the others had been contacted on the issue too. Either way, this could constitute evidence of an attempt to circumvent the Open Meeting law.

As well, what exactly did Reckman communicate to the Councilors and how did they respond? According to the email posted below, somehow Reckman ascertained that an amendment that had not yet been put forth had enough votes to pass. "I have heard from 5 members of the Council that they support eliminating the requirement that people who serve on the best practices committee not currently serve on any City Board or Commissions." and he added, "I believe that David Narkewicz has arranged for Marianne Labarge to propose the change we would like to see. I am not worried about its approval and plan to watch the meeting on TV from the comfort of my home." Reckman also claimed on the Dwight show that all eight city councilors he contacted responded to his initial email inquiry, but in the email below he claims that he heard back from only five councilors so his communication of events has changed since December 6.

Moreover, Reckman claimed on Dwight’s show that he did not communicate to any councilors regarding how any of their colleagues responded to his initial query. However, contradicting this claim, Reckman’s leaked email as posted below was sent to City Council President Michael Bardsley, who was included on the cc distribution list of the leaked email but not mentioned by Reckman while speaking on the air. Therefore, Reckman DID contact at least one Councilor with the results of his email inquiry. The full list of recipients of the Reckman email posted below includes Bardsley, Joel Russell, Mari Gottdeiner, Betsy Siersma, Michael Kusek, Mary Kasper, David Kutcher, Fran Volkmann, Deb Jacobs, and John Sinton. Reckman recited this list on the Dwight show, but failed to include mentions of Bardsley and Kutcher.

Reckman may not have broken the law by contacting Councilors in this fashion, but his activity has been far from transparent. He is no ordinary citizen as Ward Three City Councilor Elect, Chair of the Board of Public Works, and Chair of the Pulaski Park Redesign Committee. What we have here is an astute local political operative that is accustomed to being appointed by Mayor Higgins into positions of authority. In this case Reckman boldly involved himself in the mechanisms of Council activity before being sworn in, effectively thwarting citizen input on a future amendment that few were aware of. Nor did he necessarily act in the interests of the original citizen sponsors of the Best Practices initiative, because at least one of them apparently disagreed with his actions and consequently leaked one of Reckman’s emails.

Next up on his radio show on December 21 Dwight visited with Ward Four Councilor David Narkewicz. Dwight aggressively stammered out domestic metaphors to frame the circumstance. He proposed to "put the issue to bed" and to "set the table" for Narkewicz, so he could tell his "story." Making light of the matter, during his recitation of events Narkewicz donned his "cub reporter" cap but failed to acknowledge, that while some Councilors expressed concerns about the language of exclusion in the Resolution before them in November, there was not a formal amendment put forth then and the Council passed the Resolution by a unanimous vote. This is important because if a formal amendment had been brought forth on the Resolution’s first reading, members of the public would have been made aware of it and could have chosen to address it before its second reading. At the very least, Councilor Marianne LaBarge et al. could have issued a press release prior to the December 6 meeting informing the public of their intentions. In this case an amendment was somehow agreed upon behind the scenes, but how is still not clear.

Here’s the text of Reckman’s leaked email, which Dwight has failed to read on the air to my knowledge:

Near the end of the Reckman show, Dwight asks Reckman, "So you’re pretty comfortable with how you conducted yourself?" Reckman’s response, "I’m absolutely one hundred percent comfortable with everything I did."

As Ives character, Big Daddy, was dying, he asked sardonically, "Didn’t you notice the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?"