On December 7, 2007, then councilor-elect Bob Reckman contacted Northampton city councilors, asking them in an email how they would vote on an amendment to a Best Practices resolution. Finding that the majority were going to vote in support of his position, he emailed Councilor Michael Bardsley and several members of the public, assuring them that the amendment would be approved without further lobbying.
This second email was leaked to Advocate blogger Daryl LaFleur, who called for an investigation into whether this was a violation of the Open Meeting Law. In the Advocate, I concluded that the deliberations at the Council meeting that followed were apparently disingenuous as the outcome was already known.
In the outrage from City Hall that followed, the mayor, Councilor David Narkewicz and Bob Reckman all maintained that his canvassing of the council members via email to see how they'd vote was not illegal. Further, they suggested that his behavior was typical, how local politics work, and completely permissible.
Northampton's District Attorney disagreed.
In a letter to Reckman dated January 11, Assistant District Attorney Cynthia M. Pepyne informed Reckman that there was "no evidence" that he had acted improperly. But in the second paragraph she cautioned that this was only because he had not yet been sworn into office. "After you are sworn into the City Council, however, e-mail communications amongst a quorum of members of the Council, even if conducted in a serial fashion, will constitute a violation of the Open Meeting Law and subject the Council to enforcement proceedings," the letter warned.
So while what he did may not have been illegal, the D.A's assessment suggests that—given that he had just been elected to the City Council and had had another municipal role as the chair of the city's Department of Public Works—what Reckman did wasn't particularly ethical.
Further, the councilors who had defended Reckman never referenced his councilor-elect status as being the reason why he wasn't guilty. Rather, they insisted I and other critics were trying to pervert benign events.
Given the assurances by current and former officials that Reckman's actions were normal, Northampton citizens are now left to wonder what's happening when emails aren't being leaked. Have there ever been debates where the councilors didn't already know how the others would vote?
Toward the end of an interview on Bill Dwight's show December 20, Reckman himself defended his actions by saying that it is "all citizens' right and duty to convey to the Council members their opinions on matters that are before them. That's how democracy works."
This statement points to the core of the problem. Northampton public officials appear to be deeply confused about their role and relationship with their constituents. Like parents who want to be their children's best friends, they seem more concerned about being liked and seen as one of the crowd than acting like elected leaders and assuming those responsibilities.
Most citizens don't know the personal email addresses of each of the councilors,and would not feel compelled to contact them all about an issue. Few, I think, would see the need to contact more than their own ward councilor, the councilor-at-large, or the mayor.
Reckman stated in the same interview that he sent eight emails out. There are nine councilors. He didn't contact Ray LaBarge, presumably because he already knew that Ray would vote against his position. Reckman wasn't interested in conveying his opinion to councilors or convincing them of anything; he wanted information from them. He wanted to know how they were going to vote on an issue so he could decide his own course of action and advise others.
Reckman was using his position and connections to those in public office to get information most of us aren't privy to, and when he was accused of it, he had a chorus of elected officials defending him, and a radio personality willing to devote nearly three days to clearing his name and sullying those of his critics.
Neither I nor local bloggers are responsible for creating the impression that there is a serious rift between those who serve in Northampton's public offices and those they serve. It's the councilors themselves who crow from their privileged positions about how unfair it is that they're held to a different standard than the general public.
