Sometimes, discussion of the public’s right to know what its government is doing can get lost in lofty rhetoric — especially during Sunshine Week, a national campaign to promote dialogue about transparency in government and freedom of information in a free society.
Yet, as the week ends, we need to remember that while the issue is of practical and professional interest to news organizations like the Athol Daily News, it is of vital importance to everyone, because our democracy thrives on open government. And that requires public access to government records and meetings.
Too often, elected and appointed officials at the local, state and federal level forget they are the servants of the voters who put them there; they forget that the Town Hall, Statehouse or Capitol is not their private domain.
On the national level, we’ve seen reports that our federal officials have become stingy in release of public information of late. The federal government censored, withheld or said it couldn’t find records sought by citizens, journalists and others more often last year than at any point in the past decade, according to an Associated Press analysis of new data. Being able to see inside our government is not a Republican or Democratic issue, it’s an American imperative.
Being able to learn what’s happening within our government is just as important at the local level, where we can have a more direct impact.
The story of the recent investigation of Montague’s former police chief illustrates how access to public documents, in a very practical way, allows us to learn what’s going on in our community and to affect the course of events.
Charles “Chip” Dodge, who became Montague’s police chief in 2012, was suspended briefly in June of 2016 after investigators from the state Attorney General’s Office came to town. Neither the AG nor the town’s Selectboard would say why the chief had been suspended. The Selectboard restored him to duty after four days with a full-throated endorsement, but no explanation about what the AG was looking into.
If the situation had been resolved enough to reinstate the chief, why not tell the townspeople he served what was up?
We now know that the AG was investigating suspicions that someone was stealing painkillers from the Montague Police Department’s prescription medication dropbox. Although no one was ever charged with anything, Dodge may have been singled out because he was in charge of the drop box and he was in recovery for opioid addiction.
This information about their police chief was of great interest and importance to the people of Montague — and it would not have come to light if not for the state public records law that allowed the media to see town hall emails that explained what was behind that visit by AG investigators.
In September of 2016, we were able to report that the AG probe was related to the dropbox program and that the local district attorney’s office had suspended Montague police from that program and from the regional crime task force, pending the outcome of the AG investigation.
The state’s top law enforcement agency had serious concerns, and the DA knew it, but not Montague’s citizenry — until the emails were brought to light.
It was after these public disclosures that townspeople, their police officers and even the police chief’s peers on the regional anti-crime task force had the information they deserved to form opinions about how the department was being run.
Unfortunately for Dodge, it wasn’t good news. Montague patrolmen and sergeants unions expressed “lost trust and confidence in (Dodge’s) ability to lead this department” in a letter to town officials that expressed dismay about the chief’s comments that suggested one of them may have stolen drugs from the drop box.
The anti-crime task force declined to work with Montague under Dodge’s leadership.
Against that backdrop, last October the selectmen suspended Dodge again while a special private investigator reviewed police operations. His report led to a series of negotiations with Dodge and his ultimate resignation.
We were gratified to learn that after the chief resigned, the Montague selectmen promptly publicized a lightly redacted copy of the private investigator’s report and the chief’s termination agreement, for all to see.
We are proud that the media did its job, shining light through the cloud that had hung over the department for nearly two years. The townspeople finally were able see the important information they deserved to know about their own police department and its chief. But journalists could not have accomplished this without the state’s public records law, which recognizes the government’s business is the people’s business.