Every 10 years there comes a moment

Just a few thoughts on Tuesday’s election while I’m sitting here waiting for dinner and hoping whoever wins the selectman’s seat doesn’t apply for the town treasurer position.

You laugh, but it wasn’t too long ago we had a selectman who was also the head of the transfer station.

Yup, seriously.

Wait a minute. Come to think of it right now we have a selectman who is the head of a department. Well, he’s not the head. He’s the assistant chief. His wife is the head.

Most Fortune 500 companies wouldn’t allow a husband and wife both on the same payroll, let alone work in the same department, let alone be the top two officers.

Did you even notice that words ending in ism usually don’t have positive connotations.

Like cronyism (definition: “partiality to cronies especially as evidenced in the appointment of political hangers-on to office without regard to their qualifications.”

Like nepotism (definition: “favoritism (as in appointment to a job) based on kinship”  

Like Lebanism: (definition: “running a town based on the least amount of transparency, releasing the least amount of information and skirting all attempts by a public intent on changing that system by systematically hiding behind a legal counsel’s efforts to thwart any such change.”

This town releases information it shouldn’t, like the much-maligned 2013 Voter Guide; and doesn’t release information it should, like major changes in Town Hall personnel or the Rescue Probe files.

Lebanon voters sometimes get too used to looking the other way when our leaders take advantage of their office.

They’ll shrug their shoulders, “Well he did OK with that,” or “He’s got it pretty good now.”

But there’s often little outrage, just a resigned complacency.

But not always.

 In 1992 residents shut down town government on Election Day.

They voted 563 to 555 not to pay the salaries and expenses for much of Lebanon's town government for the fiscal year that began that July 1.

Those dismissed included the town's governing body, the three selectmen; two code-enforcement officers who handled building permits; the registrar of voters; the ballot clerks, and the animal control officer.

Then in 2002 we did it again.

Much of the controversy that year was over selectmen’s pay. Seems that the town's three elected leaders who were paid $10 an hour were taking home between $15,000 to $24,000 a year. That figures out to between 28 and 46 hours a week.

That’s a lot of workshops, eh?

But there was growing suspicion about whether some selectmen were really working all those hours.

In the 2002 Christian Science Monitor story I used for research for this report, one local store owner said at the time, "How in the world should a selectman in our town make that much money?" (The owner asked not to be named, saying "People get pretty nasty about this stuff around here.") Some things never change.

Selectmen’s arrogance over their pay, selectmen’s arrogance over being open and transparent, selectmen’s arrogance over the Rescue Probe, over timely notice of meetings, timely notice of meeting cancellations, arrogance and unresponsiveness to townspeople’s concerns, disconnect over the disrespect of the political process regarding the Lebanon Voter Guide names just a few of the high jinks Lebanites have had to put up with the past year.

People in this town will put up with a lot but if there’s anything that’ll get us riled it’s political arrogance, an arrogance of power.

And as the saying goes, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

No one may be doing anything strictly illegal – that’s why they pay, er, I mean we pay a town attorney $25,000 a year – but if you think the flawed Rescue Probe, how SOME selectmen file their pay, poorly advertised meetings and the awarding of major bids at a selectmen’s workshop is a corruption of the democratic process that many of our forebears fought and died for and we have come to expect, then, yes, it is corrupt.

And every 10 years or so, we voters decide it’s time for a cleaning. Maybe it’s time now.