GILL — A Gill Selectboard member insists that a letter sent to Gill voters backing a slate of school committee candidates in Monday’s election was not meant as an official Selectboard endorsement.
The letter was signed by “Randy Crochier, Greg Snedeker, John Ward, Members of the Gill Selectboard, Ray Steele, Sandra Brown, Former School Committee Member and Chair.”
The letter endorsed four Gill-Montague Regional School Committee candidates who wound up winning all the seats up for election. The letter invoked the divisive Turners Falls High School mascot controversy in explaining its support for the four candidates who won.
Selectboard Chairman Randy Crochier said the letter was not from the Selectboard as an entity but was signed by each member as an individual.
The state conflict of interest law prohibits elected boards from endorsing candidates, but allows individual elected officials, even when they are identified as such, to endorse candidates.
But the way the letter was drafted leaves that distinction fuzzy.
“It’s a letter from a group of people endorsing the candidates and all three members just happened to sign it,” Crochier said, adding that Selectboard members never discussed the letter during a government meeting, although he was aware they all had been solicited to sign.
Other board members were not immediately available Thursday.
“For myself, I got an email asking if I would read the attached letter and if I would be willing to sign onto it,” he said.
Finance Committee member Tupper Brown, along with other Gill residents, drafted the letter and sent it to individual Selectboard members.
“I think that the letter is perfectly clear that” the Selectboard didn’t act as an entity, Brown said, adding that if there was action taken by the Selectboard, it would have been done in an official meeting.
“I think that the idea that there is impropriety is just wrong,” he added. “We were aware someone would raise that issue but we are also aware we have a First Amendment. It’s constitutional for elected or unelected people to play into the process.”
Brown believes the letter is a “perfectly standard piece of participation” in the political process.
“The idea that people, whether they’re members or not, should not participate … in my mind, that indicates a tenuous grasp on our Constitution and most importantly the First Amendment,” he said.
The letter went through a few adjustments after Crochier’s original signature, but he said he approved the final language, although he never saw the actual letter and how it was signed.
While Crochier said the letter was not sent by the Selectboard as official town communication, he believes each name should have been listed on individual lines instead of consecutively with the label of “Members of the Gill Selectboard.”
He said the way the letter was laid out could be “interpreted differently” by people and believes it’s important to pay attention to how these matters appear to others.
He did not back away from the endorsement.
Crochier was aware the other two Selectboard members were given the opportunity to sign the letter, but he didn’t know whether they signed until the letter was published.
Brown estimates that the letters were sent to fewer than 200 residents.
The one-page letter, written on white paper and in a hand-addressed envelope, endorsed Valeria “Timmie” Smith, Michael Langknecht, Haley Anderson and Jennifer Lively on the basis that “they believe in the education of our children, and the directly related matters of finance, program, staffing, governance and community involvement.
“We thought that years of dysfunctional infighting on the school committee were behind us, but now, for this election, there has emerged a slate of four candidates endorsed by the ‘Save the TF Indian logo’ Facebook page,” continued the letter.
Voters were asked to choose four out of eight candidates on the ballot. The candidates endorsed by the letter won all four seats.
The letter also brought up a Jan. 30 school committee meeting where the committee voted to renew Superintendent Michael Sullivan’s contract.
“One of the four candidates running on the Save the Indian slate expressed opposition to Dr. Sullivan and then called out as he left the room, ‘In May, the town will speak, and the four of you will be out on your asses!’” quoted the letter.
In a later paragraph, the writers of the letter state they are concerned that continuing the fight over the logo “may destabilize our school district and set back the strengthening of our schools and the healing of divisions in our community just at the time our income losses to choice and charter have finally stabilized and overall enrollment has actually increased.”
Public Information Officer Gerry Tuoti from the state Ethics Commission offered some background on the state conflict of interest law that governs how public officials may act, but he was unable to speak about the Selectboard’s actions specifically.
The law does not allow an elected board, such as a selectboard, to act as “a single entity” to endorse or oppose a candidate for office, said Tuoti.
Elected officials are not prevented from acting as individuals to endorse a candidate for office, even if they identify themselves by their official title.
“If an elected official or appointed official is acting on their own and not using public resources or positions, then they generally enjoy many of the same rights as anybody else when it comes to engaging in political activity,” he added.
The law prohibits public employees from using public resources, including time, funds, public email addresses, or stationery, to engage in campaign activity.
Reach Christie Wisniewski at:
cwisniewski@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 280