Awad and Hubley: What's the issue?

By BOB ACKERMANN

Published on August 01, 2008

I was saddened to read of Anne Awad's resignation from the Select Board. On many occasions during discussions at Select Board meetings, I have regarded her comments as both compassionate and wise. My belief is that she has played a centrist role in Select Board decisions that will be difficult to replace.

Given her years of exemplary service to the town, she deserved to be able to complete her elected term on the board, and to be appropriately thanked at the end of that term. Instead, she is riding a wave of awful publicity all the way to South Hadley. My entire personal interaction with Anne Awad consists of a couple of brief conversations during breaks when I happened to be at Select Board meetings. I think I can therefore approach this situation with reasonable objectivity, noting that Amherst completely lacks an appropriate way of thanking those who have volunteered considerable personal time to the good of the town, and who have served long hours without any trace of personal agendas.

It might have been seen as a fairy tale romance: "Anne and Robie fell hopelessly in love at Select Board meetings." Unfortunately for romance, it was given another twist: "Something bad happened - Anne and Robie fell in love at Select Board meetings." Why this? Some apparently feared that Anne and Robie would discuss town affairs in private, and then vote as a bloc on Select Board motions. Curiously, the fact that Anne and Robie did not always vote the same way did not trump the fear that they might do so, and so it may not be necessary to read history books to get the flavor of Puritanism in New England.

Robie was removed from the Select Board at the next election. But then a new question arose. Was Anne really resident in Amherst? This one is a little tricky. The Amherst Town Government Act does not explicitly require that Select Board members be residents of the town of Amherst.

However, it does explicitly discuss the conditions under which the town manager may or may not be a resident of Amherst, and it assumes that Town Meeting members will be elected from their precincts, that is, where they reside in the opinion of the Board of Registrars. This suggests that the document silently assumes that Select Board members must be Amherst residents, but as the act is written, this is a matter for a lawyer's inference.

Now for the tricky part. If someone owns several properties where they might reside, they are legally free to declare which of them is their residence, and that one does not have to be the one where they spend most of their time.

So, to take a nonhypothetical, if Anne owns a residence in Amherst and also one in South Hadley, she can more or less decide where she is resident (pick one). And if she chooses Amherst, she seems entitled to complete her elected term.

This is not a local form of chicanery. Recall when Mitt Romney suddenly remembered that he was actually resident in his Massachusetts home even though he had been hanging around Utah for years, but wanted to run for governor of the commonwealth? OK, why not let the term run out, thank the incumbent for her service, and move on? This would not preclude fair public criticism of any of her public views.

One citizen, taking on the role of a volunteer paparazzo, was not convinced. His blog observed that Anne and Robie had bought a house in South Hadley, clearly intending to move there, something, even if true, that seems almost certainly quite irrelevant to the question of current legal residency. Pictures were posted of Anne gardening on her South Hadley property (but not on her Amherst property), and the claim was advanced that the only issue was whether the photographer's feet were or were not on her property at the time, given the view that public officials may have all of their activities monitored in the public interest.

Are we to understand that public figures must lose any private space in a democracy? Phone calls in the middle of the night to test location? Beyond some point, intrusion into legitimate privacy becomes hard to distinguish from 17th century torture.

What is the source of the energy behind all of this? Can one not leave Paradise without revealing a serious character fault? Is it that married couples should not serve together on the Select Board, which a simple change in language could bring about?

It is useful to remember in a flurry of personal attacks that the absence of married couples on the Select Board is no guarantee of the absence of collusive voting.

Bob Ackermann is a retired professor.