Make a gift in honor of the good that comes from BDN journalism in your hands, and help raise $60,000 this spring to support our reporting. Make a donation now.
This post was originally published by The Belfast, Maine Conversation. To receive regular coverage from the Belfast, Maine Conversation, sign up for a free subscription here.
I was asked recently why I appear softer on the county versus the city when I editorialize. That’s a fair question.
In Belfast, basic governance questions too often become personal. Asking about process, records, spending, or authority is treated as if the question itself is hostile. I have experienced that directly and watched it happen to others.
The editorial tone is not intentional. I have a lot of generations of New Englander in me. People raised in working-class or rural New England know there’s a scale for skepticism and sarcasm, and it varies based on the attitude of who you’re dealing with.
I don’t think I’m giving the county a pass so much as reacting to a very different institutional posture.
When I worked in management of nonprofit member-run homeowner associations, I was given straightforward advice: Everything you touch or do, it’s not yours. If anyone asks for anything, short of privileged records, treat it as a document they own. That is the only acceptable posture for someone working in a public-facing role. After two decades of that experience, I can recognize immediately when a response is closed, obstructive, or avoidant — and it usually comes through in organizational culture.
The standard in the United States is that public access improves governance. The overwhelming majority of public records contain mundane details. Often, the resistance to producing them becomes more newsworthy than the records themselves.
In a small town like Belfast, where knowledgeable members of the public are willing to read documents, ask questions, and help identify problems, treating public access as a burden is self-defeating. A government confident in its work should welcome that kind of civic engagement.
When the county budget process was in full swing, Lincolnville Select Board member Steve Hand, who has a technology background, raised questions about IT spending. The county didn’t ignore him, dismiss him, question his motives, or suggest he was out of his lane because he was not a budget committee member. They listened, discussed the issue publicly, and incorporated some of his feedback. They treated an informed resident as a resource rather than a nuisance.
I recently emailed Waldo County IT Director J-sun Bailey asking whether the county could enable public transcript downloads for county meeting videos. Within a day, he contacted vendor support, had the feature enabled, explained how to use it, acknowledged the formatting limitations, and followed up with the vendor on usability improvements — then communicated all of it back to me.
I also had two Maine Freedom of Access Act requests pending during the height of budget season. The county acknowledged them up front, explained they had received many requests and were processing in order. The documents arrived last week without any follow-up from me.
Compare that to Belfast: centralizing responses, resisting records access, treating inquiries as burdensome, and behaving adversarially toward scrutiny.
Waldo County’s culture is even more notable because it has no county administrator. Three commissioners take on a large amount directly and make an effort to communicate and answer questions. Belfast has a city manager, deputy city manager, executive assistant, five councilors, and a mayor — yet councilors have only rarely responded to anything I’ve sent. Mayor Eric Sanders is personally accessible, but institutionally the city behaves as though communication itself is a burden.
I do not have subpoena power or institutional backing. I have words. Bodies that are open, responsive, and willing to engage constructively will naturally receive a different editorial tone than institutions that normalize obstruction. Any governing culture that prefers obstinance to openness should continue to expect the sharpest version of those words.