Annual town meetings were once held in the Center School Auditorium. Seated on uncomfortable metal folding chairs, it was either too hot or too cold and always inundated with pesky mosquitoes. Town meeting was not something you so much attended but, rather, something you endured.
On one occasion I recall someone, a new resident I suspect, was recognized by then moderator Don Hyde. The new boy in town stood from his chair and immediately began an impassioned plea supporting some issue. Immediately, I heard a voice that I recognized as former moderator Herb Potter boom out, “Who’s speaking?”
In true Yankee town meeting tradition Herb Potter was asking the speaker to identify himself. The moderator halted the speaker and requested the speaker give his name and address. Thus satisfying the moderator and town meeting attendees, the speaker was allowed to continue. I have often thought about that incident and I have come to believe that we need to ask, “Who’s speaking?” for us in a broader sense.
Fifty years ago, when someone stood at town meeting to speak, they were known to the members. This was a small town. Friends, family, farming, and orchard owners developed common bonds that provided stability to the community. When someone spoke at town meeting, everyone knew pretty much who they were, what they were going to say, and why they were saying it.
Today things are different. Stow is a community of transients. People come, and people go. People sleep here and work there. The common bonds of the community represented by friends, family, farming, and orchards are gone. The town is losing, or has lost, its roots and is losing its institutional memory. So when someone speaks at town meeting or runs for selectman or other elective office, who is that person and what do they represent?
Recently, I discovered a tool that helps provide me with insights into the mind of a speaker or candidate and partially answers the question, “Who’s speaking?” There exists a database maintained by the state called the OCPF—the Office of Campaign and Political Finance”.
The site explains, “OCPF maintains a searchable database of all electronically filed reports on the EFS (electronic filing system). You can search reports by committee, candidate or by an office sought. All contribution records or all expenditure records can be searched at once using a number of different criteria such as town/city, minimum amount, or recipient.”
Now, this interested me. With a few clicks I could see who contributed to what political campaign. While it may be political voyeurism, it was a peek into the mind and political leanings of the contributor. I sat at my laptop computer and entered www.mass.gov/ocpf/ and studied the directions. With great anticipation I clicked the top field in the left pane, “View Online Reports”. In a paragraph headed “Searchable Database” I clicked a highlighted phrase “searchable database”. Seemed to make sense. Up popped a browser window that welcomed me “to the OCPF Searchable Campaign Finance Database & Electronic Filing System”. I fumbled around and found, in the left pane, a field that identified the types of searches available to the curious.
I selected “Contributions”, and up popped a form. It allowed many different search handles, but for brevities sake I chose “City/Town” and selected “Stow” from a pull down menu and entered the “01775” in the “Zip Code” field. I let “Filer Type” default to “all” and chose to sort by “Contribution Date” in ascending order. Eagerly I found and clicked the “Search” button.
I was rewarded with page after page of contributor, contributor’s occupation, recipient, and amount. I entered every Selectman’s last name and every 2010 potential candidates last name, and their spouses’ last names—if different. I was truly astounded by the largess of some of our residents. What fun. There are so, so many answers to questions that you can make up as you peruse the reports. It’s as if I were playing Johnny Carson’s The Great Karnak. For example, I open the envelope and the answer is, “Two $500 kisses to the now disgraced Massachusetts Speaker of the House Sal Dimasi.” Another envelope might contain the answer “$16,145”.
Nothing, and I repeat nothing, is illegal, but I’m using OCPF as a resource into the minds and political leanings of those citizen legislators to determine “Who’s speaking?” and their likelihood of speaking for me.
Impaled On The Fencepost 