Dear Reader, at the close of my essay, Rockport’s proposed budget is out. Did they hear us? Well, kind of…, I noted that there was "promising news" about the town's budget and the budget review process to come.

I was wrong about this.

Three minutes into the March 4 opening budget review hearing, Select Board Chair Denise Munger read a statement from the Select Board (she was acting in her role as Select Board chair at the time, so I assume she was speaking on behalf of the entire Select Board), which expressed "disappointment" that "a member of the Budget Committee" had "felt the need" to share his "unconsidered" opinion about the proposed budget. My specific crime? That I chose to include in my byline that I "serve on the budget committee."

Why, you might ask, would this be an issue?

According to Ms. Munger and Board, by noting with that byline that I am a member of the Budget Committee, I was, they insist, intentionally trying to fool you you all into thinking that my own views on the budget represented the views of the entire Budget Committee.

I was, she said, "cloaking" my personal views as the view of the Committee as a whole.

Anyone who has read my essays on this or who knows me personally knows this is garbage. At no point in the essay do I suggest that I speak for the Committee, and, indeed, at no point in any of my essays on the budget, all of which contained this same byline, did I ever make that claim. 

I am not an officer of the Committee, and not once has anyone asked me whether I was speaking on behalf of the Committee.

At no point over the course of the past year of writing these pieces has anyone from the Committee or the Select Board or the Town Office indicated to me that a resident came to them with any confusion about this.

No reader has ever left a comment in response to my essays suggesting I was unclear about this, and the Pilot's editor has never come to me with this issue.

This is, in fact, not an issue at all. For anyone. The issue, clearly, is that I continue, and intend to continue, sharing my views with all of you directly in the interest of ensuring that residents have as much information as possible with which to render their judgement on the budget.

I will not be silenced by the Select Board or anyone else, despite Ms. Munger's lecture last night.

There is more to say on all this, and on the budget more fully as we go forward, and that will come soon enough. Stay tuned!

Stephen Bowen lives in Rockport and serves on the Rockport Budget Committee