Town of Rockport, I'm confused.

On the one hand, we were told town officials were overwhelmed by a series of Freedom of Access Act requests. That is the excuse it gave, anyway, after a resident took the town to court for taking months to respond to his records request.

Despite these crushing burdens, though, the town's leadership seems to have found the time to craft a self-congratulatory press release patting itself on the back for “careful budgeting and financial planning” and “responsible financial management.” This press release was timed to accompany the sending out of the latest round of property tax bills—first installment due soon!—which, despite all this “careful budgeting,” still reflect a doubling of municipal spending in just the last five years.

The press release was even accompanied by an extensive social media campaign, complete with a slick graphic—developed by town staff and paid for by you—that again sang the Select Board's praises.

All of this follows a similar “pat-ourselves-on-the-back” statement from the Board earlier this year, where they again took credit for a “thoughtful, deliberate effort” to keep town spending level with the previous year. What's next, an airplane flying over the harbor trailing a banner heaping still more praise on the Select Board?

What is strange is that I don't remember anything like this when, in 2022, the town's budget went up $1.2 million. Or the following year when it went up another million. Or the year after when it went up $2.3 million. Or the year after that, when it went up yet another $1.2 million. The leaders of this Select Board are almost certainly the most profligate spenders in the town's history, yet we never heard a peep about that.

Strange, but not unexpected.

That this leadership can complain about residents seeking answers while directing town staff to say nice things about them should surprise nobody. It is totally consistent with the mindset that has come to define the town's leadership for the last few years: steadily cut-off opportunities for information and engagement, then put the machinery of town government to work to advance the Board's own big-spending, big-government agenda.

The slow-rolling of records requests, and the contempt the Board has for them, is only the latest chapter in what I once called a war against budget transparency.

This is the Board leadership that got rid of Town Meeting, where residents genuinely engaged with the town's budget and voted on it article by article.

This is the Board leadership that consolidated those budget articles, so instead of residents reviewing different groupings of town functions and voting for or against each, the entire budget has been folded into a single up-or-down question: one $12.5 million article, take it or leave it.

This is the Board leadership that, as my own FOAA request revealed, drafted changes to the Town Charter that would have completely eliminated the Budget Committee. And I mean eliminate it entirely. It would no longer exist as a municipal entity. It would have been replaced, under this proposal, with a single “public meeting,” to be held after the Select Board had already approved the budget, and at which residents could offer comments that the board was free to ignore.

What did the Budget Committee do, by the way, to land in the crosshairs of the Select Board Chair?

The 2022 Budget Committee, as evidenced by that year's Town Warrant, had the temerity to disagree with the Select Board, recommending “no” votes on a number of budget articles. For that impropriety (one must never, ever disagree with the Select Board), the Committee was marked for elimination that very next year.

I should note that my many critiques of this Board leadership have only earned me a few Strongly Worded Letters. I should count myself lucky, I guess.

The Budget Committee survived, but in diminished form. Its budget recommendations—the very thing that got the 2022 Committee in trouble—now reach the Town Warrant only if the Board allows it. They couldn't abolish the Committee, so they settled for controlling it, which was the goal all along. And when the Committee last met, those watching from home saw nothing: the meeting wasn't broadcast.

If you're troubled by any of this and want to say so, make it quick—this same Board voted weeks ago to limit public comment at their meetings to three minutes. How can they write more fawning press releases about themselves if you keep turning up to chew up their time with your opinions?

Around that same time, the Board also started complaining about those Freedom of Access requests. But they, of all people, should be the least surprised by a frustrated public trying to find some way to get the information they want. They made this happen. Strip residents of the ordinary ways of learning what their town is doing—bury the budget numbers deeper in the Town Report each year, turn the town's own newsletter into taxpayer-funded advocacy in support of the Board's positions—and you force people to rely on those avenues for public engagement and information that, luckily, can't be curtailed by a town government that simply doesn't want to hear about it.

And how does this Board respond to its residents increasingly exercising this right? True to form, a Board member floated posting the names of the residents who file these requests on the town's website for the sake of “transparency.” The real intent, of course, is public shaming: “look how much money and aggravation your neighbor is costing the town, isn't it sad that they are doing this? Wouldn't it be better if they stopped asking?”

Confronted with people asking questions, the instinct of this Board is, invariably, to push back, to tighten its control, to stifle dissent, and, it appears, to make an example of anyone who criticizes it.

Which is the whole story in a sentence. The problem for this Select Board was never the records requests, the budget critiques, or people taking too long at the microphone. The problem, as this Board sees it, is you.

Stephen Bowen lives in Rockport and is a member of the Rockport Budget Committee.