There’s a kerfuffle going on in Wellfleet over clamshells.
The town shellfish department uses cultch — recycled clam and oyster shells that form a bed for oyster larvae to grow on — to expand the propagation areas on the flats and increase the local harvest. The cultch is trucked in from off-Cape at more than $1,000 a load, and this year the department hit on a way to save some money by coordinating the pickups with trips by town DPW trucks already making trash and recycling deliveries across the canal.
But that led to charges of impropriety from Jude Ahern, a dogged critic of both the DPW and Shellfish Warden Nancy Civetta. Ahern bombarded DPW Director Jay Norton with insulting and accusatory emails about the cultch, and Norton decided to stop the pickups.
Civetta went to the select board last week, complaining that Ahern’s emails amounted to “harassment.” Select board chair John Wolf responded with a lengthy statement that some in Wellfleet are saying has been long overdue. He said the cultch emails were “merely the tip of the iceberg” — that Ahern has been waging “a verbal reign of terror” against town officials and staff for years, and he vowed to do something about it.
Ahern’s critiques include repeated complaints about town boards violating the Open Meeting Law along with requests for copies of public records. Wolf said that in the last fiscal year the town had spent nearly $18,000 on legal fees responding to Ahern’s accusations and demands. “The public record requests absorb a staggering amount of time,” he said.
And there’s another cost, he said: demoralized staff and fed-up volunteer board members. “Ask yourself why anybody would want to voluntarily subject themselves to such unreasoning abuse,” said Wolf.
This might sound like small-town squabbling, but I see it as a local reflection of a national delusion. Many Americans have been persuaded that the country’s problems are the result of too much government and that the solution is to tear the government down. They see conspiracies behind every town hall office door. They are using laws designed to guarantee fundamental rights like freedom of speech and access to public records to bully officials and government employees and force them to waste time responding to frivolous demands. Widespread threats, trolling, and abuse are causing librarians, local election officials, and public health workers to leave their professions. The very idea of public service work is disappearing.
Ahern has a right to question town policies and spending, to examine public records, and to expect town business to be conducted in public. Journalists pursue those same goals. But something strange happens when the inquest begins with the assumption that there is no good will among those who work in government. It makes legitimate questioning of public officials more difficult.
John Wolf says he and town counsel have come up with some new rules. But maybe what’s needed is simply that we stand up for the old ones. The First Amendment protects free speech, even when it’s harsh. But bullies will succeed in sabotaging our civic life only if we let them.
