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I recently filed a right to know request with the City of Manchester on four specific matters that had been pending before the city. Mayor Gatsas was displeased with my request, calling it "insane"; interesting that exercising my right to review public documents is deemed insane by the mayor, rather an exercise of my constitutional rights.
I'm still plowing through, but one item that was near the top of the pile in the mayor's files involved Blue Hampshire, so I thought I would share it. Back in March, kbartek posted a diary here about the school committee and the board of aldermen not keeping MCTV, the local education and government stations, under the auspices of the school district. I posted a comment.
Will Infantine, a Republican state rep, chairman of the board of MCAM, the public access station, and who was until recently chairman of the Manchester Republican committee, e mailed the whole posting to the mayor's assistant; in his e mail, he said, "This person has a history of writing things about MCAM and MCTV. We think they actually work for MCTV but cannot trace it back. This will let you know what they are thinking."
So, you have a Republican state representative saying "we" - whoever "we" may be - cannot trace back the identity of an anonymous poster here at Blue Hampshire. I guess that means he and whoever else is in "we" tried to uncover who it was who had the audacity to post something here at Blue Hampshire anonymously. And, although he was unable to find out who the poster might be, and had no basis from which to draw any conclusion, he and whoever else constituted "we" came to the conclusion that the person had to work at MCTV. Since there are only five employees working at MCTV, he was in essence telling the mayor, we think it is one of these five people. Even though he had nothing to base that on.
If Rep. Infantine doesn't like what the person says, he can respond, but it is a little chilling on free speech when an elected official not only monitors web sites, but tries to uncover the identity of someone who posts anonymously. That person, whoever he may be, has a right to free speech, and also has the right to post here anonymously (and Will, if you are reading, no, I don't klnow who it is, so don't go speculating that I am trying to protect someone at MCTV).
Another troubling fact about this e mail is the timing - it comes at a time when the future employment of the five employees at MCTV and MCAM are under discussion. Pointing the finger at those employees, based on sheer speculation, when their jobs are on the line, seems a little retaliatory to me, especially when coming from an elected official who, according to other records I've seen, seems to have conversations with Mayor Gatsas on a regular basis.
