To the editor:
The open-meeting section of Maine’s Freedom of Access Act often is taken for granted, but it was conceptualized by common citizens. For example, Aldene Gordon was a newspaper reporter who championed the enactment of the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law and testified for its passage in 1958.
Her activism stemmed from her own experience as a local reporter. She attempted to cover a routine selectmen’s meeting at the town hall but was escorted out by the local police. Not to be deterred, she found her way to the basement, dodging the pipes in the process. She stood directly under the floorboards where she could clearly hear the proceedings. With a flashlight in her mouth, she recorded the entire meeting in shorthand in her notebook. The newspaper account was published the next day and the three members of the board of selectmen were at odds about who leaked what to the press.
When she later served as a member of the board of selectmen, Gordon refused to sign payroll warrants because cemetery commissioners held their meetings in private. The standoff ended when the commissioners publicized the agenda and opened their meetings to the public — in the tomb of the local cemetery. Few members of the public attended, but the point was made.
Thanks, Tom McCord, for reminding us in a May 3 BDN OpEd that transparency is preferable to secrecy and that our predecessors fought hard for the right to know what is really going on in our communities.
