Yesterday, I received a phone call from a Lebanon, CT resident concerned about a town meeting that had been scheduled for last night. The purpose of the meeting was to ‘Consider and act upon an Ordinance providing for the separate consideration of the General Town Budget and the Board of Education Budget’. However, last November during the municipal elections there had been a ballot question asking if the town should enact such an ordinance. If it was already voted on in November, why was there this special meeting?

Lebanon is a small town in eastern Connecticut. The population was just under seven thousand at the 2000 Census. In 2005, there were about 4,800 voters in the town. The local paper is the Norwich Bulletin from the city 12 miles to the southeast.

Last November, there was a ballot question about whether or not the town should enact an ordinance separating the town budget from the education budget. Prior to the vote, there were a couple of informatory meetings to discuss the pros and cons of the proposal, but only a few people showed up for the meetings.

According to the town clerk’s office, this ballot question received 954 yes votes and 391 no votes. However, this question did not have the language of an ordinance and was only informatory to the town boards. Based on the results, a town meeting was scheduled to vote on the ordinance.

On February 18th, the Board of Selectmen posted a Legal Notice of the Special Town Meeting. It was posted in the Norwich Bulletin, on the town website and at town hall. Still, many people did not know about the meeting or about the issue.

Last night, around 150 people showed up for the town meeting. After a discussion of the proposed ordinance there was a paper ballot where 101 people voted against the ordinance and 49 voted for it.

It may well be that there is something about this in the Norwich Bulletin, but my search online turned up nothing. Previously, I’ve written about Public Notices and Covering the News. In order for ballot questions and votes on proposed ordinances at town meetings to be meaningful, voters need to know about the town meetings as well as understand the issues they are voting on. I suspect that many of my friends could argue strong points on either side of whether or not a town ordinance to separate the town budget from the education budget would be a good thing. Unfortunately, this debate did not seem to happen in any visible manner in Lebanon. Either people didn’t know, didn’t care, or couldn’t attend the town meeting.

Yesterday, Chris Powell, posed the question, What are legals worth? in a column in the Journal Inquirer. He writes:

In determining whether the legal notice requirement gives value, the value of news reporting about government has to be considered, since that is also what legal notice advertising pays for and what will diminish if that advertising diminishes. Right now Connecticut's newspapers report about state and local government all out of proportion to the public's interest, apparently in the belief that the public should be more civic-minded than it is and that newspapers should strive to compensate for the long decline in civic virtue.

I do believe that newspapers should strive to compensate for the long decline in civic virtue. They need to do it for the good of the country as well as for their own good. He is right in noting that newspapers report about local government disproportionately to the apparent public interest. Yet there may be a chicken and egg problem here. Why are people interested, or not interested in something? Does some of it have to do with whether or not it is being reported on?

Unfortunately, despite the legal notice about the town meeting, the Norwich Bulletin does not appear to have covered the event and there was low turnout. Yes, Mr. Powell is right, the value of news reporting about government needs to be considered, and in this case I have to question the value of the legal notice in the Norwich Bulletin and the value of any reporting it might have generated.