One hears about the political advantages of incumbency, but the Newport Daily News article that Marcia Pobzeznik published on Tuesday about Monday night’s Town Council meeting takes it to a new level. Essentially, she limits herself to quoting town officials’ perspectives on various budget matters. For example:
Town Councilwoman Louise Durfee said she “cannot live with” some of the cuts made by the Budget Committee majority.
“This is crazy stuff,” she said, citing eliminating the town’s dues to the Newport County Chamber of Commerce and Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, cutting funding for the town’s Economic Development Commission and postage for delinquent tax collection notices and reducing the town planner to part-time.
“I’m not prepared to live with the Budget Committee recommendations,” she said…
TCC President Dave Nelson was in the room, as was Budget Committee member Tom Parker. I’m sure either of them would have been happy to explain a little of the craziness, and perhaps respond to Durfee’s accusation of a lack of compassion by noting struggling residents. Indeed, Council member Jay Lambert spoke about the older folks in town on fixed incomes, and I took the podium to add young working families, like mine, to the list of taxpayers who could use a little compassion, too.
And then Pobzeznik quoted this:
“Some of these justifications to me seem to be personal rather than practical,” Council Vice President Joanne M. Arruda said.
What was Arruda insinuating? What might the people she’s accusing of whatever she’s accusing them of have to say about it? Readers don’t know, because the local journalist didn’t bother to find out, so a government incumbent gets to smear residents vaguely in the pages of the Newport Daily News, and from the paper’s perspective, that’s not only fine, but news worthy of itself.
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