Toward the end of the exchange, DiMattia makes the practical point that Durfee could easily ask questions and make suggestions in person or over the phone, without waiting two weeks for the opportunity to engage in political theater. That’s especially true, considering that the council does not appoint the treasurer; the townspeople elect him.

One notable action taken was to respond in the affirmative to a letter from former council member Brian Medeiros requesting that the administrator publish the effect on services of various budgetary scenarios. Council Member Jay Lambert made the point that the council doesn’t really have that information. I’d suggest further that it’s likely that government officials might be selective in what consequences they’d include, because the possibilities are endless. (Cut this much from that; this much from that; all of that; etc.)

Treasurer Phil DiMattia just announced that the previously apparent loss of money in the landfill investment account turned out to have been an error. The money is there and “invested wisely.”

7:28 p.m.

By the way, I offer this merely as a general observation. During the Pledge of Allegiance, Council Member Louise Durfee declines to say, “under God.” She’s perfectly within her rights to do so, but I’ve never actually observed anybody exercising that right. (Incidentally, I only noticed because she stands right next to the flag and, not per my usual habits, I’m sitting perpendicular to her and the flag.)

7:53 p.m.

The agenda’s actually moving along quite rapidly. Maybe I’ll get home by bedtime, after all.

8:30 p.m.

Go, Hannibal Costa! Fire Chief Robert Lloyd is requesting adoption of a resolution to establish a “national incident management system.” The catch is that it comes from the federal government with a threat to withhold funding if the town doesn’t follow its orders. Sayeth Hannibal: “I see swastikas all over this thing.” His point is that the feds want to insist on things, but it doesn’t sound good (“like a dictatorship”), so they request an action and threaten the withholding of money. “What country is this?”

I’ve got to say that, on this matter, Hannibal’s is precisely the attitude that we need to permeate town and state governments across the country if the nation is going to pull back from the brink. Back to Hannibal: “This is the way Hitler took over Germany.”

8:34 p.m.

Teitz is up. First thing I notice is that he’s reading the policy this time, whereas in January he simply stated that he was putting forward a proposal for General Assembly action, clearly knowing it was going away.

Jay Lambert is responding, clearly wanting changes to the policy. (See my previous post for details.)

8:38 p.m.

He’s stressing that subsection (d) forbids the town from exceeding the cap unless one of four circumstances applies, the town notifies the state, and the state acknowledges that the circumstances apply. It is section (e) that creates the issue, and Jay’s arguing that it requires a 4/5 town council vote in addition to a majority of the electors at the financial town meeting.

8:44 p.m.

Jay has continued: Subsections (d) and (e) do not allow a taxpayer to raise taxes above the cap for the first time at the FTM. As a town, at the FTM, we do not have authority to violate the cap in such a way as to ignore the rest of the statute. Otherwise, it means “in effect, there is no tax cap for the town of Tiverton.”

Now, he’s offering a counter-proposal that would adopt his interpretation as a policy.

8:47 p.m.

Louise Durfee is responding. Dissembling. She said, essentially as Lambert did, that nobody disputes the applicability of (d). Already, it seems as if Teitz has done a horrible job of acknowledging the law as everybody in the room apparently understands it.

Durfee has now returned to describing everybody in the room during a conference at the time that the tax cap legislation passed. This is entirely immaterial, because the law as written, after all of the debate and rewriting in the legislature, represents the consensus will of the legislature, not any legislator’s interpretation.

8:55 p.m.

She makes the further argument that the town charter doesn’t permit the town council to presume to allow (or not) the financial town meeting to take particular actions. But if the state law encumbers the FTM according to subsection (d), it can clearly require the FTM to follow the town council in the series of approvals required to exceed the cap.

In response to a question from Council Member Cecil Leonard, Teitz rattled off a bizarre interpretation that the “also” in subsection (e) applies to subsection (d). With this guy “interpreting” the law for the council, the law has no meaning.

9:04 p.m.

Council President Don Bollin is making various points regarding the difficulty that following the law will present as a practical matter at the FTM. Specifically, he argued that a motion to increase the school budget could require the municipal budget to be reduced then and there. Well, yeah. That would be an argument that the town council should make before the vote to increase the school side is taken. That the law is inconvenient does not invalidate it.

9:18 p.m.

And on and on they go. It’s frustrating to watch people expend so much energy trying to explain that words don’t mean what they say because they want the law to be something that it is not.

9:22 p.m.

Been having technical difficulties. Budget Committee Chairman Jeff Caron is arguing that the council must approve by 4/5 and the FTM must approve by a majority. He’s also introducing the possibility that the FTM might increase taxes while most voters were unaware even of the the possibility of double-digit increases.

Budget Committee Vice Chair (and lawyer) Rob Coulter is now reviewing specific technical matters of the law.

9:29 p.m.

Council Vice Chair Joanne Arruda is stating that “the simplest spirit of that law” is that the “governing body” is the FTM. Why then the “also”? It also requires the statute to mean different things by “governing body” in different places.

9:39 p.m.

Boy, this is a long meeting. I charged my camera fully before coming and just had to plug it in. Missed some of the action, but it’s the same thing ongoing. One side explaining what the law clearly says, and the other claiming that it doesn’t matter for one reason or other.

9:57 p.m.

Still going. The council is trying to figure out how to proceed from here.

I can’t help but think of the school committee’s decision simply to ignore last year’s FTM requirement that it return town money if additional funds came from the state or federal governments. What we’re witnessing, here, is an attempt to insist on an unlawful policy when there are people in the room objecting.

10:06 p.m.

I’m not typing because I’m flabbergasted. The council is trying to get Teitz to redraft the policy, and Durfee now suggests that the council ought to have to vote by majority to send a levy on the budget committee after the state approves exceeding the cap. Where that comes from, in the law, I have no idea. Again… backfilling to make the law do what it does not do.

10:11 p.m.

It looks like they’re going to approve having Teitz redraft the policy with some minor adjustments, including specifying that subsection (d) applies to the financial town meeting, but not, apparently, (e). Where does that come from?

11:02 p.m. (from home)

They actually asked Teitz to tackle the initial provisions that get the policy up to the state’s approval of the excess levy, with the plan to take up the rest later.

A grab-bag of issues gave rise to the questioning, which were numerous and remained largely unresolved. It was unclear at meeting’s end what actions the treasurer would take in response to the council’s expressed concerns. In addition, there were other known questions that went unasked due to Mr. DiMattia’s unexpected departure.

One issue discussed at length was a $46,267 item listed in the annual financial audit, that appeared as a public works “expenditure” in the restricted landfill closure account.

With Mr. DiMattia before them at the witness table, council members fired away.

As a restricted account, the landfill money is not supposed to be available for spending. Other issues that the members raised had to do with the absence of interest reported on sewer interceptor bonds, questions with reporting of abatements, and spending on an audit that the council expresses authority to approve. No accusations of wrongdoing have been made, that I’ve seen.

Mr. DiMattia published a letter in yesterday’s Newport Daily News that addressed such issues:

The article states incorrectly that there are outstanding financial reports that are overdue on revenues, expenditures and interest income. I have completed all financial reports through January 2010 and issued an 82-page investment report to the Town Council. The council and I agreed that as treasurer, I will prepare an investment report on a quarterly basis and the next investment report is due in April.

The article also was incorrect when it implied that as town treasurer, I am responsible for budget shortfalls. The Tiverton town charter, Section 602, states that the Tiverton town treasurer’s only budget responsibility is to prepare an annual department budget for the treasurer’s office, which is submitted to the Budget Committee for review and approval. The revenue and expenditure budget is a collective effort of all department heads, the town administrator, the Town Council members and the Budget Committee and approved by the voters of Tiverton at the annual financial town meeting in May. …

The article once again is incorrect in assigning blame to the treasurer for the loss in the Landfill Investment Account. This account is being reviewed and still must be verified by detailed schedules yet to be received for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, from the audit firm Parmelee, Poirier & Associates LLP. All of these landfill investments were made by prior treasurers before I became treasurer in fiscal 2009. I will complete a financial analysis of all landfill investments included in the audit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, and present a report at the next Town Council meeting on March 8.

As a budgetary matter as well as a political one, this dispute bears watching. It’s already evidence, however, of the importance of contention in government at all levels. When officials who are ultimately accountable only to the voters butt heads, they tend to correct each other’s mistakes and scatter information beyond the town hall, state house, or capitol and into the public consciousness.