THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
BY DANIEL W. DRAKE ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Not to belabor the obvious, but the political season has arrived on Nantucket.

Like the national political races, this particular season seems a bit longer than usual. Maybe that is because the special election is barely behind us. On the other hand, the election is just three weeks away and the Annual Town Meeting convenes on April 9.

We have already had the Civic League's "Meet the Articles" session and we will all "Meet the Candidates" this Friday at 4 p.m. in the Atheneum's Great Hall. If you can't be there in person, catch the reruns of these information meetings on TV.

Two of the selectman candidates had a party last week to kick off their campaigns. Another was campaigning at the dump on Sunday. Bumper stickers and buttons are appearing around town. This year, it will be difficult for any voters to claim that they don't know who is running. Even one of the write-in candidates for SHAB is passing out business-like cards asking for support.

In the past few days, some odd political stories have come to the fore.

Early last week, the Planning Board (by a split vote) declined to give a positive recommendation to the Harbor Overlay District (zoning) articles submitted on behalf of the Harbor Plan Committee. The stated rationale of those voting against the positive recommendation was that the language of the articles, even with a lot of tweaking, was too harsh on residential property owners. However, rather than give the proponents a chance to continue to work the language before town meeting, as the supportive members of the board suggested, the effect of the split vote was to give the articles a negative recommendation.

There is no way of knowing if the outcome would have been different if the Chairman had been present at the Planning Board meeting so that the vote would not have been tied. Be that as it may, all is not lost for the proponents of the Harbor Overlay District, but they have an unnecessary extra hurdle to overcome in their effort to get the concept adopted by Town Meeting.

Later in the week, the Finance Committee, a body appointed by the Board of Selectmen, took up the Town Government Study Committee's articles recommending that the Historic District Commission, SHAB and the Planning Board be appointed rather than elected. This is a vexing question with worthy arguments on both sides. It is easy to feel one way in the morning and the opposite way by nightfall. One of the chief arguments against making the boards appointed is the ability of the members of the appointing body to exercise undue influence over appointed board members' votes. The offset argument is that the voters should have faith in the officials who they have elected not to use undue influence.

There was little consistency to the FinCom members' votes on these three articles. The outcome was that positive recommendations were given to the articles dealing with appointing the members of the HDC and SHAB, while, by a vote of 4-3, the article dealing with the appointment of Planning Board members received a negative recommendation.

And then, it seems, Selectman Michael Kopko set himself up as a poster child for the opponents of appointing the boards' members. According to someone who was present and confirmed by two of the FinCom members, Kopko approached the three remaining Fin Com members after the meeting, and strongly suggested to them - even as they tried to explain their rationales - that, because of their vote on the Planning Board article, he would never vote for their re-appointment to the FinCom.

(Kopko acknowledges telling the group that he was disappointed in the vote's outcome but was about not voting for their reappointment to one of the FinCom members, rather than to himself.) True, he is only one of five selectmen who appoint FinCom members, but it is the sort of behavior attributed to him which gives the appointment alternative a bad name.

Then there is the story which isn't a story and needs to be put to bed. Selectman candidate Rick Atherton's name keeps being bandied about unflatteringly because of something that happened in his off-island life back in the 1980s. One of the great features about living in this era is that stories like these can be easily checked right at one's desk. Google is very helpful.

Atherton was chief operating officer of City Federal, a savings and loan in New Jersey, in the mid- and late- 1980s. Like almost all S&Ls in that period, City Federal got into trouble as the result of tighter regulation and some over-enthusiastic lending. Again, like a great many similar institutions, it was shut down by the banking regulators and, as in every other similar case, the officers and directors of the S&L were sued by the Resolution Trust Company. The civil litigation was ultimately settled, as it was in the great majority of the cases; the proceedings in this instance lasted, in all, about 14 years.

More importantly, in the face of the recent whisperings here, neither Atherton nor any of the other officers and directors sued by the RTC was charged with any crime in connection with the regulatory action, a fact which was reiterated and underscored by the courts in the civil litigation. There were numerous instances of other failed S&Ls where criminal charges were leveled against senior management in connection with acts leading to the failure, but that did not happen in this case. (There was a coincidental, unrelated criminal proceeding against one of the bank's officers.)

The S&L "crisis" of the 1980s was one of those unfortunate events in our country's history. Many factors came into play to create the crisis, not the least of which, as it so often is, was the effect of timing. Many people got caught up in the net that the federal banking regulators threw across the industry - sometimes only for using poor judgment.

The point is, for the selectman's race, Atherton's role at City Federal should not be an issue. He has long been a part of the Nantucket's civic fabric as an active participant in the community. Let the old stories go! The voters should judge him, not on the basis of bad rumors about old news, but on what we have seen and heard about his performance here.

What conundrums will next week bring?

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The "Lighthouse Keeper" reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent the editorial position of The Nantucket Independent. Please send any ideas or comments to drake@nantucketindependent. com.