The Misinformation Miasma

Recently I was in a small business in town and I asked the owner what she thought about the Charter Study Commission’s work and the possibility of a change of government in Hillsborough.

Well… she was aware of the CSC (unlike many of Hillsborough’s residents) and she was upset because if they changed Hillsborough’s form of government all heck was going to break loose. All the ordinances and zoning would change and it would cost hundreds-of-thousands of dollars and there would be no responsibility to the voters and if we voted in a mayor and didn’t like him we would be stuck with that person for years … and the sky is falling, the sky is falling.

When she finally paused, I asked where on earth she had heard all that? She has a customer involved in all that political stuff who “knows the truth”.

Trying to be the voice of reason, I pointed out that all ordinances wouldn’t change, just the few that needed to be reworded or updated to reflect the new form of government. Zoning wouldn’t change if we had an elected mayor or a manager. While we could be stuck with an elected mayor we didn’t like, we could – under our current form of government - get a council-appointed mayor we didn’t like. No one could judge the cost without knowing what the change was.

She listened politely [I am a regular customer] and reluctantly conceded that okay maybe those things wouldn’t change, but it was obvious that in her heart she believed that, for the most part, horrible things were going to happen if we changed our government to any form other than the one we have now.

It is apparent that an anonymous Hillsborough cabal has made it their mission to run a misinformation campaign that started even before the CSC members were sworn in. They work through individual contacts, repeated anonymous postings on Hillsborough-related forums including personal attacks on the duly elected CSC members, and disrupting websites that attempt to provide neutral educational material on the alternate forms of government available to Hillsborough.

This campaign has involved name-calling, causing alarm amongst the residents, threats of multi-million dollar tax increases, and unfavorable comparisons with the governments of large urban towns in New Jersey. They are convincing residents that any changes will mean soaring township costs, no responsibility to the voters, changes in all the ordinances and zones - always for the worse, and [one of the most bizarre] the entire municipal government – staff, commissions, boards, volunteers, employees - will cease to exist at midnight, December 31st of the year the change occurs throwing the entire town into disarray.

We can only hope that through citizen education Hillsborough residents will begin to recognize tactics that are so obviously outrageous they will be seen as the desperate schemes they are.

This has gone beyond misinformation and become the worst of politics and power.

##

miasma: 1.- A poisonous atmosphere once believed to rise from swamps and cause disease. 2. – A harmful influence (Webster’s II Dictionary).