Bruce Vail
Captain
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2015
From the Easton (Md.) Star Democrat:
Council votes again to keep 'Talbot Boys'
- By CHRIS POLK [email protected]
The unanimous decision repeats one the Talbot County Council made in a closed session last fall. But that discussion and decision, held outside the public's view, was found to violate the state's Open Meetings Act.
Tuesday's discussion and vote was an effort to make up for the unannounced, closed meeting and vote.
A brief history of the statue was given by County Attorney Michael Pullen.
The statue is listed as an historical object by the Maryland Historical Trust, he said, and any change has to be approved by the Easton Historical District Commission. The courthouse is also listed and any changes to the courthouse grounds need to be approved by that commission, which is under the auspices of the Town of Easton.
Pullen quoted statistics from the Maryland Historical Trust, saying that in 1914 the Talbot County Commissioners agreed to accept both the Union and Confederate memorials on the courthouse lawn to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.
"The monument (was) sponsored by a committee formed in 1913," Pullen quoted from the record. According to the document, he said, the committee wished to honor Admiral Franklin Buchanan, a Talbot County resident, former Naval Academy superintendent, and commander of the Confederate Navy.
Then it was agreed to honor all the boys in gray. The monument was erected in 1914 and the statue of the color-bearer holding the Confederate flag was added in 1916.
"Efforts in 1914 to raise funds for a Union monument were unsuccessful," Pullen read from the Maryland Historical Trust document.
That would explain why there is a Confederate monument, but none erected for the Union, he said.
Council President Corey Pack said he would give his own personal feelings about the statue. He said he was not thinking of regrets or reconsideration of their decision not to move the statue.
"War is horrific," he said. He said he had also thought of the German prison camps in Europe, where forced labor, termination and mass murder took place on a scale that the world had not seen before.
He said the total exceeds 2,750,000 killed in the SS-controlled death camps.
"Many of those extermination camps still remain today as stark reminder of the devastation mankind can inflict upon one another," he said.
He said many believed the camps should not be removed but remain as living testimony.
He also talked about Vietnam veterans not being honored when they came home, and other wars.
Pack said it was a fact that more people died in the Civil War than all other U.S. wars combined and that in 1958 Congress passed laws that gave Confederate soldiers equal status and benefits as all other war veterans.
He said the Talbot Boys statue turned 100 years old last month.
"It is a monument to those 84 Americans who fought in the conflict," Pack said. He said the Talbot Boys statue was not promoting slavery but the values of the Confederacy.
He said the statue was a part of the county's history, and removing it would weaken that course.
"If every time we removed a statue or monument because it offended us, there would be nothing left," he said, adding that residents should be moved by the horrors of war and resolve that slavery will never happen again.
"I think we handled this as well as any council could in terms of being open to the public," Councilman Dirck Bartlett said. He said they received tons of correspondence, books, graduate student dissertations and also did research themselves.
"It was very disappointing for us to get the decision of the open meetings compliance board," he said. "There is no appeal to the Open Meetings Compliance Board so we will never know if it was the correct decision or not," he said.
Bartlett said there was another, more technical component to the board's decision. It was because the county did not have legislation on the books for the removal of statues.
The NAACP's request was three-fold. It included the removal of the statue, the establishment of a commission to research a new monument, and the erection of a new statue listing both Union and Confederate soldiers.
Bartlett said he believed the council had made deliberate decisions to have discussions in the open.
"You only have to see the tapes of the meetings with the NAACP," Bartlett said, and also mentioned guest comments they had sent The Star Democrat and other documents. "We were on the record about what we felt, I think from the very beginning of this discussion."
He said that when they met together in private, the council members had been in agreement and there had been no difference of opinion about the statue.
"Corey wrote a very good letter, we reviewed it, we tweaked it as a council," Bartlett said of the statement that Pack had read to the public on Nov. 24. "There was no dissension about what to do about that statue."
"Therefore there was no need for a vote," he said, adding that because of the ruling of the Open Meetings Compliance Board, they would be holding a public vote shortly.
"I agree there has been open discussion," Councilwoman Laura Price said. "I don't think anyone's opinion has wavered since July."
She said they spent months listening to public comment.
"The important thing for an elected official to reflect the will of the people," she said. "And it was overwhelming, the support to leave the statue."
"We are in a situation where we can't make everyone happy," she said. "If you make one side happy, you make the other side mad."
"I hope after today we can begin to move forward," Councilman Chuck Callahan said. "Put it behind us, learn from it, and just basically work together and unite as a county."
"Some people have different views and I respect that," he said. "Thank you all who are here today."
Council Vice President Jennifer Williams said she wanted to echo some of the comments of the others.
"There is a history to this county, a history to this country, and we can't deny that history," she said. "I appreciate all the information that's been shared with us in the past year."
"Whether we like to admit it or not, there is slavery in this country, in this state, and very likely in this county," she said. "And it would be delightful to see the energy that's gone into this matter be redirected to try to prevent, to try to help those who are enslaved in this state today."
Bartlett made a motion to leave the statue to remain where it is currently located and the decision that the county announced on Nov. 24 be re-affirmed, and no commission be appointed currently.
Price seconded it and the vote was unanimous to keep the statue.
The crowd was oddly silent as they exited the previously packed council chambers.
"Shame on you, Corey Pack," a woman shouted loudly from somewhere in the crowd.
"It's not over!" she shouted.
A sheriff's deputy approached the crowd, trying to find her.
Just before the meeting, the NAACP and the Maryland ACLU held a rally on the courthouse lawn in favor of removing the Talbot Boys statue.
At the edge of the rally, there were several present who were in favor of keeping the monument on the courthouse green.
The council originally held the discussion and vote in an unannounced meeting last fall. On Nov. 24, Pack read their decision from a prepared statement to the public during the legislative meeting and no other council members made comment.
Their closed, unannounced meeting came after a series of public debates and hundreds of public commentaries in the form of emails, paper correspondence, phone calls and in-person conversations.
Because of the lack of public disclosure about their final meeting on the issue, the NAACP pursued the idea that it could have been a violation of the Open Meetings Act and, with the Maryland ACLU, filed a complaint with the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board.
County Attorney Michael Pullen said the county was only controlling its own property and as an administrative function the matter did not apply to the rules of the Open Meetings Act.
The compliance board ruled that the decision should have been made in a public meeting because the issue did not fall comfortably into the definition of administrative exclusion.
The board said if there was ambiguity in a case, the board would favor an open public vote and decision-making dialogue, not a closed one, and ruled the council had violated Maryland law.
Bringing the