For a little bit of light late-night blogging, I can’t resist turning to the newspaper that transformed a letter to the editor about something I tweeted into a news story and a campaign-season scandal in 2012.

Last month, when Tiverton’s financial town referendum (FTR) voted by nearly two to one in support of the budget that I’d submitted for a zero percent tax levy increase, two of the three local newspapers — the Fall River Herald and the Newport Daily News — called me for comment, as they’d both done at earlier stages in the process.  The Sakonnet Times never did.  (Although reporter William Rupp did fairly summarize a hearing on the budgets.)

On the night of the vote, Sakonnet Times reporter Tom Killin Dalglish didn’t put any faces on the budgets, but disappointment about the results practically seeps from the paragraphs. Consider:

State tax cap legislation allowed for up to a 4% increase, and the budget committee’s proposal was well under that.

Instead, voters gave their approval to an alternative budget put forth by a group of petitioners that called for a zero percent tax increase for FY 15. …

Voter turnout was small. Just 18% of the over 11,000 registered voters in town actually went to the polls. Of those, 1,234 voted for the petitioner’s zero-percent-increase budget, while 698 voters voted for the budget committee proposal.

The punchline, though, came when the tax assessor announced (as I told everybody to expect) that the the tax rate is actually dropping a little.  Based on Dalglish’s article and the accompanying photograph, you’d think the assessor is to credit, as “Tiverton taxpayers will catch a break when tax bills are mailed out a week or so from now.”

The heroes of the FTR were the 1,234 voters who supported the 0% petition, followed by the folks who put in hours of volunteer time walking around handing out cards and distributing signs.  I just did some math, argued with some people, and played with some paint and stencils.

That said, the differing enthusiasm of the Sakonnet Times when it comes to mentioning my name in a bad context versus a potentially positive one is quite a lesson in media bias.