| Former House Education Chairman Jerry Mezzatesta may be the most talked-about man in Hampshire County, but don't mention his name at a school board meeting.
The school board's attorney Norwood Bentley successfully muzzled people demanding that Mezzatesta be fired from his $60,000 administrative job earlier this week.
Speaking is a privilege offered by the board, not a public right, said Bentley.
"It's not the public's meeting," he said. "It's the school board's meeting," said Bentley to 100 citizens attending the meeting, saying such comments are "too libelous."
"You can't take an employee of a school board to task in an open session," Bentley told The Associated Press after stopping a handful of residents from identifying Mezzatesta or Superintendent David Friend by name or job title.
The Hampshire citizens had signed to speak at the board meeting, following the board's public comments protocol.
The decision stunned those who had planned to speak.
"I think he was probably right in saying the school board could not use names, but he was wrong in telling us what we could say," Jim Hott said. "There's absolutely no reason to have an open meeting if we can't voice our opinions."
Lew Brewer, executive director of the Ethics Commission, says the rules Bentley set for the board meeting are new to him.
"I've never heard of anybody saying you can't criticize the city manager, you can't criticize the chief of police, you can't criticize the municipal judge in a public meeting," he said. "There is nothing in the Open Meetings Act that deals with what can be said by someone who is signed up to speak at a public meeting."
The embattled Mezzatesta is a grant writer, with a $60,000 salary for the Hampshire County Board of Education. He has lost his job as chairman of the powerful House Education Committee, lost his re-election bid, been charged and found guilty of ethics violations and plead no contest on several legal charges.
He is currently under federal investigation.
Then, to top it off, the State Department of Education, has developed a lengthly list of administrative infractions committed by Mezzatesta and Hampshire County officials regarding "mishandling money."
Hampshire County once referred to his prolific ability to return money to the county as "Mezz Money."
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