Man Collecting Referendum Signatures Questioned by Police

The Bristol Press/Steve Collins | January 19 2006

BRISTOL -- Months after collecting signatures for last year’s failed effort to force a citywide referendum on downtown, Mike Saman got a phone call from the police about his work on the referendum.

The former Republican City Council candidate said recently he got a message from a police detective who wanted to talk to him about "a criminal investigation."

Saman, who’s active in his church said he figured it had something to do with the church break-ins and was surprised to learn when he spoke with the officer that the investigation actually centered on the petition gathering process.

The detective told him they could speak on the phone or Saman could come down to the police station, with or without an attorney, to answer some questions, Saman said.

Saman said he told the officer he had nothing to hide and they talked in a "very nonchalant" way about how Saman gathered signatures for the downtown referendum effort.

Saman got most of his petitions signed while he knocked on doors for his council campaign but about a quarter of them were obtained at a farmer’s market downtown.

He said he didn’t think too much about it until he read in the paper that the police investigation caused a handful of people who had circulated paperwork to pull back the petitions they gathered rather than run the risk of arrest for filing a false statement.

Some petitions circulators left the sheets unattended and later swore to have witnessed signatures they could not have seen. Others may have failed to meet a vague state standard that requires petition circulators to know the people who sign the forms.

Enough of the petitions were yanked from consideration last month to prevent organizers from securing the 3,200 valid signatures required to force a vote, effectively ending a five-month-long drive to try to put the issue on the ballot.

At last week’s City Council session, Saman said the efforts to thwart the petition drive - including attempts to stop circulators from getting signatures during a downtown street festival in September - are "starting something bad."

"Are we a regular police state?" he asked.

Saman said he wanted to know why he was phoned by the police and questioned whether it might have something to do with his opposition to former Mayor Gerard Couture as a member of the axed Hoppers-Birge Pond Committee.

He said, too, that he believes the rights of the people who signed the petitions in good faith were violated when their names were not counted by the city.

Mayor William Stortz said he didn’t know how the police chose those who were questioned, but he has heard no complaints from anyone who felt coerced into withdrawing petitions.

He said he was "a strong and early advocate" of the referendum effort but nonetheless supports City Clerk Therese Pac’s strong belief that she had a responsibility to turn the issue over to the police for investigation.

Pac "was obligated to do the right thing," Stortz said.

The mayor said that Pac and the police were doing their jobs in interpreting what the law means.

Pac said that it is "quite sad" so much work by so many, including those in her own office who spent weeks checking signatures against the voter list, "turned into nothing" but she had no choice except to follow the dictates of state law.

Stortz said that if Saman or anyone else feels things were done improperly, they should challenge what was done.

"If they’re unhappy, they should come forward," Stortz said.

Saman, who lost a 2nd District council race in November, said he feels uncomfortable about how the referendum issue played out. He said that voters who put their fears aside to sign the petitions are being denied the chance to vote on the downtown plan.

But, he said, he’s willing to drop it.

"If it wasn’t for Bill Stortz being mayor, I would pursue it further, but I trust him," Saman said. "He’ll do what’s right."

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