At Saturday’s annual town meeting in Otisfield, resident and assistant district attorney Craig Turner questioned the legality of discussing a petition drive at the meeting.

While a good question, it wasn’t the right one.

The real question is why this town of about 1,500 residents is petitioning against the loosely organized Voices of Otisfield at all.

The community action group, advocates for what its members believe to be better local government. They are not elected, appointed or otherwise serving in any official government capacity. The group holds meetings that are open to the public where members discuss the business of the town. The U.S. Constitution gives them an absolute right to do so.

The Voices of Otisfield is also an irritant to the 140 or so people who signed a petition requesting that it drop the word “Otisfield” from its name because petitioners do not believe the views expressed by the group are representative of all citizens of Otisfield.

All three of the town’s selectmen – Lenny Adler, Tom Nurmi and Mark Cyr – have signed the petition. Doing so treads dangerously close to infringing on the Voices’ First Amendment rights.

If the petition were crafted as a general request for any group other than a sanctioned government entity to drop the word “Otisfield” from its title, such as the town’s snowmobile club and historical society, the petition would be strange but would not necessarily be such a pointed political arrow.

This petition targets a specific group based on its actions, its political views and perhaps even its membership. Add the Board of Selectmen into the mix, and we have a situation in which government officials are requesting action limiting a citizen group.

One of the members of the Voices suggests that selectmen and others who have signed the petition have targeted the group because it points fingers at where its members believe government is failing in Otisfield, and “finger pointers are not very popular.”

They are not, but the Constitution permits us to point fingers, it permits us to assemble and it permits us great discretion in what we say and how we define ourselves. When government officials stand in the way of that, they risk violating the First Amendment.

What makes the selectmen’s decisions to sign the petition most curious is that they specifically asked the Maine Municipal Association last October whether Voices could use the town’s name. An MMA staff attorney said it could.

It clearly irks selectmen and others to watch as the members of this vocal group get together in someone’s living room to discuss the town’s comprehensive plan, its budget and other business, even going so far as to enact an ordinance committee. The group has crafted a powerless shadow government. They can do that. They can also call themselves whatever they want.

The Voices of Otisfield have never claimed to be the voices of all the folks of Otisfield, but they are a vocal minority. We suggest petitioners take a deep breath, drop the petition push and leave the group alone.