I really didn’t want to write about the Burlington scandal surrounding the Kiss administration and Burlington Telecom. This is twice now I promised I was so done with it, but each time, there has been something crop up that was simply impossible to ignore.

This time, its again about the coverage – specifically the coverage emanating from Seven Days’ Shay Totten and Ken Picard, two of the more reliable reporters in the state. I’ve never been sympathetic to the criticism that Seven Days as a whole is more sympathetic to one political party or another. In fact, I’ve seen on many occasions them clearly taking pains to avoid such an appearance.

But ever since the complete turnaround in Totten’s coverage a week or two back, Seven Days coverage of this issue has been dancing dangerously close to the land of outright journalistic malpractice – as in, making statements that are demonstrably untrue, and not correcting them when their inaccuracy is brought to light.

And I don’t have the first clue what’s behind it.

Consider this headline from Blurt, dated November 13th and penned by Ken Picard:

BREAKING: City secures refinancing for Burlington Telecom

Nice and clear, right? Only problem is, its not accurate.  

As Margolis says (as part of a different criticism of the coverage):

…the refinancing by Piper Jaffray, a Minneapolis-based underwriting company, has been announced, but not completed.

So, no financing has been “secure(d)” at all. And commenters have pointed this out. Yet the statement remains.

Now this is where it gets weirder. Shay Totten picks it back up and reports in the first paragraph of today’s Blurt post:

the Burlington City Council early Tuesday morning scuttled a $61.65 million refinancing proposal for Burlington Telecom.

Okay, first of all, if this statement is true, it stands as simple, logical evidence of Picard’s headline’s inaccuracy. If the financing was “secure,” how could it now stand “scuttled?” It was either secured, or it wasn’t. And yet, the Picard headline remains.

But the real fact is that the Totten statement, like the Picard headline, is – again – apparently inaccurate. According to Haik Bedrosian who also reported on the meeting (quoting from it extensively), nothing has been “scuttled,” the deal has simply not been approved… yet. From a Burlington Pol post entitled “Council Delays Financing” (emphasis added):

The council passed part one, but then postponed funding it with part two pending more info.

A case of he-says-he-says? Maybe, but there’s more. This is from Independent City Councilor Karen Paul via an email she sent to Mayor Kiss and Jonothan Leopold and cc’d to city councilors earlier this afternoon:

I sincerely hope that the administration will take to heart the words of the council at last night’s meeting regarding access to financial, business plan, pro forma and marketing strategy documentation and information on Burlington Telecom.  A lot was said about fiduciary responsibility last night and, as confirmed by the City Attorney, we have not only a fiduciary responsibility to Burlington Telecom, we also have that same responsibility to the city and our taxpayers.

I appreciate that you did as the resolution we passed a few weeks ago asked.  You did come back to the council on November 16 with a financing option.  In that resolution, there was nothing about the council voting to proceed with that financing on the same night.  While I understand your timeline and need to secure the financing before a payment to CitiCapital comes due in mid February, I hope that you can similarly understand the need for councilors to feel comfortable and fully informed on this rather complicated financing arrangement.  I don’t mean to suggest that it’s exotic or unusual.  As you said last night, it is not the normal run of the mill debt financing and there are going to be questions that need answering.

I would strongly suggest that you supply each councilor with the documentation necessary for us to ask informed questions.  That means giving us the material in advance.  I completely understand that this information is sensitive but we must have the information in advance so we can review it and do our due diligence.    I personally need to see a financial statement and balance sheet for Burlington Telecom (and not a maze of city financials but the actual statements for Burlington Telecom) to assess the overall health of the entity.

Lastly, I would suggest that a representative from the underwriting group at Piper be at our December 7 meeting in person if at all possible to work with us and work through the questions so we understand this financing well enough to feel confident in voting in the affirmative to authorize you to continue with Piper in this COP financing for BT.

We need to work together on this and we need to be able to do our work in a responsible way.  Please do not delay in getting us this information, if possible, this week so we have adequate time to review it.

What is 7 Days doing here? One could easily make the argument that the Council’s delay threatens to “scuttle” the financing (that was supposedly already “secured”). If I were a Burlington resident, I’d be very concerned about this deal getting bogged down so far into the tarpit that is Burlington politics that it does, in fact, dry up and blow away – but its plainly obvious that it has not been “scuttled” by the City Council or anyone else (at least not yet).

And the fact is that their own inaccuracies read as contradictory, yet they still persist. Heaven knows what we’re going to see in tomorrow’s print edition, but anyone looking for accuracy in reporting on this particular issue might well be advised to look elsewhere, which is screwy. I, for one, find myself depending on 7 Days reporting.

The postscript? Picard recently claimed (again in Blurt) that this story was first broken by Totten, when those I’ve talked to believe that the Freeps’ John Briggs was the one that first reported on it (and yes, that’s Briggs’ recollection as well, as I dropped him an email looking for clarification)

Anybody have any theories as to what they’ve been smoking up 7 Days’ way lately?