Daily Herald opinion: Threats and accusations in local controversies aren't just ugly; they deter good government

It is important to acknowledge at the outset that our Russell Lissau found the overwhelming number among hundreds of pages of emails he examined regarding a controversial property sale in South Barrington to be polite. But there is an unnerving message about the fragility of local government - or any government, really - in the character of those few that weren't.

At issue in South Barrington was the planned sale of a 34-acre undeveloped park district parcel the district considered unsuitable for recreation and too costly to develop. After four successful referendums in which voters expressed support for divesting the property, the district found what it thought would be a suitable buyer in a little-known Schaumburg-based church congregation that offered $1.7 million for the site at Bartlett Road and Route 59, where it planned to put a house of worship and private school. After the board approved the sale, however, some residents took offense at the nature of the church and mounted a drive to block the plan.

So far, no problem. Any town's citizens certainly have the right to raise concerns about a proposal they think will be bad for their community. But the objections here took forms that suggest a serious problem indeed.

Those handful of objectors brought personal accusations, threats and intimidation so unnerving that not only did the park board rescind its approval of the sale, but at least one member quit outright.

Shelby Elias, who had been called "unscrupulous trash" by one critic cited such insults in her letter of resignation to the board.

"I expected more from my neighbors," she wrote.

Board President Pete Perisin expressed similar disappointment in an interview with Lissau.

"It was very disheartening that our neighbors acted the way they acted. They were not pleasant. They were personal. They were vindictive," Perisin said.

These are disturbing enough reflections in their own right. But on a larger scale, they suggest something much more troubling than our increasingly frequent tongue clucking about a lack of civility. For bad behavior at the neighborhood level has implications for government at every level.

In the South Barrington park board case, it is hard to know for certain whether the cancellation of what appeared to be a sound financial deal represented the best interests of the community as a whole or merely reacted to the behaviors of one segment of the community. If the latter, that would be ominous enough. But whatever the answer to that question, when threats, accusations and insults become such prominent features of political discussion that they overwhelm the more common reasonable voices, especially at the local level, they discourage good potential candidates from seeking office.

This both lowers the quality of campaign discussion about issues and potentially deters strong, thoughtful individuals from seeking influential positions of government.

Democracy can be an effective, empowering means of building communities and helping them thrive. But when it is volume rather than number or reason that determines outcomes, decision making suffers both on individual issues and for the process at large.