If Amherst voters are content with their selectmen's handling of Town Manager James O'Mara, we suppose that is their business. But it makes one wonder just what else elected officials or public servants may be doing that is tolerated in town.



Having been placed on leave from his job since early December, (with pay, the selectmen finally admitted last week), O'Mara suddenly popped back up at his office last Thursday just as mysteriously as he had vanished.

Requests for information from townsfolk and the Union Leader alike were stonewalled for weeks. The ever-handy "personnel issue" was all that was said.

Now, it appears, O'Mara was suspended with pay while the selectmen looked into the purchase of a dump truck. O'Mara, they say, was cleared of any wrongdoing, as were other unnamed parties. Nothing more can be said, they said.

This is so much of what that dump truck could be filled with as to be laughable.

The selectmen have treated the townspeople as pesky children who are not worthy of the basic information to which they are entitled and to which they should demand. The voters of Amherst would be well-advised to do some serious office-cleaning, starting with their next Town Meeting.