Talk about transparency in government, the Ocean Pines Board of Directors was see-through last Wednesday when the majority’s animosity toward former board candidate Stewart Lakernick resulted in the abrupt rejection of his second bid to serve on a community committee.

Lakernick had sought a seat on the Search Committee this time, having been denied a spot on the Strategic Planning Committee earlier this year.  But no. The board leadership wasn’t having it and then refused to discuss it.

Attempts by other board members to have association President Collette Horn and former president Larry Perrone explain their opposition to Lakernick’s appointment were quickly dismissed with no reason given.

Horn and Perrone simply didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want anyone else talking about it either, as was evidenced by their blunt instrument approach to cutting off the conversation.

Horn might as well have said, “We just don’t like him, and that’s that,” when she refused to acknowledge board member Rick Farr’s request to speak.

“That subject is closed, and we’ve moved onto the next applicant,” she declared.

Well, so much for the collegial atmosphere and free exchange of ideas with this group.

Their real beef is not with Lakernick, but with his wife, former board member Esther Diller, whose legal difficulties became fodder for the local gossip cannon last year and whose anti-board activism so burned the incumbents, apparently, that the blisters have yet to heal.

The bigger problem, however, is that the main criticisms of that 2021 board majority, which was led by Perrone, was its proclivity for imperious behavior and its dismissiveness of challenges to its authority.

It doesn’t look as if things have changed, at least not when their explanation for Lakernick’s rejection is about the same as saying, “Because we said so. That’s why.”