John Barrella – The G.O.A.T. News

One year ago today, on Oct. 13, 2025, I started a Facebook page with a simple idea: the people who pay for local government deserve to see how it works. I called it The G.O.A.T. News, for Government Oversight, Accountability and Transparency.

A year later, the work has drawn 3 million views, combined, across the social platforms.

That number isn’t a trophy. It’s a measure of how many people want to know what is happening at Town Hall, on Beacon Hill, and at the meetings most residents never have the time to attend. They want the documents, not the talking points. They want the questions asked out loud. And they want someone to keep asking until there’s an answer.

From one page to a platform

The Facebook page came first. This July, I designed and built the website so that every story, every meeting preview and every primary document would have a permanent home that anyone can search. In September, I created The Warrant, a weekly newsletter named for the town meeting warrants that decide what voters get to vote on. It puts the week’s meetings and the stories behind them in one place.

I also created The G.O.A.T. Podcast, recorded at MCCAM, Middleborough’s community access media center, to put public officials and candidates in front of the questions residents ask. In one eight-day stretch this September, the show hosted six guests at one table.

I didn’t do it alone. From the start, Matt Phillips has been on the other side of the microphone as my co-host. Matt brings his own questions and his own read of the numbers, and when a guest gives a polished answer, he’s often the one who asks the follow-up. Two people pressing for an answer are harder to talk around than one, and the show is better because he’s at the table.

Today, on the anniversary, Mike Walsh returns to the studio for a second conversation, and U.S. Senate candidate John Deaton is scheduled for later this week. And a Cabinet-level guest is already booked for November.

What the numbers don’t show

The milestones that matter most don’t fit on a stat sheet.

We informed the public. We previewed the agendas. I began raising concerns about Middleborough’s finances publicly in 2024, and that work helped lead to where the town is today, with a tremendous amount of oversight, auditing and correction under way. Matt Phillips was my key support through that time, and he still is. When the fiscal 2025 audit stalled, I reported it. When the auditors asked for records going back to 2021, I asked the next question: who was watching Middleborough’s money?

We brought oversight and accountability, locally and at the state level. We put officials on the record, from Town Hall to the State House, on budgets, audits and unfunded state mandates that land on local taxpayers. We followed the same questions into Carver and Lakeville, because what happens next door rarely stays next door. And when people with business before our boards declined to answer our questions, we told readers that too.

We educated taxpayers and voters. We explained how Town Meeting works, what a warrant is, and how a budget gets built. We published endorsements and stood behind them. The Select Board candidate we endorsed won by 38 points, unseating an incumbent, and a write-in candidate we covered drew a historically high vote total.

Transparency applies to us too. Matt and I both serve on Middleborough’s elected Finance Committee, and we say so on every episode. I also serve on the Town Manager Search Committee, appointed by the Select Board as one of its representatives. You deserve to know who is asking the questions.

The questions are ours. The answers are theirs. The judgment is yours.

Thank you

To everyone who read, watched, listened, shared a story or sent us a tip: thank you. You are the reason a Facebook page turned into a website, a newsletter and a podcast in twelve months.

Thank you to MCCAM for giving the podcast a home, to Matt Phillips for every hour of prep, recording and follow-up he has put into the show, and to the officials and candidates who agreed to answer hard questions on the record, including the ones who didn’t have to.

Year two starts today. We’ll keep reading the documents, showing up at the meetings and asking the questions out loud. That was the job on day one, and it’s still the job.

Here’s to the next year.