The State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) did itself no favor by leveling an unsubstantiated charge of e-mail meddling against the Yankee Institute for Public Policy. It further damages its credibility by continuing to suggest the charges are true, but simply can't be proved.

Why the Yankee Institute gets under the labor coalition's skin is no secret. The libertarian-leaning non-profit group would like nothing more than to see the state workforce gutted, regulations and taxes rolled back and business conducted largely unfettered. It created the online search engine sunlight.org that allows the public to ferret out the salary of state workers. Yankee Institute articles such as "24 retirees make more than the governor," apply pressure to reform state labor policies.

While the institute's fiscal philosophy borders on the extreme and some of the information it provides distorts more than informs (such big pension payments, for example, are the exception), its advocacy plays a legitimate role in policy debate.

SEBAC, however, made the alarming charge a few weeks back that Yankee Institute crossed the line by hacking into the state's e-mail system to send out false information to employees, seeking to undermine support for the labor concession package. The goal of the misinformation campaign, according to union leaders, was defeat of the concession deal and the triggering of massive layoffs.

The only problem, there was no proof. Two e-mails provided by labor leaders to Attorney General George Jepsen did contain misinformation and urged a no vote, but they came from Yahoo accounts, not from the state e-mail system. Mr. Jepsen also looked at other e-mails critical of the labor deal, some from the public, and others from state workers, but none that had any apparent connection to Yankee Institute.

Shouldn't SEBAC give its union members a bit more credit than to think they would accept the claims in anonymous or questionable e-mails over the information provided by the labor organization itself? If state workers are that gullible they've probably purchased plenty of virility treatments and sent checks to claim their Nigerian lottery winnings.

Blame for rejection of the first concession package rests squarely with SEBAC itself. It needed to do a better job of explaining the deal. It went into the ratification process with supermajority requirements that bordered on unachievable. Now, to avoid thousands of layoffs, the unions are voting again, but that process also seems a bit of a mess, with some bargaining units allowed to revote, others not.

SEBAC should accept the attorney general's finding of no malfeasance and move on, instead it issued a statement blaming the inability to prove the matter on "inadequate software restrictions" that allow hacking "without even being subject to detection." The statement lamented misinformation interfering with the vote as "immoral, if not illegal."

Stop whining. This is an age of half truths. It's up to the individual to depend on sources with credibility. If union leaders are waiting for a time when nobody tries to gain advantage by twisting the facts, they will have a long wait.