Legislation that would abolish the Smithfield Land Trust – introduced by the same representative who helped create it two decades ago – has ignited a heated debate in town, where two longtime residents say the trust paid nearly a million dollars to political “insiders’’ to protect land that couldn’t have be developed anyway. The longtime chairwoman of the trust says everything was done by the book, under the direction of multiple town councils. Jim Hummel says the issue now has the attention of a statewide coalition of land trusts.
