by Ed Naile
All is well in Ashland again now that the town has paid off the $2 million dollar loan it used to replace municipal funds embezzled by former Town Manager Rosemarie McNamara.
This was a story largely ignored by the press at the time but is one which the Directors of the Coalition of NH Taxpayers was deeply involved in beginning sometime in late 1999. Here are some of the details in this long and revealing look at how state and municipal governments work together to “solve” embarrassing problems regarding the theft of tax money. To understand what happened in Ashland you have to understand that many public employees and much of the public does not see tax money as belonging to anyone other than government. Once you understand that disconnect things will fall into place.
Rosie McNamara began stealing from the Town of Ashland years before she was caught and as is often the case, some members of the public had their suspicions. They were quickly demonized by the clique in town. Every town has a clique that protects town employees and town interests. It’s human nature to want to be best buddies with the police, firemen, rescue squad, road crew, town hall staff, etc., and it often causes a blind spot in clique members when it comes to misuse of town equipment or funds. (That disconnect thing.) The clique automatically forms a protective ring around, in this case… the Rosie.
People who dared question Rosie were even taken to task in the Town Clerk’s Report in the Town Report a year before Rosie was arrested and pleaded guilty. Smart taxpayers should always question any articles penned by public officials that start with ‘I lived in this town all my life/most of my life/many years and only want to do my best…blah, blah, blah, ..but certain people with their own agendas/secret agendas/ax to grind are questioning me and making allegations… blah, blah, blah…
Good public officials answer questions, provide documents and generally have thicker skin than embezzlers.
Rosie took petty cash, cash from sales of town property, she flipped property abatements for out-of-towners into her own pocket, jockeyed the electric and water funds and even gave a year’s cash advance to a police chief. Trustee of the Trust Funds Tom Peters was catching on.
I saw Tom Peter’s letter to the editor looking for help in the papers and called him. He told me he could not get documents from Rosie and he thought up to $100,000.00 may be missing. How right but so wrong. The town had to stop investigating at $2 million and borrow to replace the stolen money because the end of the forensic audit may never have been reached and the selectmen had to move on with town business.
So an investigation began. But not by the local police, Rosie had tainted them by loaning money to an officer. The investigation was conducted by Shaheen appointed AG. Phillip McLaughlin. Promises were made to the selectmen about getting money back and prison terms for those involved. Because of the nature of criminal investigations I have no first hand detail of what went on behind closed doors but let’s say less than what was expected by the selectmen was provided by the state.
Rosie gave a statement to the people at the AG’s office. CNHT has a copy in our office for what good it is. Trust in the AG’s office is something taxpayers should not waste their time with. Picture it as a fifty gallon size tub of whitewash armed with a sponge mop.
Arrested in 2001 and having pled guilty to stealing only $112,000.00, Rosie waddled off to her supposed two year term in “prison” which lasted about eight months. She agreed to pay the town about $71,000.00 she still owed after her known property was sold by making $23.00 per week payments. This was all part of a really, really good deal made on her behalf by her attorney Paul Hodes.
In late February 2003 at a hearing at the state prison in Concord the Shaheen appointed Parole Board of George Iverson, Thomas Hammond and Leon Cyr listened intently to Rosie’s sob story about medical problems and how she turned her life around. But the Parole Board definitely did not want to listen to me when I rose to speak at her hearing. All I wanted to do was to enter for the record that she embezzled at least 1.4 million and that she should, as part of her release, be required to document in a legible fashion exactly how she embezzled 1.4 million or more of municipal funds. Being a taxpayer activist I would like a little shortcut for finding these things out in the future. The board told me I was outside the scope of the hearing. Oh, I forgot the part about how I told the parole board she should spend twenty years in prison as a warning to other public officials. (This might help fix that disconnect thing.)
Now comes the interesting part. As you know by now, former governor Craig Benson was plagued by one “scandal” after another by the NH press corps. Check this out:
Rosie’s lawyer, Paul Hodes worked for the Shaheen law firm while he was her lawyer. That is correct. The governor’s husband’s law firm defended the person who committed the single largest act of municipal theft in our state’s history, and he got her a pretty sweet deal as well.
One question: If Rosie had no assets and could only pay back Ashland $23.00 per week, how was she paying one of the top law firms in the state – the sitting governor’s husband’s firm. What, no public defender?
And if she stole over $1.4 million and the town had to borrow $2 million to replace the lost sums and pay for forensic audits why let her plead to only $112,000.00. What, the sitting governor’s hand picked attorney general was afraid to prosecute? Did he think he would lose, or would there be a lot of embarrassing testimony we all would rather not get into? How about who else was involved?
And then there is the “insurance company” The NH Municipal Association, helper of all towns. Gag. They paid the town of Ashland $602,000.00. I would think they would be interested in how Rosie ran up a 2 mill tab on taxpayers since they insure towns. NHMA knows all kinds of things about towns, just ask them. But don’t ask them this:
When the Rosie hit the fan in Ashland there were three selectmen. By the time depositions had to be made early in the “investigation” one had passed away so it was one remaining selectman’s word against another’s.
Before Rosie was officially caught, one selectman member of her fan club was trying to sell a story in his deposition about how she did a great job and the original money found missing was all part of a big fat pay raise talked about in non-public session that only she and he remember. The other selectman had amore credible story about how she was in trouble with two of them for doing a lousy job and not answering questions.
The fan club selectman, an NHMA groupie, signed a deposition relating his knucklehead story as part of the pre-investigation kabuki dance. Guess who signed it as a witness? The witness was an NHMA employee from Deering NH. Get out your map some time and check out the travel distance from Ashland to Deering. Want to bet the deposition had some origins in the Concord office of our old friends at NHMA? The deposition is dated and would not be hard to track.
Did the insurance company get a little heads up in the investigation maybe? Were Tom Peters and the new selectmen (the good guys) in on everything going on? Or does it look to you like Ashland got the short end of the stick.
The Record Enterprise and reporter Leigh Stamps from Ashland can not be thanked enough for reporting the best story at the time regarding this million dollar scandal. All the other papers showed their disconnect.