by Ed Naile
Last week the Manchester Paper had a FRONT PAGE article about how softly our judicial system treats people who abused their position as a municipal employee.
The $250,000.00 stolen from the Derry Economic Development Corp. by “Cherri” Crawford landed her only a few months in a real jail.
Ditto the Hampstead lunch lady who pilfered $10,000.00. (In NH anything under $50,000.00 shouldn’t even be prosecuted if its taxpayer money, why bother.)
But the Manchester Paper forgot, or maybe not, the El Primo thief of all time – Ashland’s “Rosie” McNamara.
Remember Rosie? Here is a hint: the tax collector/town clerk from Ashland you would NOT want to get in a seesaw competition with. And she’s bi-polar too! Well that was a defense anyway.
Big Rosie “miss-appropriated” $2.4 million in the late 90’s from Ashland through a scheme of giving away abatements, rigging water and sewer bills, as well as just plain stealing.
According to the prosecutor, our own Phillip McLaughlin, the NH AG at the time, Rosie would get two years in jail.
No way! She was paroled eight months into her sentence.
I went to the parole “hearing” and waited in line for three hours to get to speak.
I pointed out that Rosie “miss-appropriated” money taken from TAXPAYERS by threat of loss of property, not like this was a used car dealer or a lawyer stealing from a client, here the victims had no recourse but to pay the only game in town – the “conopoly”.
Mentioning that Rosie was only CONVICTED of stealing $112,000.00, NOT the $2.4 million that the forensic auditors found missing, before they gave up, seemed to bother the NH Parole Board just a wee bit. (Guess they thought this would be easy and quiet.)
When I told them that The NH Municipal Association paid Ashland $660,000.00 in damages from the theft they had enough and began to ask me to please sum it up as I was “outside the scope of the hearing” as they put it.
I guess they wanted Rosie to get a FAIR hearing!
Here is how FAIR it was.
Rosie has to pay back Ashland at $25.00 per week for what her assets did not cover – about $70,000.00.
Rosie “miss-appropriated” at least $2.4 million in local taxpayer money. (The town tax are went up almost $3.00 to cover it.)
She was out of jail in eight months.
The three member Parole Board was appointed by then – Governor Jeanne Shaheen.
The prosecutor was appointed by – Governor Shaheen.
The law firm that represented the “indigent” Rosie McNamara – Shaheen and Gordon.
The “insurance company” that paid off Ashland – NHMA.
The “witness” who signed an affidavit taken by the AG swearing that Rosie was entitled to some of the money she took – an NMHA employee.
Theft of government money in NH is pandemic and historic.
Maybe letting people go is the reason. Along with WHO lets them go.