September 25, 2009
by Steve MacDonald
Edith Kelley embezzled $400,000 dollars from the school lunch program in Concord. According to an article in the Concord Monitor, Kelley had to have stolen an average of $300.00 to $400.00 dollars a day for seven years to accomplish the feat. While we can only speculate about how she felt while robbing the taxpayer on a daily basis, (sneaky, devious, justified more than likely) after serving only 8 months of her 3-15 year sentence, she’s filed for a release to administrative home confinement.
And why not?
When it comes to municipal employees embezzling taxpayer dollars New Hampshire has a history of turning the other cheek. Rose Marie McNamara stole at least $2.4 million from Ashland and served only briefly until Paul Hodes and the Shaheen Law Firm bartered her release. So what’s $400K between an embezzler and the nondescript entity known as law abiding taxpayer? It’s a pittance.
Besides, Concord is the bastion of waste and mismanagement, home to the heart, lungs, and lower GI Joe of the State bureaucracy. So if ever there was a place to rob taxpayers and get away with it, Concord would be the place to do it. If only Edith had the sense to steal the money from some privately funded malpractice account paid for by “rich doctors,” she could have spent the past eight months writing letters to the editor about how fiscally responsible she was.
Heck, they should build a freakin’ statue of Edith Kelley and stand it up on the state house grounds so Speaker Norelli can see it from that insanely expensive bathroom she remodeled at taxpayer expense.
In truth, letting Kelley off now will simply sustain the cycle of abuse, and robbing taxpayers will continue to be an embedded privilege—a benefit of municipal employment, mandated by a judicial precedent that not only gives them the freedom to steal from us by law, but outside the law, with little more loss of freedom than the time it takes for the average Red Sox fan to get their hopes up for another run at the World Series.
I’m sure Edith Kelley feels bad about stealing $300-$400 dollars every day for seven years now that she’s been caught and incarcerated. But you know what they say about apologies. They are kindness too late. And if this state has any interest in ending taxpayer abuse by town and city employees, ala Concord, Ashland, Windsor, and so on, the AG and Justice need to make sure people willing to make light of their fiscal obligations and moral responsibilities to public service, something they have no problem trumpeting when contracts and raises come due, pay for crimes committed against the state and the people who have to trust them with their tax dollars.