{"id":7835,"date":"2018-04-19T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/?p=7835"},"modified":"2018-04-19T10:53:45","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T15:53:45","slug":"the-team-sticks-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/2018\/04\/19\/the-team-sticks-together\/","title":{"rendered":"The Team Sticks Together!"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Ed Naile<\/em><\/p>\n

The mentality of \u201cWe are a team with special status\u201d pervades all. <\/p>\n

This is what you are up against when it comes to keeping government accountable. One look at \u201cThe Swamp\u201d in Washington, DC shows definitively how power, money, and influence alter the way people come to think and behave when they join the team. Even the smallest amount of government power corrupts if you are not careful.<\/p>\n

Take the tiny Town of Dummer, NH for instance.<\/p>\n

Starting in 2016 the public finally became aware of the theft of municipal funds by the Dummer\u2019s team member, Mariann Letarte<\/a>, the Town Clerk\/Administrator\/ Emergency Management Director\/ Bookkeeper for the Milan-Dummer Ambulance.<\/p>\n

The theft of the documented $147,000 in stolen taxpayer dollars is called a \u201cmisappropriation\u201d so as to soften the blow of bad publicity for the Dummer team member. This a long-held tradition when it comes to government employees stealing anything of value from taxpayers. The local media is very careful to comply with this tradition. Remember, the municipality in question is often a good customer of the team and a source for news, so they go light on team members who are exposed as thieves. Local media is often a quasi-team member.<\/p>\n

If you want to see how solid a team can become, in spite of how bad things look for a member, I offer this news story about Dummer\u2019s beloved, thieving, town clerk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The title of this article sums up how the local media cover for the town clerk and her team members \u2013 the elected board of selectmen.<\/p>\n

\u201cDummer Asks Judge For Leniency In Sentencing Town Clerk\u201d<\/a> by Barbara Tetreault.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is as though the entire town has asked for leniency, not just team members, David Dubey, former Selectman Dennis Bachand, current Selectman Chris Holt and Richard Ouellette, who appeared at the sentencing hearing on the thief\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

Current Selectman David Dubey even read a prepared statement on behalf of the town asking that Letarte be required to make full restitution but also asking for leniency in sentencing, so I question how this team member has the authority to speak for the entire town. <\/p>\n

It is estimated that each household paid $1,000 in extra property taxes covering for the stolen funds. This must be a very generous group of townspeople Selectman David Dubey is speaking for.<\/p>\n

As if more evidence of the team mentality is needed we have another story about Dummer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We do not regard Mariann’s crimes as pure acts of villainy, but rather of acts of extraordinary poor judgment,” Selectman David Dubey said.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

When it comes to poor judgement one must ask: Where were the Dummer Selectmen from 2011 \u2013 2016 as the theft of a huge portion of that small town\u2019s revenue was being stolen? Did any of them look at a vendor bill, contractor payment, abatement, individual check, treasurer\u2019s report or audit? Their names were forged on documents. Did they notice that? (When I was a selectman in Deering, NH I caught my name being forged on an abatement.)<\/p>\n

Or here is another question: Does this town have one, single, non-team member who did question where tax dollars were going all these years? Almost every town has someone every team member regards as a crank who asks questions about town spending. I didn\u2019t see any of that in news accounts of the unfortunate poor judgement incident in Dummer.<\/p>\n

Another point to ponder.<\/p>\n

As I have looked at theft of municipal funds over the years I have seen one constant problem that never seems to get resolved. That problem is this. How much was really stolen? <\/p>\n

In Ashland, NH the beloved team member, Town Clerk Rosie McNamara, \u201cmisappropriated,\u201d by auditor estimates before they gave up, over two million dollars, but was charged with taking $111,000. You can see this in case after case, the Litchfield treasurer, and Amherst town clerk come to mind. <\/p>\n

So how diligent were the, sympathetic to the town clerk, Dummer team members in discovering how much was really stolen from them \u2013 Oh WAIT, I mean the taxpayers. Those are the people not on the team. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ed Naile The mentality of \u201cWe are a team with special status\u201d pervades all. This is what you are up against when it comes to keeping government accountable. One look at \u201cThe Swamp\u201d in Washington, DC shows definitively how power, money, and influence alter the way people come to think and behave when they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-nh","category-town-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7835"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7839,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835\/revisions\/7839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}