From Claremont Chaos To Vermont Finance: Mary Henry Is Back

By NewsNHJ, NH Journal

Vermont: If you can’t make it anywhere else, make it here!

That’s the takeaway from the news that the Green Mountain State is making room for the fiscal stylings of Claremont’s own Mary Henry.

Former SAU 6 Business Administrator Henry, last seen being chased out of Claremont as the district scrambled to fill the $5 million budget hole many blame her for digging, is now the director of finance and operations for the Mountain Views Supervisory District in Woodstock, Vt.

Who would sign off on hiring someone to manage a school district’s books after her last employer fired her for “immorality, incompetence, insubordination, or failure on the part of the Administrator to conform to the laws of the State of New Hampshire, the rules and regulations of the State Board of Education, or the SAU and of the local School Boards within the SAU?”

That would be Henry’s friend and apparent mentor, current Mountain Views money man Jim Fenn. According to the Mountain Times, Fenn has been her mentor for more than a decade.

“Henry first met Fenn when she was serving as the chair of the Fall Mountain Board and he was the district’s business manager,” the Mountain Times reports.

The Mountain Views district encompasses several schools, giving Henry more opportunities to employ her trademark fiscal style. Henry was cited in Claremont for entering into secret contract settlements, failing to pay vendors and hiding their checks in her drawer, failing to pay health insurance premiums for teachers and staff, failing to reconcile the books and, of course, providing such bad data to the state and school board that the district’s tax rate was set too low to pay its bills.

Expect hilarity to ensue after Henry puts together her first Mountain Views budget in the spring.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.