OPED: Ethics and Conflicts of Interest in Concord

As far as I know, I am the only person in recent history to bring charges concerning city charter and rules violations to the City Council. I believe what I encountered illustrates the need for a strong ethics ordinance for our city… and why the proposed ethics ordinances are not strong enough.

In late 2005, I brought a series of ethics charges before the City Council concerning city officials directly involved with Concord Community TV (CCTV), a private nonprofit corporation that receives nearly 100 percent of its funding through a no-bid city contract. I was the founding executive director of CCTV — now known as Concord TV — and built the facility into an award-winning three-channel station. In May 2002, the chairman of CCTV — a city employee — abruptly informed me, without explanation, that my job was being given to then at-large Concord City Councilor Doris Ballard.

My complaints detailed several possible city charter and city rules violations by city officials involved with CCTV. In March 2006, these alleged violations were referred to the City Rules Committee, led by Councilor Katherine Rogers. I believe this in itself was an obvious conflict of interest and a violation of city rules because of her longtime close ties with CCTV as producer, on-air host and volunteer. In one of her campaigns she even called herself the “creator” of CCTV. 

Besides Rogers, the Rules Committee consisted of Councilors Dan St. Hilaire, Jim Bouley, Elizabeht Blanchard and Rowe. None of them took issue with Rogers’ conflict of interest, not even when they learned that CCTV staff had created a long running program for Rogers and her dog, Vito Corleone.

On Aug. 22, 2006, I testified before the Rules Committee for the first and only time. As the committee was investigating whether Ballard used her city council position to attain a permanent full-time position at CCTV, I testified that as CCTV’s executive director, I had hired Ballard as a temporary part-time employee (She was elected to the city council later that same year). Following my testimony, Ballard refuted my testimony and stated she had never been a temporary employee. At the end of the meeting Rogers invited people to submit documentation related.

I submitted a copy of Ballard’s original temporary part-time employment document to the City Clerk for the Rules Committee. I had legally attained the copy from the city manager’s office. Little did I know that Rogers would make me the target of an unwarranted police investigation because of that document.

On Aug. 30, 2006, I was shocked when the Concord Police came to my home. On Sept. 1, I was questioned by Detective Chris DeAngelis in the CPD interrogation room about Ballard’s contract. I told him that I had simply paid for a copy at the city manager’s office.

While neither CCTV or the city manager would verify the existence of the contract, Officer DeAngelis — after interviewing me — quickly located the contract, complete with CCTV cover letter, in the city manager’s office.

The very existence of the document proved that Ballard and others provided false information to the Rules Committee. Now it appeared as if a false report to law enforcement had also been made. And Rogers, by initiating a police investigation, may have violated the noninterference rule of the City Charter.

I asked to provide additional testimony at the next Rules Committee meeting but Rogers and the Rules Committee refused to let me speak again. At that Sept. 21, 2006, meeting of the Rules Committee, Rogers appointed a subcommittee, chaired by St. Hilaire, to examine CCTV records for improper use if the publicly funded facility between 2003 and 2005.  

Months dragged on without the subcommittee meeting. In fact, St. Hilaire’s subcommittee never held a public meeting. Not until May 16, 2007, was it revealed that on Feb. 28, 2007, Councilors St. Hilaire and Rowe had gone to CCTV to examine records provided by Ballard – the same person who had already provided false testimony to the Rules Committee.

According to a memo from the Rules Subcommittee, St. Hilaire reported that no evidence of this non-public weekend use existed, even though I had documented evidence and CCTV was contractually obliged to maintain records relating to this use.

I filed a Right-to-Know request for the public to be able to see the CCTV records examined by the Rules Subcommittee. Rogers, along with City Solicitor Paul Cavanaugh, refused my request. At taxpayer expense the city solicitor went to court arguing that the Concord public – despite completely funding CCTV year after year and despite such records being required by city contract – has no right to view CCTV’s city mandated records and that the Rules subcommittee never met. The judge agreed and the documents that the Rules Subcommittee examined and used as evidence were never made public.

In December 2007, the Rules Committee finally submitted its report. Among its findings was that it was not a conflict for city councilors — who were also CCTV board members — to speak and vote on matters effecting CCTV. It was not a conflict for these CCTV board members/city councilors to be part of non-public city meetings to discuss contract negotiations with CCTV — their own corporation. It was not even a conflict when full-time CCTV employee Ballard — who was also a city councilor — was named the chairwoman of the city Communications Committee which deals with City/CCTV matters. Nor was it a conflict for Councilor J. Allen Bennett, a CCTV board member, to make a motion at an ITAC meeting that prevented any consideration of a different organization to run the access center, effectively assuring that his own corporation would have a no-bid contract with the city.

The best (or worst) part of this two-year whitewash was when Rogers admitted in a city memo after her report was filed that, “I have taped shows on Saturdays since the inception of my show.” Rogers did not explain why she withheld this pertinent evidence, as this Saturday studio use privilege – not available to the general public for a number of years – was one of the charges that the Rules Committee supposedly investigated and found no evidence of.  So this evidence of Roger’s special weekend use of the TV studio was possibly tampered with or withheld by either Ballard and/or St. Hilaire, as well as Rogers. 

Despite all this, the rules report was quietly accepted by the City Council.

I believed criminal laws may have broken in this investigation by city councilors.  Both the law concerning tampering with public or private records (RSA 638) and false report to law enforcement (RSA 641:4) appear to have been broken. These are serious crimes. But when I tried to report this to the Concord Police Dept., I was turned away because the alleged crime involved past and current city councilors. I was told by two consecutive police chiefs that since the council controls their budget, they would not take action against councilors.

Maybe I’m naïve, but I believe no one should be above the law.

From my experience I believe the city of Concord government has a systemic problem, where conflicts of interest lead to wasteful spending, look-the-other way oversight, stonewalling and covering-up of potential crimes.

You have a city manager who refused to attain contractually mandated CCTV records pertinent to knowing whether CCTV was abiding by its City contract. Not only did the manager impede the investigation by not attaining these documents, he also did not acknowledge documents he had in his own office. The fact that he had never requested these contractually required documents raises questions about his managing of the CCTV contract, as it led to a lack of transparency and accountability of an organization that involves several city councilors and has a multi-million dollar no-bid contract.  

But the city manager’s job depends on keeping city councilors happy. The same impulse drives the city solicitor, who told me he doesn’t serve the citizens, he serves the city council. When you have a city manager, a city solicitor, and police chiefs who worry more about their paychecks than upholding the law, you have citizens who are being ill served. And when you have a city council who fail to acknowledge problems within the city administration and the council itself, the whole city suffers.

This ethics ordinance can and should be made stronger, but ultimately only ethical people will protect us from the actions of unethical people.  I believe we should all work towards making our city government as open and as ethical as possible. 

There’s much work to be done.