Keno-garten Conflicts On The Concord City Council?

CONCORD, NH — At least two Concord officials could have been – or may, in the future – be in conflict during official discussions about Keno in the city of Concord which has been put up for a vote this November. The issue arose during recent Concord City Council meetings after Mayor Jim Bouley – who co-owns one of the state’s most profitable lobbying and consulting firms, Dennehy and Bouley – stepped away from leading meetings due to his lobbying relationship with Intralot, the New Hampshire Lottery Commission’s Keno vendor. The first time, on Aug. 14, 2017, the mayor stepped away from the meeting but failed to announce why he was stepping away, something that council rules require.

Mayor Pro Temp, Dan St. Hilaire, chaired the rest of the meeting until the mayor returned. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Concord NH Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

At-Large City Council Mark Coen did not step away from the meeting even though his daughter works for Bouley’s firm, which would also fall under the council rules of a conflict.

At the next council meeting on Sept. 11, Bouley again called for a recess and when councilors returned, St. Hilaire was again leading the meeting.

Councilor Allan Herschlag of Ward 2 then asked St. Hilaire why Bouley wasn’t chairing the meeting and he stated that he would be presiding over “this one item until he returns.” Herschlag countered that Bouley being the lobbyist for Intralot meant he had a conflict and needed to declare it.

St. Hilaire then countered, “I do not know that he has a conflict.”

Herschlag then raised a 6B motion and stated that Coen also had a conflict – to snickering and giggling by some of the other councilors, a surprisingly uncouth response to the issue. St. Hilaire asked Herschlag for clarification about why it would be a conflict if there was no Keno contract and Bouley returned to the council to request to speak on the matter.

At-Large City Council Stephen Shurtleff jumped in stated that there needed to be a second to Herschlag’s motion before proceeding. But none of the other councilors seconded the motion. Shurtleff then suggested that discussion was not needed.

St. Hilaire though stated he would let Bouley speak on the matter if he chose to. Bouley said that Intralot did not have a contract with the state for Keno but there was a potential in the future that there might be a conflict.

“They do not have a state contract for Keno,” he said. “It may be somebody else – they may not get it.”

But, Bouley added, he was stepping away for the purposes of transparency. He also stated that since there wasn’t a contract, he didn’t think Coen had to step away from the meeting. Bouley added that he didn’t know where Herschlag was going by raising the issue.

St. Hilaire stated that the motion had failed due to lack of a second and thanked Bouley for his explanation.

“The fact is that there actually is not conflict anyway,” he said. “So, it’s moot for both of those issues.”

Herschlag then asked that if it were a moot issue, why was the mayor stepping away? Because you would call him on it a year later, St. Hilaire accused.

After voting to set up a public hearing about Keno for Oct. 16, Bouley returned and led the rest of the meeting.

Lottery officials, during multiple conversations, confirmed that it does have a contract for Keno with Intralot that runs through the end of June 2020. That contract was negotiated in 2008 and 2009, and approved in 2010, if and when the state approved the game. But because the game had changed so much during the last seven years, a new “contract term amendment” was being negotiated with the company.

In previous press reports, Charlie McIntyre, the executive director of the lottery commission, has stated that the org was working with Intralot to be the Keno provider.

Maura McCann, a spokeswoman for the org, added that no other company would be offering the service and couldn’t discuss the specifics of the negotiations with the company. It’s the same game but the technology is different – machines and software – and different costs are associated with it, she said, and those items need to be re-negotiated. Lottery officials are expecting to have Keno up and running by mid-December, she added.

Bouley said on Friday that what he said at the meeting last week was what he believed to be true at the time and currently. He said that the amendment between Intralot and the lottery hadn’t been approved by the Executive Council and governor, so it was still up in the air. He also stated he checked the council’s legal counsel about the issue and believed he was not in conflict but stepped away from the meeting as a caution.

Herschlag, in an email, said he was disappointed that the mayor had misstated the relationship between his lobbying client and the lottery, his “apparent attempt to avoid declaring” that he had a conflict, and “an attempt to make me look like an over-zealous nut who sees conflicts of interest in every nook and cranny in city hall.”

Coen said he was surprised by Herschlag’s mention of the 6B because he never talks with his daughter – or Bouley – about her or her clients. He added that he still thought of her as his little girl – not a grown woman, with kids, and a background in finance. Coen said he thought it was "pretty cool" that the issue was being raised because he had to think about her not as a daughter but as a successful adult.

“I never thought,” he said, “about anything my children do, professionally, that I would end up being in a conflict. It never even crossed my mind.”

Coen said he didn’t think it was a conflict because he wasn’t voting to approve Keno – he was voting to allow it to be put on the ballot and for a public forum to be held. He added that he would consider stepping away from items the council took up, in the future, if there was a conflict.

The issue of whether or not Keno will be offered at establishments in the city of Concord will be on the ballot for a vote this November.

File photos by Tony Schinella.