Ethics: No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Ethics: No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Once upon a time, this selectman believed complaints from employees could be handled in an equitable manner, according to the procedures outlined in the Personnel Policy. Boy, was I wrong!

Treasurer Tammy Coller’s complaint  March 15, 2010

Farrell letter to Carol Skelton March 23, 2010

Carol Skelton response to Farrell request March 26, 2010

Anyone else think these responses are “odd”? Shouldn’t both CS, BC and GPS have refrained from responding since they are mentioned within the Coller complaint?

Having no luck in addressing this complaint through the procedure outlined in the Personnel policy, I made a request to the Chairman of the BOS (Gerald Skelton). I received this response. At that time Gerald Skelton was also the Chairman of the personnel board. At this point, I contacted the Secretary of State’s Division of public records. I received verbal confirmation that the complaint from the Treasurer was indeed a public record.

I rented the American Legion in order to have a symposium on citizen petition articles. The BOS decided to post my meeting as a BOS meeting. I distributed the treasurer’s complaint at this meeting on April 25, 2010 to support my belief that the BOS should administer the personnel policy because the personnel board is ineffectual.(Article 28).

After the May election in 2010, the composition of the BOS changed. Dennis O’Brien is named Chairman, Robert Columbus is vice chair, Chris Stewart, Julie Farrell and Robert Mitchell are members of the BOS.  On May 21, 2010 Mr. Bennett, as a private citizen receives an opinion from Joe Fair of Kopelman &Paige regarding his public record request for the treasurer’s complaint. There was NO vote taken by the BOS to generate this opinion. As a private citizen, Mr. Bennett had no access to town counsel. So who requested this opinion? Could it have been Robert Columbus? The person named in the complaint?

The next set of documents is rather confusing. In 2009, Jerry was Chairman of the BOS. He sent a letter to Tammy (treasurer) asking to what extent she had helped with the new billing system for the sewer department. The issue of help for the sewer department came up again in May of 2010. Mr. Columbus again made the allegation that I had a conflict of interest in this matter because my husband was chairman of the sewer commission at that time. According to Kay Doyle of Kopelman and Paige, I did not have a conflict of interest. May 24, 2010 correspondence.

Not satisfied with amount of needless harassment they have inflicted to this point, Mr. O’Brien, Mr. Columbus and Mr. Skelton file complaints against me for trying to address the treasurer’s complaint. It is suddenly decided to have a meeting to discuss the treasurer’s complaint on July 19, 2010 – four months after the original complaint is made. I have a draft copy of the minutes from this meeting. Then this article appears in the Gardner News…followed by this editorial by Robert Columbus.

Mr. Bennett wrote a few editorials to refute Mr. Columbus’ editorial. One editorial was paid, the other two were letters to the editor.

For me, the fun continued when I received this letter from Ethics about my “improper” release of the now suddenly “highly confidential” complaint by the treasurer. During the hearing held on these complaints on August 25, 2010, I graded each of the complaints with an “F” (Mr. Columbus received an “F-“) for plagiarism.  This letter arrived after my hearing on this matter on August 25, 2010. On page three of this communication, it states:” In light of the seriousness of this allegation,…” You would think if this allegation were that serious, then Ethics would have contacted me prior to this letter as is customary. Instead, this letter is issued to me without my side of the story. Also, this letter cites the exact same reasoning as the K&P opinion by Joe Fair from May 21^st. I would grade this response a “C-“ for plagiarism. So much for Ethics being an “independent “ organization. I prefer to think of Ethics as a wholly owned subsidiary of K&P.

August 27, 2010, Mr. Bennett receives this opinion from Joe Fair (K&P). In this opinion Mr. Bennett is accused of harassing and annoying the town with his public record requests. I receive another letter from Ethics, again without being consulted first. I wonder who submitted this complaint to Ethics? Could it have been Mr. Columbus, who sent these same e-mails to the Superintendent of schools and the chairman of the school committee? Again, this file is closed.

At this point I hired my own attorney(Scott Graves) to deal with these complaints. On November 30, 2010 we had a conference call with Brian McWilliams from Ethics to discuss the “complaints “ against me. I was informed that the letter I received from Ethics dated July 29, 2010 was an “educational letter”. Nowhere is this piece of literature labeled as such. I was told this was not a preliminary investigation. A very odd conversation.

I continued to try to get complaints addressed by the BOS. The backlog was(and is) quite extensive. I created a list of complaints in December so the BOS would have some idea of the number of complaints and if the complaints were still active. In February, A reporter from the Gardner News made a public request for the “List”. Lauren Goldberg wrote this response from K&P. I guess Joe Fair was getting tired. At this point my attorney received yet another call from ethics because I created a “List” of complaints.

My attorney, Scott Graves, submitted this 31-page response to Ethics. This response was expensive, but worth every penny. I haven’t heard from Ethics since this response was submitted. This response was very long, but it is interesting. After this response was filed, Attorney Graves received this message from Alan Cote, Supervisor of Records. I don’t know why Joe Fair of K&P was contacted in this matter; no idea why Joe Fair forwarded it to Carol Skelton. For the record, the treasurer did feel that her complaint was a public record.

I find it very troubling that this witch-hunt was conducted because I had the gall to try to address an employee complaint. I believe this witch-hunt was conducted to try to discredit me; to silence me. The witch-hunt was also conducted so that I would be fined $10,000 by Ethics. I leave it for you to decide if this is the way you want employee complaints handled in the town of Templeton. I will continue to speak out on behalf of the employees and taxpayers in the Town of Templeton. No one will take away my first amendment rights without a fight.

Julie Farrell