News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
Laurie Ortolano 
How City Hall Used a Closed-Door Session to Hide the Failed 14 Mulberry Street Land Deal from the Public A deep dive into the April 28, 2026 Board of Aldermen non-public session minutes, now unsealed, reveals a troubling pattern of using executive session not to protect the public’s interest, but to shield elected officials from … Read more
The numbers don’t lie. After years of watching the city’s Ethics Review Committee treat male and female complainants differently, I finally put it on the record. On May 6, 2026, I filed a formal complaint with the New Hampshire Attorney Discipline Office (ADO) against Attorney Timothy Bush, Chairman of the Nashua Ethics Review Committee (ERC). … Read more
A companion piece to Doris Hohensee’s “When Public Meetings Become Police Operations” — GraniteGrok, May 2026 Doris Hohensee’s recent GraniteGrok piece is a must-read account of how nine ordinary New Hampshire citizens were wrongfully arrested at a public Executive Council meeting in October 2021 and then spent the better part of two years navigating a … Read more
When a Judge Tells You to Go Be Political Seven and ½ months. That is how long a single ethics complaint has been waiting to be screened by the City of Nashua’s Ethics Review Committee. Not read. Not decided. Not ruled on. Just sitting. The only complaint. Waiting. And when I finally brought that failure … Read more
On December 11, 2025, I filed a formal complaint with the New Hampshire Attorney Discipline Office against Timothy E. Bush, Esquire, chairman of the Nashua Ethics Review Committee. The ADO’s finding, issued April 1, 2026, cleared Bush of all violations. I have filed a Request for Reconsideration, due to be heard May 1, 2026. The … Read more
This email was sent to the Board of Aldermen, City Clerk, and Corporation Counsel for the City of Nashua, NH. Residents should hope that the City of Nashua does the right thing for its residents Re: Formal Request for New Public Hearing on Resolutions R-26-019 and R-26-020 – 14 Mulberry Street Acquisition – New Material … Read more
What Is Nashua Hiding? — The “Unsettling” Hunt for Settlements New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know Law has a provision most people don’t know exists, and one New Hampshire city is apparently counting on that. RSA 91-A:4 VI is short, clear, and unambiguous. Every settlement agreement involving a lawsuit, a threatened lawsuit, or any other claim against a … Read more
Nashua’s Selective Enforcement of “Shall” There’s a phrase often attributed, loosely and somewhat inaccurately, to Karl Marx: power without ideology. Whether or not Marx ever said it in those exact words, the concept is unmistakable: power exercised without consistent principle, without accountability, and without any obligation to apply rules evenly. That idea is playing out in real time … Read more
If the City of Nashua and its three “independent” arts center corporations were truly separate, you would expect them to act that way when legal trouble arrived. They didn’t. Instead, they entered into a Confidentiality and Common Legal Interest Agreement, a joint defense pact that allowed them to operate as a single, coordinated legal unit while … Read more
When the City of Nashua created three shell corporations to build and manage the Nashua Performing Arts Center, the public was told they were private and therefore off-limits. Private corporations, the argument went, meant private records. Private records meant the public had no right to see how decisions were being made. But the documents tell a … Read more
On September 14, 2025, I filed an ethics complaint against Nashua Alderman Derek Thibeault. The complaint was straightforward: three pages identifying a single alleged ethics violation. Under the Nashua Revised Ordinances governing the Ethics Review Committee (“ERC”), complaints are first reviewed in a screening meeting. The purpose of that meeting is limited. The committee determines whether the complaint: … Read more
Transparency should not require a lawsuit. Yet in Nashua, the only way to force the ERC to follow its own ordinance has been to ask a court to intervene. When internal oversight systems stop working, citizens are left with a simple choice: Accept the dysfunction, or challenge it. I attempted to resolve my concerns through … Read more
When Ethics Systems Protect Power An ethics system reveals its true character when it investigates those at the top. Anyone can enforce rules against minor officials or low-level employees. The real test comes when allegations involve political leadership. I can assure you that the test has not inspired much confidence. Over the past several years, … Read more
When Rules Are Optional in Nashua Sunshine Week is supposed to celebrate the public’s right to understand what their government is up to. But in Nashua, transparency feels more like a suggestion than the rule it is intended to be. The city’s Ethics Review Committee (ERC) was created to hold public officials accountable. Its governing … Read more
The black box redactions on Nashua’s Performing Arts Center legal invoices were not a mistake. They were reviewed and approved by the City’s Legal Office. When I wrote last week about Nashua’s “Epstein-style” redactions, I left open the possibility that the City might claim error. Maybe someone inexperienced had over-redacted. Maybe a clerk panicked. Maybe … Read more
I filed a straightforward Right-to-Know request asking for the invoice supporting a $33,614 payment to McLane Middleton, the law firm hired to defend the three shell corporations created by the City of Nashua to construct and manage the Nashua Performing Arts Center. What I received in response did not look like transparency. It looked like … Read more
Each March, Sunshine Week reminds Americans that open government is not optional; it is foundational and well-regarded in New Hampshire as a Constitutional right. The public has a right to know how its money is spent and how its officials conduct business. Yet here in Nashua, one of the city’s largest public projects was structured … Read more
In a recent pretrial filing, defense counsel asked the Court to “caution all parties” against extrajudicial statements, citing one of my writings as an example (Viewpoint Discrimination in Plain Sight, Dec. 29, 2025). That writing was not a social media post. It was a long-form blog essay published on my civic-advocacy website and in this … Read more
Nashua’s Weaponized Decorum In Nashua, the definition of “civility” is not a fixed principle; it is a sliding scale that depends entirely on who holds the microphone. On August 26, 2021, I used a single vulgar word during a public meeting to describe a City Attorney’s conduct. My frustration was the culmination of a seven-month … Read more
Why the Executive Council Must Reclaim Its Constitutional Role in Judicial Selection New Hampshire’s Constitution has never been ambiguous about judicial appointments. For more than two centuries, the process has been a shared power: the NH Constitution provides that the Governor and the Executive Council share responsibility for nominating and appointing Judges and Justices. It … Read more