“Man, what a crap show this became! And I blame the former GAC commissioners for most of it (McLear, Gallagher) as well as current Commissioner Kiedaisch.
Now, however, with the adults in the room (new Commissioners Wood, Strang, and Lambert, along with current Commissioner Ness) being elected to the GAC, it’s clear that they stopped that power-seeking lawsuit (to keep themselves in their seats of power, so it seems) and are trying to unwind the mess that they were stuck with.
Given the nature of the lawsuit, and that the Delegation (all of the NH State Reps in Belknap County) had to expend funds to defend themselves, it created another firestorm – the Delegation, having voted to spend $20,000 to defend themselves ended up having to spend over $40,000 to do so – and then the suit was just dropped.
And WE, the taxpayers, have to absorb both that $40K as well as the $100K expended by the GAC Commissioners. My thought is that each of those three Commissioners (Kiedaisch, Gallagher, and McLear) ought to be pulling money out of their OWN pockets to reimburse Gunstock Mountain Resort for the monies spent just for personal political reasons.
But I digress but at least that’s a bit of context for this letter by NH State Rep Mike Sylvia, Chair of the Belknap County Delegation, who provided this email at my request (emphasis mine):
——– Forwarded Message ——–Subject: Request
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2022 16:36:31 -0400
From: Mike Sylvia <mike.sylvia@leg.state.nh.us>
To: Mr Peter Ness <petergness@yahoo.com>, Gary Kiedaisch <garykinusa@gmail.com>, david strang <davidstrangmd@yahoo.com>, Jade Wood <gopjade@outlook.com>, Doug Lambert <dlambert@dgfindustrial.com>
Gunstock Area Commission,
As we move forward and seek to build a more harmonious relationship among all groups concerned with the viability of Gunstock, I believe it is important to properly memorialise lessons learned over the past year. What started as a question of the propriety of an ethics policy snowballed into a lawsuit against the county delegation. I believe the suit to have been brought without merit and at great expense to the county taxpayers. As such, I believe it would serve to help restore relations if GAC would look into how this snowball grew, and consider making restitution to the county for the legal expense paid in defense of the suit. As you know the court ruled in all issues in favor our defense and were this a private matter there would likely have been a counter claim made for frivolous action. Clearly such action by the delegation would be illogical.
I hope the GAC will give this request for payment full consideration and I hope that you can help us understand how we can avoid repeating missteps in the future. I sincerely thank you for your service to Gunstock and the county.
Rep. Mike Sylvia
Chairman Belknap County Delegation
Knowing only what I do know, as there are a bunch of things going on in the “transparency and openness” sphere as to if legal documents should be unredacted and made available along with the legal bills themselves, the top of this post is all I know. There are movements by both the Delegation and GAC members, as the client side of “attorney/client” privilege to waive that privilege and to bring everything into the open – you know, put the dirty laundry through the washer and hang it all up on the clothesline for every one to see who did what to whom.
I’m thinking that the naming of names and the actions are going to backfire a few, select people. I only wish I had been at the meeting this past Wednesday to record it but hey, somebody had to be recording James O’Keefe at Dartmouth, right?
That’s the problem with this all – too much going on in too many places that really need cameras.
Hey, if YOU want to Be Brave and Do Something, consider becoming a volunteer camera operator to get to the events that we can’t get to – you’ll get your own byline on GraniteGrok and our readers will get a better idea of what’s going on around the State that the regular media here in NH never bothers to cover.
Deal?
