Mayor Donchess and I rarely align on issues, but one thing we agree on is justice is not served in Judge Temple’s Courtroom. The Mayor has been expounding in his many public forums about Judge Temple’s ruling in favor of some of my Right-to-Know cases. He believes the Judge is picking on the City as the City has provided “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents” to this “individual” who is retaliating against the City. He is speaking of me.
In listening to the Mayor’s Ward 7 town hall forum, he was asked by a citizen about the Right to Know problems in Nashua. The Mayor carried on for over 6 minutes (far more than we get for public input) with his conscious twist of the facts shirking responsibility. In the eyes of the Mayor, this is the result of an overbearing citizen and unjust court. A dissection of the Mayor’s remarks is the writing of another day.
I agree with Mayor Donchess that the Judge Temple runs an unjust courtroom, but my reasons differ completely from the Mayor’s assessment. Judge Temple treats Right-to-Know cases like criminal trials. This has driven up the costs for both the City and the citizen, but the City makes out much better with this process. The City has the deep pockets of the taxpayers and happily runs up the legal bills on citizens. Ultimately, the City wins by losing slowly and justice is never served for the Citizen. The Judge does not appear to want these cases, so due process is squashed by staggering legal bills, and so goes access to public information.
Judge Temple’s process and the Courts; Clerk willful disregard of the Administration Orders of the Court in handling civil cases, send a powerful message that citizens have no business in the Nashua Court. Take your Petition elsewhere.
Nonsensically, every motion within a Petition requires a hearing. Why? Some of the issues are minor with little to say, but hearings are scheduled with no apparent purpose, other than to delay the outcome and run up the bills.
My observation based on my three years of Court experience and historical research is that Judges, carrying little interest in these types of citizen cases, get the ruling right about 30% of the time. So, do citizens justice and embrace your lousy records and stop ringing up our legal bills to produce incomplete, partially-correct rulings. The harassment, burden and financial ruin associated with Right-to-Know records Petitions must stop.
A lack of Transparency is a symptom of dishonesty
