The Nashua City Charter serves as our local constitution for city government, and the ordinances serve as the laws. It works best when we follow the rules. But in the last four years, the rules no longer matter.
Under the Nashua Revised Ordinance [NRO], the city must have a five-member Ethics Committee, with appointments nominated by the Mayor.
The Mayor has not appointed anyone to the Ethics Committee since 2017. The committee ceased to function in 2019. The last members were Dearborn Wingate (term expired in 2015), Tim Bush, Sindiso Mnisi-weeks, and Mike Tabascko.
In the last four years of Mayor Donchess’ reign, the city has faced several ethics allegations, none forwarded to the Ethics Committee.
When a single political party runs a City, it is unlikely they will investigate their own, and the Mayor’s neglect in appointing members to the Ethics Committee without any Board objection amplifies his unchecked powers. Board members need his money to back their campaigns.
To compound this, there is an old guard of city leaders that have long-standing personal friendships among themselves and leadership, that prevent the critical and objective review necessary to call out misconduct. When leaders sit in the chamber together to do business and regularly sit in the bar together chumming it up, they develop blind spots for seeing and correcting abuse.
Based on the NRO Ethics Committee complaint section, “Any individual having information that a municipal employee.., is engaged in improper activities or has a conflict of interest .., may file his or her complaint with the City Solicitor/Corporation Counsel, who shall forthwith submit said complaint to the Ethics Review Committee.”
In 2019, I hired, at my own expense, a private investigator to observe an assessor who I believed was not doing his job; My attempts to convey my concerns with the City leadership were disregarded. The Standard of Conduct that would trigger a committee review would be if an employee “Pursues a course of conduct which will raise suspicion among the public that he is likely to be engaged in acts that are in violation of his trust.”
After a month-long investigation, it was discovered the assessor was sleeping in his car in city parking lots and/or using a personal computer while signing out on an office white board that he was visiting properties. Additionally, in a conflict of interest, he came to my home to review the assessment his brother has done on the property. Unsurprisingly, he agreed with his brother’s work.
The private investigator’s report was presented to Attorney Bolton and Mayor Donchess. In violation of the City law to report this alleged misconduct to the Ethics Committee, Attorney Bolton dismissed the report, within 24 hours, finding the report had no merit. The Department of Revenue investigated and produced a report that did find misconduct and sanctioned the assessor for violating public trust. Why were Concord leaders willing to conduct an ethics investigation, but Nashua leaders were not?
A single party system can easily lead to unchecked unethical conduct. What the Republicans did in Washington to defend Trump’s action on January 6, 2021 and not impeach, is no different than what Nashua leadership does to defend Mayor Donchess and promulgate unethical behavior in City Government.
The Ethics Committee should be convened to:
[1] investigate Mayor Donchess’ use of the public access TV station to run a personal public relations ad last year to campaign in support the charter change that would permit the Mayor to appoint the Police Commissioners. The Board of Alderman did not vote to approve this. Using his Mayor power, he ordered TV time to pitch his personal agenda. The Democratic Board of Alderman looked the other way, just like the D.C. Republicans did with Trump.
[2] investigate the handling of information requests by the City and Legal office. There have been too many costly lawsuits with no substantive changes to correct these problems. The State Attorney General’s office does not have a municipal division and will not accept municipal complaints, so local power to enforce is critical.
[3] Investigate the conduct of Attorney Bolton in his ability to follow his professional conduct codes with regard to his duty to provide administrative oversight to the Attorneys and staff of the Nashua’s legal office and investigate the misuse of taxpayer money.
[4] to investigate the destruction of public documents by Board of Alderman members who believe when they read a letter into the public record during a public meeting, they can tear it up, on camera, and announce their willful act to deny the public the information.
[5] investigate the Board of Alderman and their inability to conduct themselves per their professional code of conduct. The Mayor is leading the effort to gaslight citizens who speak contrary to his viewpoints, violating their constitutional rights and creating costly federal lawsuits and personal lawsuits against individual members of the Board. The Board of Aldermen are modelling the Mayor’s tactics and amplifying the gaslighting.
Mayor Donchess had created a viscously partisan city with the Board of Alderman happy to execute his divisive plans rather than represent their constituents. The Mayor’s neglect in appointing an Ethics Committee has allowed the City to lose its moral compass. Sadly, under Mayor Donchess’ leadership, Nashua has become a lot like Washington, DC.
Youtube video of Timmons tearing up letter read into the record:
