Contracted legal fee agreements are approved by the Mayor and require no approval of the Board of Aldermen (BOA). The purchasing policy does not require the Finance Committee or Board of Aldermen to approve legal services above $25,000. The Mayor and Legal Office have unchecked control over the legal fee contracts and the terms and expenses associated with these services.
The Legal Office fee contracts are divided into two categories for accounting: Abatements and Risk Management.
Abatement contracted legal services are funded through an overlay account separate from the Legal Department Budget. These contracts are hidden money that requires citizens to request Trial Balances.
Risk Management and the property casualty account run the remaining contracted fee agreements. These are expense accounts that are funded with taxpayers’ money. These accounts are separate from the monthly budget, so tracking and accountability are not transparent. The Risk Management Department has inflated from $3,500,000 under Mayor Lozeau to over $7,300,000 in 2025 under Mayor Donchess, with little accountability to the BOA or taxpayers.
Nashua’s legal budget with the City budget book records no outside consulting fee services or contracts. The budget remains relatively flat, yet millions of dollars of consulting legal fees are being paid to outside firms. The City of Manchester accounts for its overlay abatement account within the budget, while Nashua does not.
This arrangement permits Nashua’s attorneys to cozy up to outside firms and stall and delay closure while lining the pockets of outside attorneys. Taxpayers blindly fund all these costs while plaintiffs foot the bills for delays stalling closure to challenges.
Should the Mayor approve the Fee Agreement with McLane Middleton for the Arts Center Right-to-Know Lawsuit?
The Mayor approved the fee agreement with McLean Middleton to represent the shell corporations formed to funnel public money required by a federal program used by the City for funding. The Mayor approved payment for legal representation to these shell companies while denying that the City has involvement with these corporations. These “independent” Corporations and funded by the City so they could not pay their legal expenses.
It appears that Mr. Lannan, president of all three shell company boards, made the selection independent of his board—most likely communications between Mr. Lannan and Dir. Cummings and the Mayor took place, but no public records exist regarding these communications. The Mayor and Legal Office did not competitively bid on this contract, and the BOA was not given any say in the selection of this firm. The Mayor provided no input on why he would select one of the most expensive firms in the state to represent issues regarding the noticing and posting of meetings being held by the three corporations, which were presented by the City Attorney and documented in bylaws as public entities.
The Mayor had a lot to hide when he became aware that the structure of these corporations was potentially illegal. The Mayor and the Legal Office then began a campaign to demonize the citizen who brought the petition forward, accusing her of costing the City too much money. Why did the Mayor need such an expensive firm to defend shell corporations? The fees billed to the City to cover legal representation of these corporations was over $475,000 charged by McLean Middleton. (McLane discounted ~$50K in fees) This has to be one of the most expensive right-to-know lawsuits in the state. The lawsuit solidified that two of the shell corporations are public entities. The City Attorney attempted to hide this. The role and public nature of the third shell corporation is under Appeal at the Supreme Court.
The relationship between Mr. Lannan who was selected by the Mayor to run the three corporations as president and to serve as chairman of virtually all the arts boards within the City contained many conflicts of interest that presented no public transparency and accountability in taxpayer spending for an over $34 Million Arts Center.
Most likely McLean was hired to address all of these conflicts of interest between the corporations and protect the potential wrongdoing of the Mayor, Nashua’s legal officers and the Boards of Directors of these corporations. Deputy council attorney Leonard and corporate counsel attorney Bolton were intimately involved in this intricate deal. It appears they deliberately withheld and mislead the public and BOA on the corporate structure information, preventing informed decisions.
There Are No Safeguards To Prevent Private Taxpayer Money From Funding Attorneys Who Hide The Corruption Of The Mayor And Legal Office.
There are no checks and balances that would prevent a mayor from using taxpayer money to defend his potential civil and criminal violations as well as the potential wrongdoing of the Legal Office and boards he selected. Since the Mayor has full power to enter into fee agreements with any legal firm without the approval of the Board of Alderman, there’s no way to be certain that these agreements are done to protect the City’s interest or the city leaders’ personal wrongdoing. As a matter of fact, this hired outside firm did not once meet with the BOA to address the work they were doing or permit questions from our governing Board for oversight. Our BOA was entirely in the dark; it is a reasonable opinion that Ms. Wilshire and other power-seated Board members could have had inside information not shared with the full BOA.
The court system and the judges in Nashua handling municipal have turned a blind eye to the conflicted corporate structure and the unbridled power within the Legal Office and the Mayor’s office. The corporate structure plays a major role in determining what records are public. The failure of the City to define the corporate structures and to initially write bylaws correctly, resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars spent so a citizen could try to figure out who was ultimately responsible for the records. In this case, the judge, Temple, threw up major roadblocks along the two-year trail to bring this trial into court. It appears the judge swept the wrongdoing under the rug, cast credibility aside, or was ordered by those above to look the other way. Two judges have spent over 10 years in Nashua exposing their bias and political influence for our far-left-wing Mayor Donchess. The judges appear to be in the pocket of the City. Judges are not enforcing the court’s rules to afford plaintiffs challenging records their due process rights afforded them in the NH Constitution.
What Can be Done to Correct the “Blind Spots”
- Rewrite the purchasing manual to add the legal fee agreements. Over $10,000 will be brought before the finance committee, and the full BOA will be required to be finalized.
- Mandate, by Board policy, that at least two meetings per year will be held as a non-public session where outside hired counsel, assuming they are retained as consultants for over 12 months, will come before the BOA for questions and answers. The Board must scrutinize the work of the attorneys. All invoices and payments will be presented to the Board at these meetings.
- Forbid judges from membership in the NH Bar Association to eliminate the appearance of Conflicts of Interest and solidify this “appearance” into truth. Trust in the Judicial legal branch will only happen when Rules of Civil Procedures and Evidence are applied fairly to both parties, gender discrimination is ended, and politics, in municipal matters, are removed from the Courtroom.
Of course, the public plays a major role – request these policy changes be adopted. The Mayor won’t do this voluntarily. The public would wisely insist on the change by expressing their rights as citizens.
