VDE Commissioners, District Manager Plead GUILTY to Right to Know Law Violations in ESC Takeover

Appearing in New Hampshire Superior Court on March 18, 2014 the Village District of Eastman (VDE) Commissioners and District Manager acknowledged through their attorney that they violated the NH Right to Know Law in their takeover efforts of the Eastman Sewer Company. Justice Tucker agreed that on January 19, 2012, February 7, 2012 and February 15, 2012 VDE Officials did not comply with NH RSA 91-A when they met in Non-public Sessions to discuss Eastman Sewer Company takeover efforts. At each of these three sessions multiple violations of the Right to Know law (RTK) occurred.

While all of these violations indicate a complete disregard on the part of the Commissioners and the District Manager for the public’s Right to Know, the February 7, 2012 meeting is particularly onerous to anyone who believes in citizens’ rights. That meeting held by VDE Public Officials was done so without any public meeting occurring on the same date – which is a legal requirement of the Right to Know Law. Furthermore, fully participating in collaboration at that meeting were Eastman officials including ECA Board President Maynard Goldman. Other Eastman officials participating at that session include: ECA General Manager Ken Ryder, Assistant General Manager Brian Harding, Eastman Sewer Company "Board Representative" Brad Moses along with others. All participants in this clandestine session denied the Sewer users and all VDE Members from an open transparent process and laid the foundation for the ultimate take over orchestrated by the VDE Commissioners along with ECA Board President Goldman.

In acknowledging on March 18, 2014 in Superior Court their Right to Know violations; the defendants claimed ignorance of the law. The Village District argued that "it learned it was not complying with RSA 91–A in March of 2013 when a resident of the district, Philip Schaefer, called the violations to the attention of the board." There is no public record, to our knowledge between March 2013 and February 2014 wherein VDE officials acknowledged their ignorance of the Right to Know law to their constituents. In fact, quite the contrary-- in their initial reply to our complaint to Superior Court in February 2014 the VDE took the position that it did not violate RSA – 91A with respect to the Non-public Sessions. This denial is just part of the overall cover-up of this whole power effort on the part of VDE and ECA elected and appointed officials.

These same four VDE officials along with ECA Board President Goldman, petitioned the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission in June 2013 that they (the VDE officials ) possessed the managerial, technical and engineering expertise to operate the Eastman Sewer Company. As VDE District Manager Weber posted to the community, the Public Utility Commission agreed with the VDE officials’ and the ECA Board President's claim.

How is it that a government body, the NH Public Utilities Commission, can find that officials of a municipality have the managerial skills to take over and operate a second utility when in fact those officials violated the NH Right to Know law multiple times? Is violating the Right to Know law an acceptable managerial skill for running a public utility? The bureaucracy of governance is at play here.

It seems that while the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commissioners can make a finding on the attestation of the managerial skills of the VDE municipal officials, the PUC commissioners ignore evidence of RTK law violations from their decision process. It is not in their jurisdiction; neither is it in the jurisdiction of the Consumer Advocate’s office. All of the facts we submitted in our Superior Court complaint were submitted to the Public Utilities Commissioners and the Office of the Consumer Advocate (See http://preview.tinyurl.com/ldugav9, Exhibit #5 and see http://tinyurl.com/kr4ozx5, Exhibit #29, p. 14). Furthermore, the penalties for Right to Know law violations are so trivial that they almost encourage its violation.

While our initial filed Superior Court complaint focused on multiple RTK violations on six explicit dates, subsequent due diligence demonstrated to us that on additional dates multiple violations occurred. The full details of these findings were submitted to Sullivan Superior Court along with our Trial Memorandum on 3/13/14. We will address those findings in a subsequent post as well as the Court's findings on the remainder of our complaint.

Submitted by Robert Logan--40 year resident of Eastman