CCA packs Chariho School Committee with another acolyte
By Will Collette
First, my thanks to my colleague Tom Ferrio for his live coverage of tonight’s Town Council meeting. My Cox internet connection is
having “issues,” so I just didn’t have enough bandwidth to catch it.
Overall, the Council agenda was pretty light compared to
last month when the Council needed two full three-hour sessions to complete its
business.
Tonight, they finished up with 15 minutes to spare.
The big item, at least to me, was the Council’s action on
who to name as the replacement for recently resigned Chariho School Committee
member Andrew McQuaide. There were three contenders but only one person could
be named.
Their ultimate decision led to the title of this article, “To
the Victors Go the Spoils,” a phrase uttered in 1828 by New York Senator William L. Marcy to explain the right of President Andrew Jackson to appoint
anybody he wanted to, no matter how unqualified or sketchy, by right of winning
the election. The "spoils system" - today, we also call it "patronage."
CCA's version of good government |
It didn’t matter that she is spectacularly unqualified
compared to the other candidates (click here to read the resumes), or that she has been openly hostile to
Chariho by grandstanding against Chariho’s position that taxpayers should not have to pay to send students to charter schools if those charter schools are inferior to Chariho.
Nope, Chambers meets the Number One criteria for CCA
Councilors Tom Gentz, Dan Slattery and George Tremblay in that she is 100%
loyal to the CCA on every subject.
It doesn’t matter that Chambers almost single-handedly
turned the town’s Charter Revision process into a rancorous, partisan zoo. It
doesn’t matter that Chambers tried to turn the Charter Revision process into a
vendetta against people in town who angered her.
Or that the Charter changes that she championed have already
caused problems for Charlestown. She’s a CCA partisan and that's all that counts.
Since the CCA increased
its grip on the Town Council to the point where they no longer even need
Councilor Lisa DiBello’s support, they can appoint whomever they wish.
Because to the victor goes the spoils.