Time to choose:
Serve the town or Sue the town....
It’s time for Lisa DiBello to decide whether she wants to serve Charlestown or sue Charlestown
After last week’s Town Council meeting, the conflict between those two roles is now painfully obvious, particularly when DiBello unveiled report after report from what appeared to be her extensive network of spies.
When DiBello was fired as Parks and Recreation director last year, some people in town felt sympathetic to her after the years she had worked for the town. Others, myself included, wondered whether the firing was done in a way that honored her rights. And some, including those who worked with or under her, felt she deserved it.
But the ensuing sympathy vote got her elected to the Town Council. Her campaign slogan was “Because I Care.” She repeatedly claimed she was running to serve the town, not for revenge or pay-back.
That lasted for a few months until she filed charges against the Town of Charlestown
DiBello’s complaint is worth studying (start reading on page 7). That raunchy 2005 conversation she overheard involved then Town Administrator Richard Sartor and other male town employees. DiBello says she tried to report this conversation anonymously, but then Council President Deb Carney made her follow the town’s formal (and, I might add, legally required) procedure.
From then on, she claims, Sartor and his allies were out to get her, as were then Council members Gregg Avedisian and Forrester Safford. She reports conversations she had with them either verbatim or in remarkable detail.
She says she had a brief respite from persecution during Jim Mageau’s term as Council President, but the attacks began anew when Gregg Avedisian and Forrester Safford were returned to the Town Council after Mageau’s defeat.
Then, in 2009, she reports secret meetings in Hopkinton where Sartor recruited then Hopkinton Administrator Bill DiLibero to take the better-paying Charlestown Administrator job. According to DiBello, DiLibero got the new gig by promising Sartor that he (DiLibero) would drive Lisa DiBello out of her job.
DiBello describes her rocky relationship with DiLibero – how he didn’t understand that even though she was out on extended sick leave, she still intended to run her department as she always had. She describes the progressively more serious clashes she had with DiLibero as he tried to impose his directions, rather than allow Lisa to do things her way.
After around six months of this, she was fired.
Whether DiBello was right or wrong, or more importantly, whether she can prove the elaborate conspiracy did exist, is a matter for the legal authorities to decide. Frankly, I’m surprised the State Police or FBI haven’t come in, since if it’s true that Sartor and DiLibero made the deal she claims they made, that’s criminal conspiracy. If it’s true.
But for the rest of us citizens and taxpayers of Charlestown
If DiBello goes ahead with the threat to file suit in Superior Court, she substantially ups the ante. How can she work within the Council if she’s suing two fellow Council members? How can DiBello work within town government if she’s suing the Town Administrator, the head of the Budget Commission, the Chief of Police, and members of the Chariho and Conservation Commissions?
I asked the RI Ethics Commission about the potential conflicts of interest that could arise. They told me this was uncharted territory because they could not remember a precedent for a sitting town council member suing their town (and fellow Council members).
So what’s it going to be? SERVE or SUE?
Author: Will Collette