Will Lisa DiBello return to her Town Council seat?

Or, more to the point, SHOULD SHE?

By Will Collette

Since the spring of 2010 as her power struggle with her then boss, Town Administrator William DiLibero, intensified, through her firing in May 2010, then her "Because She Cares" campaign for Town Council and her peculiar year as a Council member, Lisa DiBello has grabbed and held the spotlight.

Intended or not, she has gotten a lot of attention as people ask "What's Lisa going to do next?" In my opinion, that “what’s next?” has usually been something bad for this town.

After swearing throughout her campaign that she was not out to settle scores or seek revenge, she waited less than three months into 2011 to bring her first legal action against the town, filing a complaint against the town and against present and former town officials for engaging in an incredible five-year-long conspiracy against her.

She tied up one Council meeting after another with attacks on her enemy, the Town Administrator, and against another enemy, fellow Council member Gregg Avedisian. She flouted town procedure, nurtured a network of spies among town staff and hassled town employees working at the beach.

If she showed up at Council meetings, you never knew what would happen, although you could usually count on at least one flare-up, often involving one or more of her enemies.

Then, after months of hints that she would take her complaint into Superior Court, she received the go-ahead to do so from the RI Human Rights Commission where she filed her initial complaint.

But before filing suit, she made one last demand on the town: pay her $1.5 million to go away, or give her $500,000, plus $150,000 for her lawyer, an unspecified amount of reimbursement for her health insurance costs and her old job back.

The wrinkle was that DiBello’s unprecedented legal action against the town made it impossible for the Town Council to even consider her settlement proposal – both her actions and inactions denied the Council a working quorum.

Rather than take the simple steps required to allow the Council to at least consider whether to bargain with her for a settlement, now DiBello has filed the long-anticipated Superior Court lawsuit.

How can DiBello claim to be able to SERVE the town that she is SUING?

How can she expect to comply with the requirements of the Rhode Island Ethics law and take part in any Town Council actions that could touch on her case? Given the scope of her lawsuit, there are few areas – except perhaps to suggest who should get the next Hometown Hero Award – she can participate in without an obvious conflict of interest.

How can she expect other Town Council members or town staff to sit in meetings with her, work with her or allow her to hear information that she may well use in her court case? How can she expect anyone to trust her, including the voters, whose trust she has betrayed?

In short, how can DiBello continue to serve as a member of the Charlestown Town Council?

It is long past the time where DiBello needs to go. The honorable course of action, now that she has decided to sue the town, is for DiBello to tender her resignation.

If not, it is time for the town to consider using the new provisions in the Town Charter for the recall of an elected official. See this article for details on how the recall process in Charlestown is supposed to work.

There is a very dark cloud hanging over Councilor Lisa DiBello, and it’s not just this lawsuit. Since last September, I have shared my research with you on DiBello’s apparent conflict of interest regarding her long-time roommate’s contract with the town, on DiBello’s peculiar home-based charity, A Ray of Hope, and on DiBello’s history of dodging accountability and disregarding her legal obligations.

From her record, it seems that Lisa DiBello never met a rule that applied to her but only to other, lesser mortals.

DiBello has the right to go to court to seek redress of her grievances. It is for the court to judge the merits of her claims about the alleged conspiracy and the manner in which she was discharged from town employment. Let the court decide the veracity of her amazing claims by the evidence she presents. If she has any.

For better or for worse, she has made the choice to sue the town. Now there is another decision to be made about whether she can continue to hold a Town Council seat. If she doesn’t make the necessary choice, that choice should be made for her.

Charlestown has a new provision in the Town Charter that is made for such an extreme situation as the one we have. It is called Recall.