By Will Collette
In the past couple of weeks, there has been some movement on
the conspiracy lawsuit filed by Council member Lisa
DiBello against the town of Charlestown and the “Charlestown Ten” - present
and former town officials.
The lawsuit stems from the unanimous Town Council vote on
May 10, 2010 to fire DiBello as Parks and Recreation Director on the recommendation
of recently resigned Town Administrator William DiLibero.
DiBello then ran for and won a seat on the Town Council on
the motto “Because She Cares.” She promised she did not intend to
seek revenge for her firing. But only weeks after her election, DiBello filed an administrative complaint against
the town and the individual officials. She alleges they engaged in a five-year
conspiracy against her that culminated in her wrongful discharge.
That administrative complaint was converted into a civil lawsuit. DiBello offered to settle her claims for either $1.5 million cash, or
$500,000 (plus costs) and her old job back.
Despite DiBello’s claim that she needed to settle her case
because she was nearly destitute and in danger of losing her home, there was no
action in the case for almost two months while all eyes were focused on the
CCA’s “Kill Bill” campaign to oust DiBello’s arch-enemy Bill DiLibero as Town
Administrator.
The “Kill Bill” campaign hinged on a ruling from the RI
Ethics Commission. The question before the Commission was whether DiBello could
vote on DiLibero’s fate even though he was the one who fired her and was a
central figure in her conspiracy lawsuit against Charlestown .
Remarkably, the Ethics Commission gave DiBello the green
light to participate in DiLibero’s inquisition and execution, although the
basis for their decision was narrowly drawn and very specifically focused on
that one matter.
For the first time, you can read the Ethics Commission
decision for yourself and draw your own judgments about what it means and
whether it was a sound decision. Click here.
The Town of Charlestown
has apparently hired new Counsel to represent the town and most of the
defendants in the case.
If you click here, you can read the Stipulation of Acceptance that shows the town’s counsel on
this case is Michael DeSisto, a Providence
attorney. His Martindale profile lists his practice areas as real estate, civil and commercial litigation.
However, DeSisto is not representing ALL of the “Charlestown
Ten” DiBello defendants. He is listed as representing Acting Town Administrator
and Treasurer Pat Anderson, former Town Administrator Bill DiLibero,
soon-to-be-retired Chief of Police Jack Shippee, present Town Council members Marge Frank and Gregg
Avedisian , former Town Council members Candi Dunn, Forrester
Safford and Richard Hosp and Town GIS specialist Steve McCandless.
The only member of the Charlestown Ten not represented by DeSisto is former Town Administrator and present
Budget Commission chair Richard Sartor. Of all the members of the Charlestown
Ten, Sartor’s role appears to be the most crucial in DiBello’s conspiracy
scenario.
Richard Sartor - going his own way? |
According to DiBello’s complaint, the conspiracy began when
DiBello reported hearing a raunchy conversation in 2007 between Sartor, who was
then Town Administrator, and another male Town Hall staff person.
DiBello’s complaint then describes how this led to months of
trouble. Then, she claims, a particularly sinister conspiracy was hatched by
Sartor and then Hopkinton Town Administrator Bill DiLibero. According to
DiBello’s court filings, Sartor offered to line DiLibero up with the
then-vacant Charlestown Town Administrator job, which paid more money, if
DiLibero promised to do whatever it took to kick DiBello out of her job.
Members of the executive search committee that ultimately
recommended DiLibero’s hiring say they find this conspiracy theory to be
far-fetched. Even if true, it would not have affected their deliberations and
their choice.
DiBello recently filed a new “First Amended Complaint” with
the court – click here to read it in its entirety. It adds no new charges but cleans up some misspellings
in the original version.
But this “amended” version misses some other errors. For
example, in the the very first statement DiBello claims she “worked as the Director of Parks and
Recreation for the Town of Charlestown, Rhode Island for over 21 years as of
the date that she was fired for retaliatory reasons on or about May 10, 2010.”
But DiBello gave the RI Ethics Commission five different hire dates in her
mandatory annual ethics filings, none of which add up to more than 21 years. If you accept the dates she gave in her first and second ethics filings, she
worked as P&R Director for just over 19 years . So either this latest court
filing is wrong, or the ethics reports she filed under penalty of perjury were
wrong.
Now that two of DiBello’s enemies among the Charlestown Ten
– Town Administrator DiLibero and Chief Shippee – are off the board,
there’s a lot of speculation afoot about what might happen next.
Of course, the biggest question is whether a settlement is
afoot. While the departure of two of her enemies has been touted by DiBello’s
allies as a big win for her, there are still lots of enemies left, not to
mention the matter of the money.
If DiBello seriously wants to get her old job back, there
are at least two obstacles. One is the state law that bars revolving-door
employment. The law requires one year to pass before an elected official can
get a job in the jurisdiction they represented.
Just as Deputy Dan Slattery is barred from getting the Town
Administrator job he coveted until at one year as passed from the day he leaves
office, so too DiBello is barred from going back to being Parks and Recreation
Director for at least a year after she leaves the Town Council.
Though Lisa DiBello
may think the RI Ethics Commission is willing to bend the law to accommodate
her because they ruled in her favor on the DiLibero discipline vote, the Ethics Commission decision was, in fact, very narrowly draw, However, it was more than enough to allow DiBello to strike the killing blow
against DiLibero.
The second problem is that the job she wants is currently
filled by Jay Primiano. As much as she, and her CCA allies, would like to get
rid of Primiano – especially if it ensures DiBello’s continued loyalty to the
CCA agenda – how much stomach does the CCA have for another public fight over
the purge of a town official?
Since we are only weeks away from the June 27 deadline for
candidate declarations, DiBello will also have to decide if she intends to run
for re-election. With a record dominated by turmoil, ethics questions and
broken campaign promises, DiBello would go before the voters as the only known
Town Council member in Rhode Island
history to be actively suing the town she claims to represent.