Who WAS that guy?

Just Deputy Dan, on the job, breaking the law again

"I'll be watching you....while you vote."

By Will Collette

On primary election day, I received several reports that Charlestown Town Councilor Dan Slattery (CCA Party) was seen lurking around Charlestown polling places checking voters’ names off a list. 

There was some concern about Slattery’s legal right to hang out inside the polling places and the reasons why he was collecting voters’ names.

It seems that every election cycle, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) comes up with new ways to game the system to gain an electoral edge (click here and here), so why not try voter intimidation?

Looking to see who is voting for whom fits Slattery’s skill set. Throughout Slattery’s four year career as one of the CCA Party’s Town Council members, Slattery has often gone off on half-cocked investigations.

His unauthorized probe into “Friends of Ninigret Park” turned out to be a fiasco, when Slattery refused to reveal what he found (even though he summarized them at a Council meeting), admitting that he had absolutely no authorization to conduct the investigation. Even though he said then, and has since repeated, that he is a “former federal agent,” he claimed he was just conducting a private investigation and that the results were private.

Then there was his chase after Charlestown’s “phantom properties,” the “plot” by the state Water Resources Board to acquire undeveloped Charlestown land as open space, the imaginary“ Single Taxing District” crisis, the “Battle of Ninigret Park,” “the Kill Bill Campaign,” RHOTAP and his repeated efforts to circumvent Rhode Island’s open meeting and open records laws, such as his Australian Ballot.

He ran so many of these bizarre investigations that I started calling him “Deputy Dan.” Not since Jim Mageau was on the Council has one man caused so much chaos as Dan Slattery.

There are rules about who, other than actual poll-workers, can stay in a polling place, observe the voting and write down people’s names. 

Officially recognized political parties can appoint, and then certify, people to serve as “checkers,” ”runners” and “watchers” who keep tabs on who has come to vote.

Political campaigns do this to focus their “Get out the vote” (GOTV) phone banks – if one of your likely supporters hasn’t shown up at the polls, you call them to get them to turn out.

Here’s the specific part of the RI General Laws addressing these types of poll observers:

“§ 17-19-22 Party checkers, runners, and watchers. – The officers required to furnish and equip any voting place shall also provide a table in the room where the voting is conducted, outside the enclosed space near the first bipartisan pair of supervisors, at which a representative of each recognized political party bearing credentials signed by the proper ward or town committee chairperson, shall be allowed to sit for the purpose of keeping track of those who are voting, and these representatives, who shall be known as "checkers," may be changed during the day. A representative, known as a "runner," of each of the parties shall be allowed to come to the table at frequent intervals for the purpose of taking whatever list or memoranda the checkers may wish to give the runner. A representative of each recognized political party bearing credentials signed by the proper ward or town committee chairperson, shall also be allowed outside the enclosed place to observe the voting and assist the checkers, and these representatives shall be known as "watchers." The watchers and any election official shall have the right to challenge the right to vote of any person offering himself or herself as a voter.” 

In Slattery’s case, there was some question about whether he was legally authorized to be there. The last time I had checked his voter registration, he was one of eleven Charlestown residents registered with the Moderate Party, that had been formed, then abandoned by Ken Block. Slattery also served for a time as Ken Block’s state Treasurer for the Moderate Party.

If he was there as a Moderate Party observer, that would be a problem since the Moderate Party disbanded their Charlestown Town Committee on July 14, 2011, so there would be no local party chairperson to sign his certification.

Even though the Charlestown Citizens Alliance is, for all practical purposes in Charlestown, a full-fledged political party, it is recognized by the state only as a political action committee. The bar is set higher for a political group to win official state recognition as a political party [RIGL 17-1-2 (9)] – that party must have won at least 5% of the statewide vote for Governor or President in the prior election. For now, the CCA Party is largely Charlestown’s problem.

Ken Block's coat-carrier "credentialled" Slattery

Slattery certainly is no Democrat, but if he was registered as a D, he would have had to gotten certified by the local Democratic chair. That happens to be my wife, Cathy. Or did he switch Republican after his guy, Ken Block, skipped out on the Moderates to run in the primary against Alan Fung to become the Republican nominee for Governor?

As it turns out, Slattery was there, not as a Republican since he is now registered as unaffiliated, but as a representative of the Ken Block for Governor campaign. It was Neil Hytinen who describes himself as “Personal Assistant and Scheduler at Ken Block for Governor” who signed his paperwork to sit inside Charlestown’s polling places and take names.

However, I could find no provision in the RIGL chapter on elections that allows candidates’ campaign committees to bypass the requirement for local party certification as stated in RIGL 17-19-22. Even though Dan Slattery is a “former federal agent” and Neil Hytinen is “personal assistant and scheduler” (or at least was until September 9), it looks like Deputy Dan broke the law. Again.

So what?

Even though Slattery’s guy lost and even though Slattery is not running for re-election to the Charlestown Town Council, all this is worth noting if for no other reason than nobody truly expects Slattery to go away. I’d say it’s a pretty good bet that Dan Slattery will find other ways to plague this town after his “retirement” from the Town Council.

I’ve heard some speculation around town that he might decide to go into business with Ron Areglado and Donna Chambers on some charter school venture. Slattery was a major player behind Areglado and Chambers winning patronage appointments to the Chariho School Committee when vacancies cropped up during the last term.

Over the past four years, Slattery has been the town leader in attacking Chariho (even though he is a substitute teacher there) and in demonizing Charlestown’s reluctant partners, Hopkinton and Richmond, in the school district. Slattery has been the one pushing an effort to scare the bejezzus out of taxpayers through the totally concocted “Single Taxing District” non-issue.

Areglado and Chambers - Slattery's new business partners?

Slattery has been the one who, on his own initiative, has been looking at alternatives to Charlestown remaining in the Chariho School Committee. And, of course, he led the Charlestown’s Ad Hoc Chariho Withdrawal Committee.

Slattery does part-time teaching at Chariho. Areglado was principal of the Charlestown Elementary School for a short time before an abrupt and mysterious departure. Chambers has been a public advocate for charter schools.

What a nice package deal it would be for the three of them to steer Charlestown out of the Chariho School District and into their own brand-new charter school!

I think Slattery has worked the politics to set this all up. He already can count on his CCA Party Council colleagues, Boss Tom Gentz and George Tremblay, to go with a scheme like this. And if the CCA Party retains or increases its Council majority in November, then the sky’s the limit.

Then, the biggest challenge will be coming up with a name. Maybe something like the “Chareglattery Academy for Moral and Ethical Learning.” They could run it out of the vacant DB station on Route One, and maybe teach the kids a craft, too.

If not this, then what will Dan do with himself after November?

I just don’t see him waiting the year required under state law for his pals to get rid of Mark Stankiewicz and appoint him to be the new Town Administrator, the job he has long wanted but didn’t get when the town hired Bill DiLibero instead. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Slattery decides the state’s anti-revolving door law, like so many other laws, doesn’t apply to him.

And now that I think about it, getting the Town Administrator’s job might just be the answer to the question about why Slattery decided not to run for re-election. Along with his fat federal pension, getting to be Charlestown TA would give him a nice chunk of change.