Tamworth board grilled over decision to side with CMI

Town attorney dismisses allegations of back door dealings

Nate Giarnese

TAMWORTH—Two citizens are pressing selectmen to reveal exactly when they decided to side with Club Motorsports Inc., and testify against a bill that could have complicated the company's plans in town to build a 251-acre driving park.

William Farnum, and Jeanne Bergen said in prepared statements to the board last week, that selectmen violated right to know laws when they apparently took up an official position against recently failed racetrack legislation, HB 90, but did not keep minutes.

Had HB 90 passed, it would have increased the town's ability to impose restrictions on the CMI development.

Farnum and Bergen also said that two members of the board consulted with CMI lobbyists and then met with state Sen., Joe Kenney, R-Wakefield, in April, before testifying against the bill at a Senate committee hearing later that day in Concord.

Farnum recently lost a dime-thin selectman's race to John Roberts, in an election that some say closely paralleled the town's sharply polarized debate over HB 90 and the proposed $28 million track.

The board through its attorney denies ever holding "meetings" with CMI lobbyists, or Kenny on April 20, as defined by state law, and said as such, no minutes are available. And any discussions of HB 90 at selectmen's meetings, the attorney said, could be found in minutes kept at town hall.

Kenney, however, in an email to Bergen confirmed meetings that day with CMI, Tamworth selectmen and the N.H. Municipal Association — a group that lobbied to pass HB 90.

But according to town attorney Richard Sager, the two selectmen's conversations are not governed by the state's right to know law.

Sager in a letter to Farnum also deemed "absurd," the notion that selectmen would post notice before "testifying for me at a trial, at a labor hearing, or other legal or quasi-legal proceeding."

Two selectmen in a move that stunned track opponents in February, broke a long-standing neutrality on the town's most divisive issue, and told House lawmakers that the majority of Tamworth voters support CMI, calling its opponents a special interest minority group.

Selectmen Mariette Ross and David Haskell first told the House, and then the Senate, that Tamworth welcomes the track and its promised jobs and tax relief. And they said the town retains several tools to regulate it, despite a surprise state law that last year rendered moot a town race track ordinance.

"Tamworth selectmen did not ask for (HB 90)," Haskell told the House Municipal and County Government Committee, at a hearing on a proposed repeal of SB 458- state legislation that left CMI unregulated by the town's racetrack ordinance. "It was introduced by a special interest group," he said.

Ross and Haskell included a brief written statement by newly-elected Roberts, also against HB 90, during similar Senate testimony in April.

The assertions by Haskell and Ross set off shock waves amongst area citizens and officials, who in crowds as large as 200 had testified passionately in favor of HB 90, condemning SB 458 as deceptive legislation that robbed local control from every town in the state.

According to recently resigned board member, Lannette Goodson, the Tamworth board had agreed over a year ago not to take sides over the heated debate.

Farnum and others contend that at some point the two, and later Roberts, would have had to decide to testify against HB 90 in Concord. And the decision should have taken place at a public meeting, Farnum wrote, requesting a copy of the minutes he said he could not find at town hall.

He also maintains that selectmen testified in Concord as public officials.

When Ross and Haskell were represented at Senate and House hearings as elected Tamworth officials, statements they made against HB 90 and its supporters were widely heard by state lawmakers.

Many legislators voting against HB 90, said afterwards that the Tamworth board's testimony carried a heavy weight. A scaled-back version of the bill overwhelmingly passed the House, only after a committee first voted to kill it's original full repeal of SB 458. That committee's majority report credited the Tamworth board's testimony with swaying its 14-2 negative recommendation.

Senators, after driving the last nail into the repeal in May by voting 14 to 10 to kill HB 90, echoed House committee statements that 75 percent HB 90 supporters were from outside Tamworth, and that the town's own elected board said SB 458 had not hurt its ability to control the track.

Even Kenney, Tamworth's lone voice in the Senate, who ultimately voted for the failed HB 90, reportedly was on the fence for months — held up by the fact that Tamworth's highest elected board said its voters didn't want a law that could jeopardize CMI coming to town, according to local representatives.

Sager's letter defended selectmen's actions and testimony, citing their Constitutional rights, as individual citizens, of speech and assembly. "Moreover, the individual selectmen's constitutional rights of freedom of association and freedom of speech would be undeniably compromised under your application and interpretation of the right to know law," he wrote to Farnum.

Sager said under Farnum's interpretation, that whenever two selectmen appear in public and are "asked a question that that directly or indirectly relates to to anything involving the town of Tamworth, selectmen would be required to either post a meeting before answering the question, refuse to answer the question, or violate the right to know law. Clearly this is not a situation that the right to know law contemplates," he wrote.

However, the board in the letter declined a request by Farnum to write Senators and declare their testimony was personal, rather than official.

Farnum's statement also accused the board of hiding behind non-public sessions on other occasions, and of concealing its reasoning behind its decision-making. A perceived policy, he said, that has left some citizens feeling left out of town government.

Sager concluded his letter by clearing selectmen of any right to know violations over HB 90, while recognizing a gaping rift exists between townspeople lodged squarely on either side of the issue.

"As new town counsel for Tamworth, I am rapidly being educated about the depth of the divide between those in favor and those opposed to the racetrack. However, having reviewed selectmen's actions and RSA Chapter 91 A, I see neither a violation of the right to know law, nor a requirement that the town maintain as a public record the testimony of the individual selectmen provided to the House and Senate committees."

Farnum has requested copies of selectmen's minutes on HB 90, clarifications on the meeting with Kenney, and information on other matters including several non-public sessions and Goodson's resignation.