School Committee member Jackie Doherty apologized to her colleagues, the union and the citizen today for leaking confidential information from executive session contract negotiations with the teachers union.

Ask about the situation at the beginning of today’s Sun’s Candidate Forum, she admitted she made a mistake and regretted doing it and putting her fellow members in the position that they had to deny they were the leak.

Fellow member Jim Leary Thanked her for her apology and pointed out we all have made mistakes and now that she has apologized it is best to move on and continue to work to get the contract settled.

Jackie has been a hard-working longtime Committee member and it will be interesting to see if the voters forgive her and accept her apology.

Watchdog?

Election year Blogger and Fiscal Watchdog Rodney Elliot is singing his own praises and using articles that appeared in the Lowell Sun during this Election Season to show he really is the Fiscal Watchdog..notice all dates are in the last few weeks…during an election season that has many good candidates..Rodney hung onto 9th by 210 votes in the last race that didn’t have this many solid candidates.

He would like you to PLEASE Pay NO attention to the Mess in the City Clerk’s office (so what that is was under the Supervision of the City Council and Rodney has served for the past 13 years, he can’t watch everything). He did make a motion in Sept of this year – calling for the audit of all departments in the city that accept cash, he said he made the request because of lax and improper accounting policies identified over the summer in the City Clerk’s Office. Guess he just forgot he was one of the people who was supposed to be watching that office per the City Charter.

Just ignore the fact he admitted in regards to the Treasurer’s Office not being able to balance the books that ” The Treasurer’s cash book has not been properly reconciled possibly going back to 1999″ (Rodney was elected in 1998) and the City Manager has only been here for the last 6 years so he can’y blame this administration but he sure does try! He recently stated ” the reconciliation issues are embarrassing for the city and should have been addressed sooner because the city has known about them for years.

He’s correct and yet he has done nothing about over the many years he has been on the council, great Watchdog.

One of the Items he seems to be taking credit for on his Blog post is a Councilor Patrick Murphy Motion. In his latest BLOG Post he has this listed from the Sun on Oct 17th.

Lowell Sun 10/17/11
City banks on proposal to boost biz

Plan would use local financial institutions more if they vow to lend to companies in Lowell
City Councilor Rodney Elliott referred the program to the finance subcommittee, which he chairs, for discussion. Elliott said he does not understand why the city is not depositing more of its money in local banks, and intends to ask city officials about Lowell’s investment policy.

The Motion by Councilor Patrick Murphy was actually made a week earlier and the Manager responded on the 17th which is when Rodney hijacked it for his committee:

CITY COUNCIL MOTION RESPONSES
1. UPDATE TO COUNCIL MOTION OF 01/11/11 BY COUNCILOR MURPHY “REQUEST THE MANAGER/CFO PROVIDE THE COUNCIL WITH ANNUAL REPORT REFERENCED IN CITY INVESTMENT POLICY & ANALYSIS OF POTENTIAL PERCENTAGE PREFERENCE FOR LOCAL BANKS ETC.”

Tom Moses, CFO provides a report as an update to Councilor Murphy’s motion to develop a local banking
program regarding local banking preference and our investment policy. This program, called the Lowell
Economic Advancement Program or LEAP is patterned after a similar initiative launched by Massachusetts State Treasurer Grossman. LEAP carves out money from the City’s cash portfolio for potential investment in local banks

Has a matter of fact it was also Councilor Murphy who successfully in his FIRST term got the adoption of performance based budgeting passed along with the implementing a variant of CitiStat model in Lowell which has helped to identify budget savings.

Where has the fiscal watchdog been for the past 13 years regarding the Clerk and Treasure’s oversight and where has he been in getting a performance based budget passed?

What options does the committee have with regards to her (Jackie Doherty) violating executive session rules?

Unfortunately very little, they can “censure” ( an official reprimand, as by a legislative body of one of its members) her

They can vote to ask the AG’s Office to investigate her actions

They can “request” her to remove herself from the negotiations.

Otherwise there is nothing either the Lowell School Committee or the Lowell City Council can do when a member violates the Executive Session rules. It has come up in the past and has been discussed but neither committee has set up any guidelines or punishments for members who violate the rules.

Only the voters can punish her by not voting for her, otherwise they are saying it is okay to break the law has long as you give your reasons. Like a little kid her reasoning was “He did it first” (he being UTL President Paul Georges).

In this case the UTL COULD REQUEST that she not participate or refuse to negotiate with her being part of the process and file a formal unfair labor practice charge (with the newspaper and her own admission has evidence).

It will be interesting to see if she issues any apology during today’s Sun Forum and what the reaction / answers her fellow committee members will give if asked by Chris Scott what they would like to see happen to her, especially since she will be in attendance with them.

She did not issue any apologies during the regular school committee meeting this past week.