Thank you, Ellen Bahan!
This is for our readers from way, way back to the late 90s when Ellen Bahan started writing a column for Rumbo which lasted eight years. My comments today are sort of a tribute to her.
Ellen wrote only about Methuen politics and that involved the Mayor’s office and the police department. She had a unique sarcastic style that many in the city disapproved of and I had no right to change.
Some of the people regularly featured on her page came out unscathed, others had their reputations stained but most importantly, former Chief of Police Joseph Solomon and former Methuen Police Officer Sean Fountain are in the news.
Anyone following the news can learn about their misdeeds violating civil service laws, forging documents, and procurement fraud.
In Fountain’s case, he made false statements about his qualifications to be a police officer, forging a training certificate he designed to pretend that he passed the Police Training Academy. Years later, it came back to bite him!
These are the things Ellen wrote about. Whenever I questioned her outrageous statements, she would bring me proof that these things were true and I had absolute confidence in her.
Unfortunately, she was fighting those in power and they did their best to ruin her life. Ellen was an interior designer and along with her husband John Foley, they installed draperies for big stores’ customers. Her work dried up with the sabotage mounted by city officials and they lost their beautiful home in downtown Methuen.
Rumbo suffered as well. At that time, we had a big advertiser on the back page who asked me to cancel Ellen because “She writes nothing but lies.” I told her that I could not deny publication to an American person or anyone writing responsibly because she proved all the time that everything she said was real.
My advertiser’s response was, “If you don’t cancel her, we’ll stop the ad.”
My stomach turned because we were just starting and needed their support but, I could not give in to that blackmail. Nobody would force me to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution that I so much treasure.
Rumbo continue to grow serving this community with honor and respect while speaking the truth for the past 27 years. Through that time, we had the satisfaction of rejecting ads from that company’s employees.
And Ellen Bahan is living well in Maine with her husband John who stuck by her through all that.
Let the truth prevail. Thank you, Ellen!
What should candidates be asked during interviews?
We have a series of new candidates for public office who have little knowledge of the duties of the position they are bidding for, but interviewers have no idea of how they should prepare for it.
The public service they may have performed in the past does not prepare them to opine on current issues or to the position they want to achieve. They are usually asked about problems a city council or school committee candidate has no control of. Their responses are meant to just attract sympathizers to vote for them.
If we are to be enlightened about the issues affecting us and learn how they will deal with them, they must be asked about current issues, not idealism, or ask them for a proposed plan for the city.
The truth is that, as long as the candidate is paying for the appearance, the hosts don’t care to do his or her homework to ask intelligent questions to get to know how they would act once in office.
Suggested questions for interviewers:
Do you believe it was a good idea for the mayor’s office to transfer 18 city-owned properties to the Lawrence Redevelopment Authority?
Should Theo Rosario be Acting City Engineer when he’s not a Civil Engineer and there’s no effort to hire a real one?
Ask for their knowledge of the Lawrence Community Access Television (LCAT) fiasco. For almost 20 years, they have been using residents’ money from the cable subscriptions and not using it for services to residents and council members have done nothing about it. Should they be audited to find out where our money is going?
Has anyone asked about the unfair (and illegal) way Lee Fickenworth was treated – secretly – by the city council and the Elections Department? Would they do something similar in their position?
This is how you get to know the candidates’ moral views and knowledge about the decisions they will have to make once elected. This is serious; we don’t need to see that they have good dental work through their laughter or talk about rent control, the abortion issue, or the school department of which they have no control.
We need a Voter ID!
While I agree that there are many problems with the Elections Department in Lawrence, I believe that the best guarantee of having an honest election is making sure that voters at the polls are United States citizens. It has been an issue in the past, some people have gone to jail for it in other states. With the influx of immigrants through the border and the ability to register to vote when applying for a driver’s license, it is bound to increase.
The things happening in Lawrence are seen in other cities as well. Kathy Lynch is running for reelection to the Republican State Committee and she’s launching a campaign to gather 75,000 signatures to put on the 2024 ballot the Voter ID concern to have it approved statewide.
That reminded me that a few years ago, and by popular demand, a group of citizens (Dottie Incropera, Marie Gosselin, and I) took a petition to the State Legislature, asking permission to implement voter identification, which fell on deaf ears. One of the excuses that they gave us was that Massachusetts does not have such a law; therefore, Lawrence could not be the only city or the first one to impose it
On April 28, 2008, the Supreme Court approved that states may require voters to identify themselves with a photo without violating their constitutional rights. The Act “is amply justified by the valid interest to protect the integrity of the electoral process,” Judge John Paul Stevens said in an opinion echoed by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy (recently retired).
Kathy Lynch is a Republican State Committeewoman for the First Middlesex District and running for re-election in the newly-formed Worcester & Middlesex District. There was a mystery of where 42 signatures for her nomination to the State Committee went is still unsolved. However, to their credit, the Westford Town Clerk’s office took responsibility to gather new signatures to replace those lost.
Why call it a “gala” event?
My idea of a “gala event” is shiny gowns, men clad in nice suits, and an elegant dinner served by well-dressed servers. But, pictures of most parties celebrated in our community show ladies dressed in office attire and men in sports shirts.
And a “potluck” dinner where the organizers cooked the meal and it’s self-serve, doesn’t qualify for that, either.
Why call it that?
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