He writes this but he offers no proof whatsoever that this exists.

rukidding, that's a great idea.  We should pull together a list of the crap that Slager has made up, and run through all of it.  Well, however much we can get through in one participation session....it's bound to be an awfully long list!

Seems odd although nothing fazes me anymore with Mr Slager that he would make such a big deal about 40K from a dept yet say nothing about BOS 400K.

The current BOS tells citizens to sue the town...and yes again folks its on tape

I just posted this on the other thread:

The town did not pay any of the library trustee's legal bills. Here is slager's addition to his original Jeer:

"Now, of course, the hate bloggers are claiming this is a lie. Well, allow me to direct them to the (gulp) Citizens for a Better Wareham web site, where a report is printed by Finance Committee members Dan Cheevers and Marilyn (Save our Library) Donahue. That report also says the library shelled out more than $40,000 in legal fees over the past two years. Any questions?"

If you look at the article on the CBW site you will find a breakdown of what the TOWN spent on each department on legal fees, not what each department's budget paid. He totally misread the Donahue/Cheevers graph. Please go to that site and see for yourself. http://onewareham.com/  I would imagine through the request for information, anyone could get a copy of the library budget and see that there never was one penny spent on any legal bills. Or you could ask the town accountant or treasurer for the information. Or you could ask the trustee's lawyer if he ever got a check from the town of Wareham for representing the trustees. I would expect a journalist to investigate such an outrageous claim before printing it.

His placing blame on three innocent people, Mrs. Pillsbury, Ms. Pizzolato and Mr. McAuliffe is reprehensible and he should apologize publicly for this huge blunder.

There's two positively incredible things about this jeer:  (1) His math is off by a factor of 50% and if you guessed the error was in favor of his position, and helps paint the Trustees in a bad light, you'd be right, and (2) he basically admits to making up his conclusion.  Here's a quick-and-dirty breakdown of what he did.  I hope he responds to my challenge so I have an opportunity to make these points to him directly.

We know for a fact they lost $72,000 in the market from June 2007 to June 2008, and that was before the market tumbled.

I don't know if this is true or not, but I suspect that it isn't.  Slager has a habit of citing things that he claims are supportive of his position, but when one actually reads the document, it's easy to see how he twists things.  The Joyce settlement is a great example of this.  I haven't seen the tax returns, but I'm guessing this is a stretch, if there's any loss at all.  I wonder, did Slager get his information from having a CPA look at the document, or is this simply his interpretation, much like he offers up his legal opinions all too often?  And again, there's no mention here of the long run of investment successes that allowed the Trustees to fund the library at a high level for years.

That’s right - the library budget covered $40,000 in legal fees for the former board of library trustees from 2007-2008.

THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE FALSEHOOD, and since we're talking about math here, it's not an opinion.

Even if we assume he's right here about what the costs were for, which I don't, he later points out that this came from the CBW website.  Assuming he was referring to this page, his math, again, is just plain wrong.  And SHOCKINGLY, it's wrong in a way that attempts to make his point stronger, and the Trustees' position weaker.  In the chart at the end of that analysis, the library line item for 2007 is $2,894, and 2008 is $23,717.  The grand total?  $26,661.  Slager exaggerated (lied?) by well over $13,000, a factor of more than 50%.

Who authorized that payout? It wasn’t the selectmen. We asked.

I wonder, did he ask about all of the other line items in the list?  Or was he afraid that the answer wouldn't support his agenda, so he'd have to ignore them?

Well, allow me to direct them to the (gulp) Citizens for a Better Wareham web site

This is another example of him "citing" something, without actually citing it.  For those who want to read the analysis, it is available at http://onewareham.com/index.php?view=ar … nt=1&page=

That report states that the town spent $40,000 in legal fees on behalf of the library in 2007-2008.

It absolutely 100% does not.  The number in the chart is $26k and change.  Nowhere near what he said it was.  This is another repetition of Slager's math-lie.  Actually, even if one includes all 3 years on the chart, it's STILL not $40k.  Slager should be ashamed of himself for publishing distortions like this, and should issue a retraction immediately.

So why would the town spend ($26,000) in legal fees on behalf of the library?

There Rob - I fixed that line for you.  I can think of all sorts of things over 2 years that one would need legal advice for.  First let's break the math down some more, though, shall we?  The library's share of town legal expenses over this time was 3.85% of the town's legal payouts.  Personally, I would investigate where the other 96.15% is going, but hey, I don't have an anti-Trustees agenda.  Now, I don't know what K&P and others charge for their time, but I did find this page which has some averages in it.  For the sake of discussion, I'm going to use $300/hr as an average rate - this probably isn't exact, but I'd bet it's close.  That works out to 89 hours of time over 2 years.  There's always some expenses in there as well, so I'm going to say 80 hours to make the math easier.  If we look at 80 hours over the course of 2 years, that's 40 hours a year, or just over 3 hours a month.  Viewed another way, it's 5 days per year.  The library does not have to be involved in litigation to use up 5 days of somebody's time over the course of the year.  There could be tax issues, issues handling donations, employment issues, general questions, etc.   Remember, lawyers don't bill in fractions of an hour - you call these guys, and BOOM, there goes 300 bucks :)

Any legal fees the town accrued in its lawsuit with the former trustees would not be considered legal fees for the library

Unless the town decided to categorize them that way, which Slager appears to have not investigated.

The selectmen were listed as defendents in the case, so legal fees from the lawsuit would be attributed to their department and not the library department

Assumption number 2!!

So if this $40,000 in legal fees weren't used to defend the selectmen in their lawsuit with the former trustees, what was it used for?

Well, it's 26, not 40.  And again, that's two weeks' of a lawyer's time over the course of two years - that could be used for dang near anything, Bob.  A real journalist would have answered the question through research before making assumptions that turn into irresponsible allegations.  Ms. Bicki gave you several options in a previous post for options on how you could have done this research before running with another divisive, and false, allegation, in his attempt to further attack the former Trustees.

Edited for formatting

Last edited by acasualobserver (2009-08-28 08:22:16)

For the record, the case against the trustees began in July, 2007. The bos had K and P give them an opinion prior to dismissing the trustees. They then filed a countersuit, using K and P again, against the trustees, the Friends and the Foundation in September of 2007.

This is great information Nora!  So essentially the entire jeer is made up, as it's based on two premises:

1. $40,000 of funds were paid out for legal purposes surrounding the library
2. There was nothing else going on at this time that the funds could have been used for, so the only possible explanation is that they went to the trustees' lawyer.

I showed above that (1) is completely factually incorrect, and now we have the explanation for (2).  I wonder if Slager will simply remove it, and put my jeer back up (honestly, I feel like I got gypped because it was only there a couple of days), remove it, and leave it empty, leave it up knowing it's been completely proven wrong, or (gulp) issue a retraction?  Anybody want to take bets?

Ha, Larry you're right.  He's already updated his jeer based on what I said.  Most of the changes are just in the dates, going from 2 years to 3, but the math still doesn't work.  It's still not 40k, and he hasn't acknowledged the fact that there was significant legal activity going on during that time.  Realistically, the amount he includes for 2009 is another week of one lawyer's time.  The public sees right through what you're trying to do, Rob. 

As a side note, I just registered an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account to use for chatting about this sort of thing in real time.  If you use AIM, add 'CasualObserverMA' to your buddy list.  I have my privacy config set so that only people who are on my buddy list can see me, so if you want to chat send me your screen name.

Oh, it's BYOG on Sunday (Bring your own Gnome!) :)

rukidding, are you kidding?  Getting an invoice like that is something that a responsible journalist who doesn't have an agenda to push would do.  In my opinion, Slager's more of a throw-around-accusations-without-any-evidence kind of guy.

I think someone needs to learn to READ. kitty box liner = Wareham Pravda....whew....Ham? Can you work with Slager a bit longer on his reading skills? Who goes to the liquor store for kitty litter?

Sarcasm..read it, recognize it...embrace it....

Great..the Gnome is laughing so hard her jacked up back is cramping! i have tears from the laughing....beer...kaluha...kitty litter liners? OMG! One of these things is not like the other...one things doesn't belong!

I'd like to thank Slager for bring tears to my eyes (of laughter) and making my wife's back tense up from laughing too hard.

It's been a long busy day and I am over tired...whew.....it must be from the town wide computer audit?????