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Manchester has been operating without an independent auditor for years, despite a city charter requirement, and Mayor Jay Ruais said that needs to change.

“It’s been six years since the city had a charter-required independent auditor,” Ruais told NHJournal. 

The position has been vacant since Kevin Buckley, the last independent city auditor, retired in 2018 during Mayor Joyce Craig’s administration. After Buckley left, the job was never filled, leaving a gap in Manchester’s fiscal oversight system.

“I want to make sure we’re providing the oversight,” Ruais said.

Manchester does get an annual audit from the Melanson Marcum firm, but that’s a process that is supposed to be managed by the auditor under the city charter. The auditor’s position is assigned to work in the City Solicitor’s Office per charter rules.

The auditor is also tasked with regular analysis of all city departments as well as the operations of the ski area, golf course, civic center, MTA, MCTV, and baseball stadium to make sure the finances are transparent, and that the services provided using taxpayer funds are done efficiently.

The auditor is also to perform any particular investigations or research into aspects of city government as requested by committees and the Board of Aldermen.

“The city auditor can examine individual contracts and departments as needed,” Ruais said. 

Ruais doesn’t know why Craig left the position open, but he said Manchester voters and business owners deserve to have a city auditor on staff making sure their taxes are being used correctly, and that their city is running as it should.  

“I don’t know why Mayor Craig never hired for the role, but it’s certainly a priority for me. And with increased inflation and taxpayers fighting different headwinds, it is the kind of accountability we need to provide,” he said.

The city tried to hire a new auditor twice since Buckley’s retirement, but two different hiring committees came up short finding a candidate to take the job. 

Ruais wants to include $135,000 in the upcoming city budget starting July 1, 2025 to cover the $90,000 salary and benefits for the auditor’s position. The proposal so far won approval with the Committee on Community Improvement. Under his proposal, the first year for the position would be paid for with American Rescue Plan Act funds, with the city taking over the costs starting the following year.

In 2023, the Illinois-based nonprofit Truth In Accounting gave Manchester a “D” for its city budgeting practices, reporting the city didn’t disclose the level of debt taxpayers were carrying.

“We really believe that our representative forms of government are being harmed because citizens are making decisions on tax policy, spending policy, and who they even vote for based on misleading or wrong financial information,” said Sheila Weinberg, co-founder and president of Truth in Accounting.

“We have worked for years to recast government’s financial reports to show a truer picture of their financial condition, bringing business accounting to these financial statements instead of the political math that is used by the governments,” she said.

Lionheart Academy is pushing back on founder Fred Ward’s concerns that the school is in financial trouble, touting a new audit and an anonymous $5 million pledge. 

Ward, who has given $700,000 to the Peterborough school, had attorney Richard Lehmann send a letter Thursday to New Hampshire Board of Education Chair Drew Cline outlining what he sees as red flags. A day after Ward’s letter was sent, however, Lionheart attorney Robert Best sent Cline a response calling Ward’s claim “outrageous.”

“Dr. Ward’s allegations are ill-informed, inaccurate, and frankly, defamatory. The school is shocked and saddened that a founder of the school would work in such a manner to attempt to damage the school,” Best wrote.

According to Best’s letter, the school expects a clean bill of health from the pending audit by the accounting firm of Nathan Wechsler. The school is doing so well, in fact, it anticipates paying off its operating line of credit in the coming months, Best wrote.

Lionheart’s Kimberly Lavallee did not respond to NHJournal’s request for comment on Thursday after Ward’s letter was sent to Cline. Hours after being contacted by NHJournal, the school also announced a pledge for a $5 million endowment from an anonymous donor. 

Best’s letter does not give many details on the $5 million gift. Instead, he focuses on the the school’s self-reported strong financial position. The school spends less per student than other charter schools audited by Nathan Wechsler, Best wrote, and Lionheart does a better job than other Nathan Wechsler charter school clients of attracting donations and grants.

Speaking to NHJournal last week, Ward said the school ran a significant operating deficit since it opened in 2021. His frustrations over the board’s lack of transparency and concern about the school’s future moved him to act, he said.

According to statements Nathan Wechsler accountants made during a board meeting after Ward’s letter was sent, Lionheart spent $7,862 per pupil in its 2024 fiscal year, and received $9,000 per pupil from the state, a surplus of $1,138 per child.

Best wrote the school is heading into 2025 with better than expected finances. 

“Lionheart’s FY25 financial position is ahead of budgeted expectations as of September, 2024,” Best wrote. “Lionheart exceeded its budgeted expectations on a number of revenue streams in FY 2025.”

But the new influx of donated dollars doesn’t address one of the main concerns regarding the school: the lease Lionheart has for its Sharon Road building. According to Ward, former Lionheart Board Chair Barry Tanner negotiated the $24,000-a-month lease with building owner Ophir Sternberg without disclosing he has a potential business relationship with Sternberg.

Sternberg, a Miami-based entrepreneur who resigned as chairman from the nearly bankrupt BurgerFi chain this summer, did not respond to a request for comment. Tanner declined to comment on his relationship with Sternberg.

Sternberg also negotiated naming rights for the school with Tanner. Sternberg owns Lionheart Capital and agreed to a $1 million donation in exchange for the naming rights. However, after making one $100,000 payment on that pledge, Sternberg changed the arrangement.

According to Ward, Sternberg gave the school stock in Lionheart Capital rather than cash. The stocks were locked as part of the agreement, and by the time the school could access the account last year, they were worthless, Ward contends. 

Best’s letter does not address the Sternberg/Tanner relationship, nor does he yet refute the concerns about Sternberg’s $1 million donation. Instead, Best promises a more detailed response soon.

“Lionheart also disagrees with and finds his allegations of poor board oversight or conflict of interest to be equally outrageous. We look forward to providing a more thorough response to those elements of his letter in the coming days,” Best wrote.

Lionheart is one of many new charter schools in New Hampshire that got start-up money from a $46 million federal grant to the state. Lionheart received $1.5 million in 2019 through the grant.

Lionheart uses a classical education curriculum developed by Hillsdale College, a non-denominational Christian school. Kristina Vourax, communications director for Hillsdale’s K-12 Education Office, reached out to NHJournal last week to put some distance between the college and Lionheart. 

“Lionheart is not part of our Member School network, nor do we work with its board or headmaster. In addition, the Hillsdale K-12 Education Office did not assist Lionheart in its founding effort,” Vourax stated in an email. “Lionheart has signed a curriculum license agreement with Hillsdale College to use our K-12 classical curriculum scope and sequence.”

Taxpayers could be on the hook for more than the $38 million verdict to David Meehan in the Sununu Youth Detention Center abuse lawsuit after lawyers with the Department of Health and Human Services tried to force a cap on the award.

The historic jury decision is being disputed by the state, which claims New Hampshire law imposes a cap on monetary damages and limits the amount Meehan can receive to $475,000. But as both sides hash out the dispute, looming is the real possibility that taxpayers will have to pay more — much more — regardless who wins the current dispute.

New Hampshire is a self-insured state, meaning there is no liability coverage policy for Meehan, or the 1,300 other adult survivors who claim they were horrifically abused as children while in state custody. Meehan was the first of the YDC claimants to get to court.

On Wednesday, Rockingham Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman rejected the state’s argument that New Hampshire only needed to pay $475,000 to Meehan for a “single incident” of abuse after a jury ruled in his favor last month. 

“In the court’s view, this would be an obvious miscarriage of justice because the finding of a ‘single incident’ was conclusively against the weight of the evidence,” Schulman wrote.

Meehan’s attorneys claim there were more than 300 incidents of rapes, beatings, emotional abuse, and illegal solitary confinement proven at the trial.

After listening to weeks of testimony about the hundreds rapes and other abuses Meehan suffered as a child in the 1990s, jurors returned a verdict finding the state liable for facilitating Meehan’s abuse and working to cover it up for decades. However, the verdict form was marked to indicate there was one incident where the state engaged in “wanton, malicious, and oppressive conduct” by abusing its power in permitting the sexual assaults.

Lawyers for DHHS argue that form means the $475,000 cap needs to be applied, overriding the $38 million verdict. However, after reading New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella’s statement about the cap, the jury foreman reached out to Meehan’s lawyers to express dismay, saying he felt “duped” by the state.

“I was literally sickened and brought to tears in fear of the mistake we made. I still am,” the foreman wrote in an unsolicited email. “Please know, and PLEASE let Mr. Meehan know that, had we had knowledge that that was the way it was going to work, we would NOT have written it that way.”

Schulman blamed his jury instructions, which did not specify jurors needed to count up all the individual instances of abuse, for the confusion. Schulman wrote he was trying to avoid influencing the jury by explaining the cap.

Schulman wrote that the jury’s $38 million award cannot be explained if it truly found only one instance of abuse had been proved. 

“An overly clever logician might say that the jury could have found that plaintiff proved one instance of abuse, disbelieved his testimony regarding all of the other instances, and awarded $38,000,000 for the single instance,” Schulman wrote. “But this would be sophistry rather than true logic. No reasonable jury would award $38 million for a single instance of abuse. No reasonable jury would have believed plaintiff’s testimony as it related to a single hour and disbelieved his testimony as related to all of the other hours, days, weeks, and months.”

David Vicinanzo, one of Meehan’s lawyers, pushed for an emergency hearing in court to let the jurors clarify their verdict. Short of that, he argued the $475,000 cap ought to be applied to each incident proved at trial, which he pegs at at least 300 rapes alone. 

Schulman’s order Tuesday recommends a process by which he will determine the number of incidents to which the cap could be applied. In more bad news for the state, Schulman writes that in reviewing the trial record he found there were between 103 and 155 incidents proved at trial. That would put the total award at between $47 million and $73 million. 

The state legislature passed a bill creating a $100 million settlement fund for all of the victims. But Vicinanzo and Russ Rilee, the other lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said that fund unjustly limited the damages the survivors could seek. 

The fund is administered by former state Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick, who told NHPR last month that 418 survivors entered into settlement agreements, and most took less than $500,000. A few have received more, between $1 million and $5 million. But with at least 1,200 more civil trials pending, the $100 million settlement fund, which has already spent $66 million, will run dry.

The state has been criticized by survivors for the conflict of interest demonstrated by the fact it is defending itself in the civil trials while it is also supposed to prosecuting the alleged abusers. Out of the hundreds of alleged abusers named in the lawsuits, the state has managed to indict just 11 men, with the last of the indictments coming in 2021.

After taking heat for picking the $180 million design for the proposed new Strafford County Nursing Home over a $50 million bid, and then saying he never saw the less expensive bid, Commissioner George Maglaras said Wednesday the low bid wasn’tould work.

“The commission picked the firm we thought had a track record of building larger nursing homes and there are other written responses required within the answering of the RFP,” Maglaras told NHJournal.

Republican members of the Strafford County Delegation blasted Maglaras, a Democrat, and the two other Democratic Commissioners this week after learning about the lower bid from EGA Architects. Rep. Cliff Newton said the Commission kept him and other delegates in the dark about the lower-cost bid on the 215-bed proposal.

“Strafford County Commissioners and administration never informed the delegation of the EGA’s lower cost plan. Instead, they chose a much more expensive and institutionalized building plan without exploring different options that would have been acceptable to the entire delegation,” Newton said.

When contacted Tuesday about the EGA bid, Maglaras initially told The Rochester Voice he never saw EGA’s bid. That’s despite the fact the NHJournal found records showing the Commission was presented with all six bids, including EGA’s, on the project in 2022 when they voted to go with Warrenstreet. By Wednesday, Maglaras blamed politics for the kerfuffle, and said he was misunderstood.

“I said that there was never a $40 million proposal put before us,” Maglaras said. “These claims by some of the Republican members are misguided and are inflammatory and political in nature.”

According to Maglaras, the EGA bid quoted the Commission a cost of $350 a square foot to build the new home. But that number was never going to work, he said. EGA cited its work building the Carroll County Nursing Homes 10 years ago in its bid to Strafford. However, the construction company hired by EGA in Carroll told a slightly different story, Maglaras said.

“I brought in Bonnette, Page and Stone who was the contractor that actually built the Carroll County Nursing Home designed by EGA and they told the entire delegation in a public meeting it would cost $600 a square foot to construct a similar facility today and that the (Carroll County) home does not meet present federal design standards,” Maglaras said. “Architects don’t build buildings, construction companies do. You need to compare apples to apples not apples to cherries.

Comparing Maglaras’ math, that means the EGA bid would have cost as much as $83 million at $600 per square foot, instead of the $50 million the company quoted. The Warrentstreet project costs close to $1,300 per square foot.

The Republicans on the delegation have twice blocked the Commission from getting bonds for the $180 million proposal, and the Nursing Home project is currently stalled out. Maglaras wants to see the project get back on track.

“We have offered to meet with all the parties to see if we can’t move the process forward. The offer still stands and we will be reaching out to them,” Maglaras said.

A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money, the saying goes.

Unless it’s taxpayer money. 

Strafford County’s quest for a new nursing home stalled out last year when members of the county legislative delegation balked at the astronomical $170 million proposal pushed by county commissioners. Representatives like Cliff Newton (R-Rochester) blocked the commissioner’s request to take out a massive bond for a 215-bed nursing home proposal complete with a golf course and waterfall.

But now, Newton is flabbergasted to learn commissioners ignored a $50 million bid when they originally opted for a grander vision.

“It boggles my mind they did that,” Newton told NHJournal.

When the commissioners voted unanimously to go with the extravagant bid submitted by architectural firm Warrentstreet in May 2022, it passed over the $49 million bid from EGA Architects. The lower bid was never shared with the delegation, Newton said.

“They did it without notifying the delegation of anything,” Newton said.

Commission Chair George Maglaras denied ever seeing the lower bid, telling The Rochester Voice on Tuesday, “That proposal never came before us.”

However, the EGA bid was presented to the commission at the May 26, 2022 meeting, according to meeting minutes on file. Maglaras did not respond to a request for comment from NHJournal.

The county’s all-Democrat commission has been working for years to put together a winning proposal for a new nursing home. Twice the delegation stopped its plans over cost concerns. Newton fully supports a new nursing home for county residents, but said the expensive plans favored by the commission don’t make sense for taxpayers.

Frustrated by a lack of a new, lower-cost proposal, Newton and others took a trip to Carroll County to tour the nursing home there. Impressed by that facility, put together by EGA, they spoke to company representatives about doing the same for Strafford County. That’s when Newton and other delegation members found out EGA, in fact, submitted the $50 million bid.

“I knew that we were not being told the whole story on the county nursing home project,” Newton said.

Rep. Joe Pitre (R-Farmington) said commissioners wasted time and taxpayer money pursuing the high-cost project. So far, the county has spent close to $2 million developing the upscale Warrentstreet proposal.

“When I spoke with [EGA] they said yes, they could build one, but would have to adjust for inflation to a cost of approximately $64 million, or $15 million more because of the delay,” Pitre said.

Newton and Pitre started digging and found the EGA bid submitted in April 2022, as well as the record on the May 2022 vote.

“Strafford County commissioners and administration never informed the delegation of the EGA’s lower cost plan. Instead, they chose a much more expensive and institutionalized building plan without exploring different options that would have been acceptable to the entire delegation,” Newton said. “As a result of their actions, we have not approved a bond for an extravagant nursing home. We have gone nowhere in two years. We have spent $2 million of taxpayer money with nothing to show for it, and that is just plain wrong.”

Newton believes the commissioners want to build a facility that can compete with the many private nursing homes already in Strafford County. The county home is a service for county residents, and it is supposed to be there for the people, he said.

“Instead, they’re chasing revenue by trying to compete with private nursing homes,” Newton said.

The lawman with a big heart, Mark Brave, could be getting a gift from prosecutors in the form of a plea agreement. Just not on Valentine’s Day as requested. 

The former Strafford County Sheriff is due in Rockingham Superior Court on March 4 for a dispositional hearing, originally scheduled for Tuesday. Facing the deadline, and preparing a plea agreement offer, Assistant Attorney General Joe Fincham asked for a change to Feb. 14 hearing last week.

“The State has not yet provided Defendant with a formal plea offer in this matter due to specific details of the plea not being finalized, but the State anticipates being able to make a formal offer in the next two weeks,” Fincham wrote.

But romance is dead, and proof is the fact the court’s clerk set the date for March.  

Brave is accused of stealing almost $20,000 in taxpayer money to fund his illicit love life and he faces several felony charges connected to his alleged extramarital affair-fueled thefts. 

Brave was New Hampshire’s first elected Black sheriff and a rising star in the state Democratic Party until his self-inflicted scandal forced him out of the job.

Brave allegedly used his county-issued credit card to fly out of state to meet his paramours. He also booked hotel rooms and restaurants in Boston for romantic getaways and even took dates to an indoor water park. When the criminal investigation into his credit card use became public, Brave accused fellow Democrat and Strafford County Commissioner George Maglaras of being a racist. 

Though Brave agreed to go on administrative leave last summer after he was indicted, the trouble did not stop. He is accused of lying to the court and violating his bail conditions. 

Brave was allegedly less than truthful about how much money he had after his divorce in order to obtain a free public defender. Instead of using his money for a lawyer, Brave reportedly bought a classic 1968 Porsche and paid $50,000 to rent an apartment in the Bay State.

At the time Brave moved to his Tewksbury, Mass. apartment, he was under a bail order to live in New Hampshire. Brave allegedly got around that by giving prosecutors and court officials a false address in Dover.

When that house was discovered, Fincham told the court Brave was essentially stealing money by collecting his sheriff’s salary while living out of state. With Fincham demanding his bail be revoked and the prospect of new charges looming, Brave resigned his job last month.