Silber and Sylvia fight to hide correspondence with law firm

LACONIA — The public might have a chance to make themselves heard on whether or not their tax dollars should be used to cover the county delegation’s legal bills regarding a suit from the Gunstock Area Commission at the next County Commissioners meeting on Monday, June 6. 

Earlier this week, the County Delegation’s Executive Committee voted to pay the remainder of their legal bill related to the recently settled Gunstock litigation. So far, the delegation has gone $30,000 over their initial appropriation of $20,000. This initial portion was paid for with funds from the county’s $200,000 contingency fund, which is usually reserved for emergencies. 

According to documents recently obtained by the Sun, county commissioners were compelled via a complaint to release the initial $20,000 for the appropriation, arguing that the commission was illegally withholding funds. 

The complaint in question is available for download via laconiadailysun.com.

“Our legal funds were very limited,” said county commissioner Hunter Taylor. “We could not have defended an action. We got a threatening letter from their attorney that they were going to sue us if we didn’t pay.”

During the litigation with Gunstock, Silber and Sylvia deemed themselves the "control group” for the delegation without any input or vote from fellow delegates. The pair have leveraged their status as a control group to keep all of their correspondence with law firm Cleavland, Waters and Bass confidential, even from their fellow delegates, who are all plaintiffs in the suit. 

“You’ve got two members that claim to be members of the control group,” explained Taylor. “They claim they have  the right to assert attorney-client privilege and prevent the 80 something emails back and forth between the two reps and the law firm. As long as that is withheld, I think there is a real serious question as to whether this delegation works for the taxpayers or the two leaders.”

The creation of this so-called control group, and the secrecy of their communications with the law firm, spawned discomfort amongst other delegation members during the delegation’s last meeting. 

“There was no control group, we never voted on it at all,” said Rep. Travis O’Hara. “I’ve talked to many delegate members that have said the same thing. We never voted on that.”

O’Hara also stated the emails should be made public, not just to the rest of the delegation members, “Let everyone know what they pay for. I say the same thing for the Gunstock emails,” O’Hara said. 

The representative cited some of Sylvia’s comments during the most recent county delegation meeting on May 3 as concerning.

Silber explained that by sharing the emails with the rest of the delegation, doing so would somehow waive attorney client privilege and thus make the communications available to the public via the state’s Right To Know law.

“Even if we did release it to the public, why are we blocking transparency on a case that can never come back again?” asked Rep. Timothy Lang, who emphasized that the case was closed and decided upon with prejudice. 

“There’s nothing nefarious being hidden, but the fact of the matter is there are people with significant resources that would like to take little pieces and parts of that and get it looked at into a suit,” responded Sylvia, who then referred to himself in the third-person. “That suit would be against the delegation and members individually. In that case, let's say that a certain party with a lot of money decides to sue representative Sylvia because of something he said in one of these emails, there is RSA 99D which would involve bringing in the attorney general to defend representative Sylvia. So we’re talking about very extensive litigation over something that’s nothing. So that is the reason this stuff is not just thrown out there in the public.”

The delegation then decided by a narrow margin to keep the emails confidential, despite the delegation being a public entity.

 “The vote was eight to seven not to have the firm provide the emails to the delegation on the basis of attorney-client  privilege, two of the votes were Silber and Sylvia,” Taylor said, noting that Silber and Sylvia’s decision to not recuse themselves from the matter would have lead to a different outcome.  

After going over $30,000 over their initial appropriation for legal fees, a citizen petition calling for their removal under RSA 24:16 was brought forward, only to be ignored by Silver and Sylvia, who claim that they are not county officers, and are thus immune to the petition. 

Silber and Sylvia have ignored repeated phone calls from the Daily Sun regarding these matters. When questioned in person about their refusal to release the emails, and their self declaration as the delegation’s control group, Silber remained silent. 

Sylvia, who’s personal website describes his focus at the State House is “government transparency, including the Right To Know law…” and that he will “be going to Concord to defend your rights and continue to seek transparency in government,” ignored the question, instead asking the Sun to “go talk to Governor Sununu and get his email communications with his lawyers.”

Current delegates and Taylor aren’t the only ones interested in the emails. Belknap County resident Matt Coker filed a 91A Right To Know request for the emails to Silber and Sylvia, only to have it rejected under attorney-client privilege. 

“Looking at the invoices(from the law firm), I had a lot of questions. The emails are a giant portion of the billing,” Coker, who is running for representative of District Two, said. “I figured by calling it out, the first step would be filing the right to know request. The fact that he (Silber) rejected it, that didn’t surprise me.”

Although the emails between the firm and the “control group” are not public, the unredacted invoices are, and their contents have raised eyebrows both among delegates and Taylor, who questioned how much of that $50,000 was actually used for defense. 

“I did the math, I went through each line, description, what I came up with for physical defensive moves, not trying to remove (Gunstock Area Commissioner Gary) Kiedaisch, I only came up with $23,000,” said O’Hara. “The rest was trying to remove Gary Kiedasch, fighting the in-person hearing, another big portion was going over the resignation letter of Brian Gallagher.”

After the executive committee decided to draw an additional $30,000 from the contingency, Taylor requested to delay the payment until the public has had a chance to speak on the matter in a letter sent to his fellow commissioners. 

“From looking at the latest bill, there appears to be very little that relates to defense of the injunctive action filed against the County Convention,” Taylor wrote. “From looking at this bill as well as the prior bills, it is clear that the $50,000 in question was used to pay for considerable legal work that had nothing to do with defending the injunctive action.”

“I’m going to resist paying unless or until the emails are given at least to the delegation,” Taylor asserted. “And the delegation has the opportunity to review the emails and decide for themselves what happened. At that point they need to take a vote. As my letter says, Silber and Sylvia should not be voting(due to their conflict of interest).”

Taylor stated that he intends to allow for public comment at the beginning of the next county Commissioners meeting, instead of waiting till the end of deliberations.