Steven Hepburn: Sylvia continues to show either ignorance or disdain for rule of law

To The Daily Sun,

Mike Sylvia, chair of the Belknap County Delegation, continues to show extreme ignorance or more likely utter disdain for the rule of law. He questions the right of the Gunstock Area Commission to expend their revenues on a lawsuit to protect themselves from political bullying of the delegation, whilst deflecting his own malfeasance along with his Free State cronies and followers.

Here’s a quick refresher, Mike: The Gunstock Enabling Statute grants the commissioners the power “to sue” (399:10) and “The commission is hereby authorized and empowered to use the revenues from the area to carry out any and all of the purposes herein stated” (399:14c).

For county legal matters it is the County Commissioners who hold the power. “The county commissioners shall have the authority to hire, within the limit of appropriations, legal counsel to advise them on county affairs and to issue opinions relating to county matters” (28-17a)

In stark contrast, the County Delegation – led by Mike and Norm Silber – have no powers to accrue taxpayer liability by unilaterally engaging legal counsel.

Mike Sylvia is well aware of this, as he sponsored legislation in 2014 to try and give the Delegation just such power which was recommended inexpedient to legislate and not passed in to law.

Despite this knowledge, Mike and Norm went ahead and illegally engaged counsel, inappropriately incurred taxpayer liability, and then used their lawyer not only to “defend against the suit from GAC” but also to drum up charges against Gary Kiedaisch, and confer with Peter Ness — one of their political appointees to the Gunstock Area Commission.

Then for the metaphorical cherry on the cake, they tried to hide the details of their $40,000 bill with redactions and refuse to share the details of their legal consultation with other members of the County Delegation.

Steven Hepburn

Gilford