( - promoted by Dean Barker)
Kevin Landrigan's recent column dissecting Kelly Ayotte's contributor list, and the tens of thousands of dollars contributed to her by Benson and his Cabletron cronies sent me back to the Benson archives. It is interesting that Kelly Ayotte never mentions Benson in her speeches and that the campaign biography on her web site does not mention the critical stop her career path took in Benson's office, where she served as his spokeswoman and legal counsel.
So, in the interest of filling in the gaps, here is one story from the old Benson days. (I can't provide a link, but the quotes are from a June 15, 2003 Concord Monitor Capital Beat Column which was attached to a pleading in a NHDP Right to Know petition).
As you all may recall, Craig Benson had a troika of "volunteers" - Angela Blaisdell, Ray Marshall and Linda Pepin - working for him in the Governor's office. All three were former Cabletron employees (for more about the Benson "volunteers, here is a pretty good summary: http://www.nh.com/apps/pbcs.dl...
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Blaisdell was the most visible, because she served as the volunteer chief of staff. The Monitor asked spokeswoman/legal counsel Ayotte about the arrangement in April, 2003. Ayotte's response:
"She's a volunteer.. She is paid by the governor because prior to him becoming governor, she worked for him, too, So he continues to pay her...He is paying her out of pocket, he is, but technically her designation would be volunteer, because she's not receiving a state paycheck."
Understand?
The Monitor subsequently learned that contrary to what Ayotte had told them, Blaisdell was not paid by Benson personally, but by The Collingsworth Company, LLC, an investment business. Ayotte's response to the discrepancy? She misunderstood the question.
"When we spoke in April, I thought the issue was whether she was paid from the state or the governor's personal funds....I didn't further inquire as to which of his personal funds she was paid from."
Collingsworth was not the governor's personal funds - from a lawyer's standpoint, the whole point of an LLC is to create a separate legal entity for business purposes, to protect the individual from personal liability. If you use it as a personal checkbook, you risk losing that protection in the event of a legal claim. Now, one might overlook the mistake if Benson was the sole owner of the company; people would say hey, it is still just Craig Benson under another name. But he was not.
The Monitor looked into Collingsworth, and found the state's filings showed that there were two owners: Benson and his former Cabletron partner Bob Levine. Benson was listed as the manager. According to state records, the purpose of the company was to provide debt and equity financing to businesses. Since Benson's financial disclosure only listed Collingsworth as an asset, and did not list any of Collingsworth's investments, it was impossible to know if Collingsworth, or the companies it invested in, or Blaisdell had any conflicts.
The Monitor summed up the situation very well:
"The governor is managing an investment company while he's managing the state. The public has no access to Collingsworth's records to determine whether conflicts of interest exist. And Blaisdell, whom State House insiders say calls a lot of the shots in the governor's office, is being paid by a company with which businessman Levine is associated."
Interesting factoid: Benson identified himself as an executive with Collingsworth in April, 2003, when he donated $5,000 to the NH Republican State Committee, and again in September, 2003, when he donated $2,000 to the Bush/Cheney campaign. Interesting that he thought of himself as an official of Collingsworth, not as Governor. In any event, Collingsworth was active enough that Benson thought of himself as more affiliated with Collingsworth than the State of New Hampshire.
At some point during this campaign, Kelly Ayotte may have to answer questions about those days on Planet Benson. As the governor's legal counsel, did she approve of the Collingsworth arrangement? Did she inquire as to the extent of the Collingsworth holdings, and whether it, or any of the companies it invested in, had business with the state? Did she think it was appropriate for the person calling the shots in the governor's office to be paid by a private investment company that was not subject to any disclosure? Her answers will have to be clearer than the ones given back in 2003. |
