Blanchette is Mayor Lantigua’s Economic Development Director and Former City Council President By: Tom Duggan – October, 2010 The State Office of Campaign Finance (OCPF) has fined former Lawrence City Council President Patrick Blanchette $20,000 for taking money from his city council campaign account going back to 2006 among other violations. Blanchette has admitted to […]
By: Attorney Robert O’Koniewski – September, 2010 The financial crisis plaguing our fair city is well documented and requires no re-hashing. You’d have to be living in a cave at this point not to know about the $35 million state bailout of our community and the accompanying controversy. Surely a steady string of incompetence, […]
Lawrence Mayor Lantigua has brought nothing but chaos and has no plan By: Robert O’Koniewski, Esq. – July, 2010 When Mayor William Lantigua took over city government in January, he promised a break from the business as usual that we have seen under all previous administrations. His rhetoric may have been lofty, but it belied the […]
Is it time for City Councilor Grisel Silva to resign? By: Robert O’Koniewski, Esq., – March, 2010 Just how far Lawrence can sink has yet to be seen. The recent events surrounding Mayor Lantigua’s insistence on keeping, and then resigning from, his State Representative job certainly has enabled us to plunge to the […]
Lawrence Councilor LaPlante says mayor wrong for only putting city job postings in Spanish Language newspapers By: Tom Duggan, February 2, 2010 Lawrence City Councilor Marc LaPlante took Mayor Willie Lantigua to task Wednesday night for his policy of only posting city jobs in Spanish Language weekly newspapers and not “the daily paper of record. Since […]
Lantigua Incompetence Shows State Should Step in and Take Over By: Bob O’Koniewski – February, 2010 Is it time for Lawrence to have a Finance Control Board? That is the current issue up for debate in our community and at the State House. Just before the clock struck the start of the New Year, Governor […]
Sweeney uses award-winning Valley Patriot article to make his case Tom Duggan – January, 2010 It was a contentious meeting before the Lawrence City Council’s Personnel Subcommittee Tuesday night, when three city department heads (fired by Willie Lantigua) got a chance to appeal their terminations. The subcommittee first elected Roger Twomey as their chairman […]
By: Robert O’Koniewski – November, 2009 The votes are in and Lawrence finally has met demographic expectations to attain its first popularly elected mayor of Hispanic descent. We will not use the trite adjective of “historic” to describe State Representative William Lantigua’s victory over District E City Councilor David Abdoo, as that has really […]