When Judy Newman-Rogers resigned as Warner’s long-time town clerk in October, she told the board of selectmen that the town offices had become a “hostile, unpleasant and dysfunctional environment.”
Four months later, Newman-Rogers is getting back into town business as a candidate for a seat on the select board.
“I want to stop the internal injustices that are happening,” Newman-Rogers told the Monitor. Elected officials “have a job to do. They are accountable … to the people they serve. If they cannot honestly, legally and ethically do their job and do not right wrongs after admitting (to) them … then problems will continue.”
One person she is not getting support from is Town Administrator Jim Bingham, who Newman-Rogers has directed much of her criticism toward.
“In my experience with her, I don’t give a lot of credit to what comes out of her mouth. It’s not reliable,” said Bingham, who returned a phone call to the Monitor on Friday to comment on this report.
Town politics in Warner have been rather sour lately. Board and committee members say meetings have grown tense, and that tension has spilled over onto social media in some cases.
Newman-Rogers, who worked in the town clerk’s office for more than two decades before resigning, says there is a need to increase accountability and transparency between the town offices and the public, two qualities of town government that she says has run short in Warner.
When describing what has made the town offices a “hostile” place to work, Newman-Rogers said it is common for personal attacks to be made over email and in open meetings. She says decisions about wage increases and other expenditures have been made behind closed doors.
Bingham, meanwhile, says he too has been unfairly attacked. Comments made by Newman-Rogers challenging his management style were published in the local weekly newspaper, the InterTown Record.
“I think there is a personal agenda going on there … in respect to me and my position,” Bingham said. “She wants to improve communication and yada yada yada. No specifics where the problems are.”
Newman-Rogers worked in the town clerk’s office for 24 years, first as a part-time deputy town clerk. She said she has also worked in the private sector, as well, overseeing payroll and purchasing programming for a software company in Connecticut before her family moved to New Hampshire.
She will likely join select board members Clyde Carson and Kimberley Edelmann, unless another candidate mounts a write-in campaign.
Newman-Rogers was there when the town decided to hire a town administrator about 13 years ago. She says the intent was to lift some of the burden of the day-to-day management off the select board, perhaps then opening the door for more people to run for the position.
“They didn’t want it to just be people who had time on their hands,” Newman-Rogers said. “So the town administrator position was created to take care of the daily goings on in town, so then anyone can be selectman.”
While Newman-Rogers sees this as a benefit to the town – that any member of the public could potentially hold a position on the board – Bingham is concerned that it will be difficult to find “qualified people” to run for the board. The reason for this, he said, is a lack of respect paid to the board members.
“The town may be running into a crisis in leadership as in they may not be able to find qualified people to run for selectman in the coming years because I dont think respect is given to the incumbents as I’ve seen them,” Bingham said.
Voters will decide in March. Until then, the war of words may continue in Warner.
“I dont want to add fuel to the fire,” Bingham said. “I want to stay professional, I’ve always been that way. … I’ve learned to work with all types of people.
“If the atmosphere doesn’t stay professional, it starts to fall apart.”
That’s something Newman-Rogers and Bingham can agree on.