Questions Raised About $70 Million In Nashua Trust Accounts

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH

Nashua residents Laurie Ortolano and Laura Colquhoun say the city’s been lying about who’s in charge of the more than $70 million in the Trustees of the Trust Funds account.

For the last several years, Nashua’s official trust fund reports sent to state regulators stated that resident Linda LaFlamme was the chair of the Trustees of the Trust Funds, according to documents Ortolano and Colquhoun found. This was news to LaFlamme.

“I was as surprised as anyone when [Ortolano] produced the documents with my name,” LaFlamme told InDepth.org.

LaFlamme is the chair of the Nashua Library Board of Trustees, but she’s not a city employee and told InDepthNH.org she had no idea about the existence of the Trustees of the Trust Funds board she supposedly led from 2019 to 2023.

“I had absolutely no idea what was going on,” LaFlamme said.

That may be because the board LaFlamme was not part of and did not chair didn’t actually exist until this year. Despite state law requiring that municipalities have a Trustees of the Trust Funds board to manage such accounts, Nashua only created the board this year.

Ortolano and Colquhoun, known for their activism to keep Nashua’s government transparent and honest, uncovered documents showing the city was lying about the board last year. In December, the pair filed a complaint with the Charitable Trust Unit of the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office about the misleading official reports, called MS9s and MS10s.

In January, City Treasurer and Tax Collector Dawn Enright informed the Board of Alderman the city was “activating” a Trustees of the Trust Funds board. According to InkLink, Mayor Jim Donchess said at the time that Nashua had not needed one until recently.

“In reality, the city has never had a committee overseeing the investments in a single committee, because when this existed, all they were doing was approving the purchase of equipment, meaning trucks, fire trucks, things like that,” Donchess said at a Jan. 14 meeting. “They were not overseeing the investments, so in reality, the city has never had this, but now we will.”

Under the law, the Trustees of the Trust Funds control all trust fund accounts and capital reserve accounts. The board makes decisions on how to spend the money, and how to invest the funds as well.

“This isn’t just a paperwork issue, it’s about millions of dollars that could have supported public projects,” Ortolano said. “Without transparency and accountability, public trust is eroded. Nashua deserves better, and the state must step up.”

Enright claimed that the Charitable Trust Unit allowed the city to operate without an actual Trustees of the Trust Funds board based on the city’s solid MS9 and MS10 reports. But those are the same reports that listed LaFlamme as the Trustees of the Trust Funds chair. Enright did not respond to a request for comment.

Ortolano told InDepth that the CTU is doing nothing about the deceptive reports.

“We provided evidence that Nashua was filing false reports year after year, yet instead of addressing the perjury or the absence of a legal trust fund board, the Charitable Trust Unit brushed aside our complaint,” Ortolano said in a statement. “They first suggested they were investigating, then reversed course and claimed they had no authority, leaving the public with no answers.”

Director of Charitable Trusts Mary Ann Dempsey wrote to Ortolano and Colquhoun on Aug. 4 to explain why her department would not give them an update on their complaint.

“CTU advised you in communications in January and April that our review of complaints is on behalf of the public at large and not the individuals who submit the complaints. Accordingly, while we encourage citizens to bring issues to our attention and provide any information they believe will assist in CTU's review, which we have encouraged you to do, we do not provide updates,” Dempsey wrote.

Michael Garrity, spokesman for the Department of Justice, told InDepthNH.org the CTU is still working on the original complaint Ortolano and Colquhoun filed last year.

“The Charitable Trusts Unit can confirm that the matter remains under review,” Garrity said in an email.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.