LynnCam in the Hot Seat; Mayor Should Back Off

By all accounts, it appears as though the mayor, her minions and the daily are making an attempt to oust the President of LynnCam’s Board of Directors, Karen Chapman.

Ms. Chapman, we believe, does an admirable job of running LynnCam in the absence of an executive director. As a LynnCam viewer, this writer can attest to the high level of professionalism practiced at LynnCam. What we view on a daily basis is proof of that. What is being programmed is further proof of that.

The question to be asked about this new witch hunt by the mayor against Ms. Chapman is what has Ms. Chapman done to deserve the public humiliation and lack of due process she is being made to endure?

To our mind, this appears to be another witch hunt not so unlike the one the mayor recently ran with her designee, the former city auditor Mr. John Pace. History will show that the mayor and Pace made a great effort to run out of office Richard Fortucci, the city’s Chief Financial Officer.

That witch hunt failed miserably. The mayor’s assertions about Fortucci and those made by Pace had no standing. The city council wouldn’t buy any of it – to the city council’s great credit – and in the end, Mr. Pace was fired and the mayor returned to her spotty work in the mayor’s office after long hours of meaningless hearings which were an embarrassment for the mayor and the city.

Now comes LynnCam’s Board of Director President Karen Chapman for the mayor’s special treatment.

The mayor has been able to round up people close to LynnCam to make preposterous statements about Ms. Chapman’s behavior. They apparently have her down as an embezzler and as a troublemaker.

She is neither.

According to Ms. Chapman, the mayor and her LynnCam gang want an executive director who lives in Chelsea. In addition, she has detailed in her letter to the Journal how outrageous the behavior of another board member has been.

She has described one board member’s behavior as dysfunctional, confrontational and combative – which is not so unlike Mr. Pace’s motions when he tried to do in Mr. Fortucci and later on when he was questioned at his dismissal hearing he basically failed to answer questions about accepting taxpayer money he was not owed.

What is happening to Ms. Chapman is a repeat of what happened to Mr. Fortucci.

It is another instance of trying to do in a board member whose reputation has been untarnished since she was first appointed by Mayor Albert DiVirgilio almost two decades ago.

She, too, has found the mayor virtually inaccessible and uncommitted.

Before another salvo is fired in this sad bit of city business, the city council should schedule a hearing or two, as it did in the Fortucci situation, to question Ms. Chapman and the others trying their best to ruin her reputation and to oust her.

The city council has shown an ability to cut through the smoke screen and to act on merit.Such a protocol is needed here.

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