Reel Wamps

Now, we’ve been down this road with Tah Tah.  She’s gotten away with her manic behavior under Cedric. But now, we’re in a bad place, and trying to get on our feet.  And we have Tah Tah  getting paid $1,400 a week for doing nothin’.  AGAIN.

Cedric’s legacy lives on !.

So she sabotages the Council meeting tonight and says she’s got a stomach ache and the meeting is  canceled combined with other excuses for non attendance that add up to no quorum.  The real problem is that Marie Stone wants to get paid for a job she can’t do. Check this out.

• She’s not coming to work
• She’s not at critical meetings regarding Tribal funding
• She’s delaying meetings for funding because she doesn’t understand the process or procedure
• She has not prepared a budget
• She won’t provide an audit
• Shelly Tobey can’t draw down on about $1million in Housing money to move forward as a result
• She says she can’t get the information because Knees Knocking AKA ” Gordon Harris” left no records
• She pledged to hire people to do the finance work and she won’t do that.
• When attempts to get her to a meeting to talk about funding tribal economic development, she said “Let’s hold off on that.  What’s the rush?”

She is so incompetent she can’t even figure out how to do her job.

But Cassie Jackson has nothing to go on. Ann Marie left no discernible minutes.

NOR DID TAH TAH leave records when she was Secretary…. she kept no minutes, but Cassie Jackson does her job despite the fact that she has no records from either of here predecessors.

Jessie Baird wiped her records clean and left Carlton Hendricks no records.  Course since it was all bout her getting grants to pay herself, you can understand.  But the Feds have that along with Cedric’s mess. Jessie unloaded on Natana Hicks when she walked away from her responsibilities as Vice Chair. She replaced Natana with Anne Marie Askew who also quit as Secretary. That was one hell of a move when you realize that Natana has REAL LANGUAGE credential and Jessie….well you know.

So that whole crew of officers was scandalous and brought us to our knees. We’re trying to get up and Marie Stone a former member of that mob is doing her damnedest to continue to oppress us to get paid.

Money that belongs to the Tribe  is going to someone who is desperate for a salary, incapable of delivering service and is doing everything she can to slow things down to get a check. So she’s stalling, avoiding tribal members.

Just like Cedric and the others who did that over and over. Paying themselves until the Feds had to come in and stop the madness.

Cedric’s sycophants are still on the Council…you know who they are still holding on for dear life.

The same people are still employed.

They said nothing.

They did nothing, for years. and look where we are.

Tah Tah doesn’t want a meeting because she has to be accountable and  she can’t.  She will continue to humiliate us as long as we let her.

Who knows when  we will have a Council meeting to talk about what we want for the Tribe.

It’s starting to look like Cedric never left.

The Council meeting last night was dominated by a variety of house keeping measures and votes to extend the life of actions taking longer to cure than usual. The controversial expenditure of $250,000 in COVID  hazardous duty pay came up. The auditors made a report that measured the extent of dangerous exposure for employees from 0, being no exposure to 5, being extensive exposure.  And the the appropriate pay to coincide with the ranking will come shortly.  In other words a lot of employees who were working from home and took the hazardous duty pay will have to pay it back….to the US Treasury no less.

So the worst culprit is Denise Hathaway, finance director.  Not only did she work from home a majority of the time, she ( like others working from home on tribal laptops) came into the (empty) building occasionally and was ranked at a level 1. That’s how you got extra cash.  Come to the building.  Expect a large portion of the $57 K she made over 7 months to be refunded.  Oh, that was on top of her $90k salary.  Hopefully she won’t dodge, block and stonewall the Treasury Department the way she did the outside auditors brought in by then Council member, now Vice Chairman Carlton Hendricks, Jr. to check “her” book keeping of the tribal government. What they could decipher was pretty damned bad.  We talked about it in earlier posts

This round will be a tough one for Marie Tah Tah. She faces more scrutiny and less patience from tribal members who are stakeholders wanting leadership from the new Council.

But her insubordination and belligerence is known tribewide. And the new treasurer, Marie “Tah Tah” Stone unloaded in the Council meeting about Denise.  Denise won’t obey Tah Tah. And? So she went on mumbling ridiculous questions to the accountant, demanded an executive assistant, complained about Gayle Andrews being an election monitor, dodged the question about producing a budget and plans to fly in the tribe’s Wisconsin audit firm to make a report at the Sunday General Membership Meeting.   That’s in lieu of producing anything that even looks like a budget.We already know how bad it is. In other words if Denise doesn’t produce a spread sheet and  incriminate herself, Tah Tah is incapable of doing it.  This went on for at least 35-40 minutes. In Tah Tah’s mind, she was showing everyone how smart she was when it was confirmation of just the opposite.

Yes people, the nightmare’s beginning again. We were tortured by her behavior and professional malpractice when she was secretary.  We’re still missing years of minutes. You can search this site for a reminder of the madness. Cedric tried to take advantage of Marie but in the end he became one of her many victims. We can hear people saying, “Well they put her back in there.” Not really. Tah Tah got 223 votes.  But 388 people voted against her casting ballots for the other three candidates. If it were a two person race she would have lost.

Marie’s problem now is that the rouge government that violated Tribal law is gone. She can’t hide behind a corrupt regime. She can’t command a salary for her nonsense, especially during a financial crisis. Transparency is in the eyes of the Tribe.

The election committee pulled  off a trifecta which is rare in the world of elections.

We’re always talking about problems.  It’s time to highlight success.  We need to thank our election committee for a job well done.  Within 31/2 weeks Election Committee Chairman Robin Tobey, and her committee members, Mingo Teixiera, Wayne Frye and council liaison Rita Gonsalves   pulled off a multi-faceted election that was prone to major problems. Robin was short two members but they pushed through. Robin’s about business. Monitors Joanne Peters, Evelyn Fermino,Yvonne Tobey, Lauren Thornton, Gayle Andrews, Pauline Peters and Alex Pocknett did voter sign-in and issued ballots. Erin Bassett handled security well.  He was short staffed too, but he handled it.

Robin really had an 18 hour election day (let alone the week prior). The long hours 7am-7pm may not have been necessary for an anticipated vote of 700 (661 turned out).  The drive thru was slow but a good idea for Elders who should be allowed to drive thru in the future.

There were complaints about the long drive-thru line but everyone who was eligible voted. A three tiered election is hard to pull off.  Drive-thru, registration and walk-in is rarely done all at once, but Robin, her team and security pulled it off.  There was no beak at 11:30 by the way.Everyone worked, together.

THE ELECTION SIDE SHOW

Cedric showed up to vote and a bunch of tribal members nearly lost their minds.  You can understand why.  The US attorney ordered him to have no contact with the “victims.” That would be us.  But there’s no tribal law that says he can’t vote.

Together forever. Winnie and Cedric. You’re not the only one confused.

You would have thought it was the return of Metacomet the way Winnie Johnson was screeching and gyrating  across the parking lot cheering Cedric on. Her frail figure and spastic behavior made onlookers dizzy. As word spread through the crowd of voters more became irate complaining to others in line and to monitors.  It was vintage Mashpee.  And they said it loud enough for him to hear.

Prior to that solo act, Winnie was raving and cursing accusing people of stealing her signs. She was spewing nonsense on Facebook. Apparently it was behavior unbecoming to the new council that did not approve and made that clear. The Cromwell days of letting her get away with inappropriate behavior  are long gone.

Besides Winnie has enough baggage to load a freight train.  All we can do now is pray that she gets better.  That she heals.

Brian will be tested as he faces the reality of leading a Tribe handicapped by a collapsing government.

New Tribal Chairman 28 year old Brian Weeden won a 20 vote victory over favorite Nelson Andrews to take the helm of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe crippled by extraordinary debt and scandal. Weeden a traditionalist who recently won an uncontested seat on the Mashpee School Committee, is a charismatic council member whose inexperience and temperament has drawn the ire of  Tribal members and Elders in particular.

Carlton Hendricks, Jr. was brought to power as Vice Chairman by a diverse coalition

Hendricks relied on a connecting message that would address Tribal needs on all levels.

of families trouncing long time rival Winnie Johnson, a Cromwell loyalist. Hendricks ran on a message of transparency that resonated with a number of families. He warned Cromwell’s  fawning  Council members of the financial disaster that was revealed last week. Half of  $700m in loans to the Gaming Commission from gaming mogals Genting  was interest. Auditors said the remaining money disappeared. Code for money laundering. The Gaming Authority had not been audited in 5 years.  Hendricks also connected with core members about problems that continue to plague fisherman and a host of issues unique to the Tribe.

New to the tribal political arena is Cassie Jackson as secretary who is a member of the Hicks family as is Weeden.

Marie has been exploited by many and has failed to live up to any assigned task. All that is guaranteed is that she will disappoint.

The shocker was the election of Marie Stone as treasurer. Her troubling record reflects a trail of instability now that she takes the most important leadership role in the Tribe. Stone lost the Mashpee Board of Selectman seat a week earlier blasting her opponent in what observers called an erratic outburst. Stone’s conduct in several Tribal positions shows that Cromwell employed the volatile   ” Tah Tah ” at the expense of tribal staff who were harassed and bullied by emails and numerous confrontations.

There are no salaries, or professionals to help navigate the disastrous terrain left by Cedric Cromwell. Bare bones working environment that some are not prepared to engage is where we are. The election of people who cannot do anything to right the canoe is pretty sad.  But there will be another election in a month to replace the seats vacated by Brian and Carlton.

We still have a chance to put people in place on the Council who know what to do.

We still have a chance.  Next…election sideshow.  Stupid stuff and the HUB BUB about Cedric voting and being in the midst of his victims.

So we learned some telling information at the Wednesday Emergency Meeting.It’s clear that when Cedric was indicted, the Tribal government collapsed. Gordon was AWOL, Jessie was random and the finance director was doing whatever she wanted.  They just plain stopped paying the USDA mortgage on the government center and continued shuffling money from account to account. None of the money came out of the indirect cost revenues associated with grants as intended. That money went to salaries instead.

Probably one of the most disturbing failures was the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars for housing because Gordon and the finance department failed to provide the required audit. The grants lapsed for 3 years. We don’t have to tell you how hurtful that was to many of our members in need.

There’s that number again. Three years.  We had no budget, we had no audits, for 3 years. What we have is a rogue finance officer that is now stonewalling outside accountants who are trying to get a head start on the damage. And the damage is humongous. It will come out.  Stalling changes nothing it only delays the inevitable.

So Denise Hathaway is following the Gordon Harris playbook.  When your bad practices are known, take sick leave. About a week ago Denise took a month of sick leave.

The incoming officers better be ready with their own oxygen and smelling salts. You guessed it. Thank Gordon Harris and the Frye Full Finance Department.

The urgency to keep the government running this way is obvious. Staying power depended on the election committee. The original election committee was all Fryes accept Mingo. Finance is dominated by Fryes.  The court staff is Fryes. All but two members on the CDC are Fryes.  Even the pantry is Frye full. So the Frybal Council legacy is one of abject incompetence and greed derailed after 11 years.

And the rumors about Denise being fired are not true. Ironically, in a close vote the Council made Denise’s aunt Yvonne Frye Avant interim tribal administrator. Okay, you can believe it.  It’s part of the Frye Nepotism Legacy.  The interim tribal administrator cannot fire anyone.  But why would she?