UPDATED: Framingham Racks Up $40,000 In Legal Fees Dealing With 1 Town Meeting Member

Framingham Town Meeting member Deborah Butler has sued the town, more than once, and challenged the Town’s decisions with legal action several times.

Tuesday night, Selectmen announced the Town of Framingham has spent $40,087 in legal fees to defend itself, successfully - each time - against the Precinct 7 Town Meeting member.

Last week, a judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Town of Framingham, the town’s chief assessor, and the Framingham Board of Assessors challenging the Town’s Fiscal Year 2012 tax assessment due to a lack of standing filed by Butler.

Middlesex Superior Court Judge Bruce Henry dismissed the case with prejudice. The judge’s ruling said Butler’s case had no standing, as she is not a taxpayer in the Town of Framingham. Butler lives with her parents. The Judge said Butler ”can not show” how she was personally injured by the town’s assessing practices.

Butler is also one of three candidates running for Framingham Selectmen in the town’s election on March 29. Voters will elect two individual to a 3-year term.

Tuesday night, Town Meeting members took action on a 2-article Special Town Meeting, requested by Butler after she gathered hundreds of signatures.

Butler presented two non-binding resolutions against the Town of Framingham’s Veterans Services Officer Peter Harvell.

After lots of confusion by Town Meeting members and the Moderator on how to vote on the articles, Town Meeting voted confidence in the Veterans Services Officer, defeating Butler’s requests.

The $40,000 legal fee announced by Selectmen does not take into account work by Town employees to investigate claims by Butler, only money spent by the town’s legal counsel, said Selectmen Chair Charlie Sisitsky.

Butler also had filed a lawsuit against the Town of Framingham in regards to the Danforth Green development in Saxonville, unhappy about the combination of rental and sale units.

Town Counsel Chris Petrini won the case for the Town of Framingham as Butler appealed it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Butler in filing these lawsuits has filed them as a citizen not as an elected Town Meeting member.

Butler has also filed several open meeting law violation cases against the Town of Framingham, in which the Town has prevailed in each case, said Sisitsky.

In regards to last night’s Special Town Meeting, Framingham Selectmen originally voted 3-2 not to call a Special Town Meeting for the Special Town Meeting requested by Butler, despite the fact she gathered enough signatures from registered voters.

Selectmen Michael Bower, Laurie Lee, and Jason Smith voted no.

Selectmen, later on the advice of Town Counsel, voted to call the Special Town Meeting, despite individual selectmen calling the request for the meeting an “abuse of power” being used ”to vilify a respectable town employee.”

Last week, Framingham Town Manager Bob Halpin said the actions of “a small group” against Framingham’s Veterans Agent is the “most personal, vindictive and frankly malicious campaigns of attack against a public official that I have seen in the course of my career in local government.”

Outgoing Selectman Michael Bower speaking at Special Town Meeting said the campaign by Butler was a ”witch hunt.”

Town Meeting members were confused by the motions and the votes, in part as the group has no authority over evaluating employees.

“I didn’t realize we were in the business of evaluating our employees,” said Precinct 2 Town Meeting member Gloria Geller.

One member came to the microphone with a “point of confusion.”

Town Meeting later changed Butler’s motion of a vote of no confidence in the Veterans Officer to a “vote of confidence.”

One motion supporting the Veterans Agent passed 38-16, with 50 Town Meeting members abstaining from the vote. There was a second vote and it passed too - 37-29, with 43 members abstaining.