Middleborough update

The mess in Middleborough keeps spreading, and, as always, you just can’t make this stuff up. We begin this morning at Cape Cod Today, which flogs a story in the New York Times (CCT links to a Times sister paper, the International Herald Tribune), and observes that the land purchased by the Mashpee Wampanoags on which they plan to build a casino is near a contaminated toxic-waste site. The story is preceded by a CCT “Editor’s Note” that says:

This grim discovery of two Super Fund sites in Middleborough which is the town chosen for the Mashpee Wampanoag casino by their South African investors and former tribal leader Glenn Marshall, immediately raises the specter of past injuries to the tribe by others. Lord Jeffrey Amherst is remembered as the European who wiped out tribes by encouraging his soldiers to distribute blankets contaminated with Smallpox to Native Americans in 1763.

The toxic-waste sites, linked to an improbably high rate of Lou Gehrig’s disease (see this New Bedford Standard-Times story by Phil Devitt), are near Everett Square, a densely settled neighborhood in the downtown. The proposed casino site is out in the sticks, several miles away. Though the New York Times story, by Michele Morgan Bolton, juxtaposes the tale of the Superfund sites with the casino in ways that are at times confusing, she does not allege a direct link between the two. Still, as CCT points out, this is pretty interesting.*

Elsewhere at Cape Cod Today, the indefatigable Peter Kenney tells the exceedingly weird story of Desiré Hendricks Moreno, secretary of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council and sister of Shawn Hendricks, who took over as chairman of the council following the resignation of disgraced tribal leader Glenn Marshall. According to Kenney:

Reliable sources say that Desire Hendricks Moreno provided sanctuary for her cousin, Sharon Fitzpatrick, after Fitzpatrick’s husband was stabbed to death in Boston. Fitzpatrick has been charged with the murder and is free on $250,000 cash bail. According to one source in Mashpee, “Everyone in town knew she was at her cousin’s house over the weekend. And she was bragging about it afterwards.”

Kenney appears to be out there on the edge here, but his previous reporting on this story has not been successfully challenged. As Kenney also notes, the tribal council’s financial affairs are already being investigated by various government agencies, although it appears that Marshall, rather than Hendricks and Moreno, is the target of those investigations.

Meanwhile, the man who has most publicly associated himself with the mess that Middleborough stumbled into, Selectman Adam Bond, is trying to get himself hired as the $130,000-a-year town manager, even though he doesn’t meet even the minimal requirements that have been posted for the position.

The Boston Globe’s Christine Wallgren reports that Bond, who lacks a master’s degree in public administration, one of the prerequisites, thinks his law degree ought to suffice. How badly does Bond want the job? He tells Wallgren: “Why don’t they just offer me less money for the job, and tell me I have to go back to school to get a master’s in public administration?” I guess practicing law isn’t as lucrative as it used to be. Maybe that explains why he’s never bothered to do anything with his Web site.

By the way, one of Bond’s main backers, Tony Lawrence, is associated with Casino-friend.com, whose editor and publisher, Hal Brown, has compared casino opponents to the Ku Klux Klan.

In the Brockton Enterprise, Alice Elwell writes that Middleborough officials were silenced at a recent meeting of representatives from nearby communities. The reason given was the lack of consideration Middleborough reportedly showed those communities in approving a casino deal with the tribe last summer.

And, finally, the Cape Cod Times fronts a long report by Stephanie Vosk and George Brennan on Sol Kerzner and Len Wolman, the South African investors behind the Mashpee Wampanoags.

Vosk and Brennan write: “Most members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe can only wonder how much of their sovereignty has been signed away to help Kerzner and Wolman continue their dominance of New England’s gambling industry.”

*Update: I have revised this item to reflect changes in Cape Cod Today’s presentation of the New York Times story.

Disclosure #1: Cape Cod Today has begun serializing my book, “Little People,” today. I am not getting paid.

Disclosure #2: Just click here.