Chairman Ingbretson's January 6, 2012 letter to Rep. Horrigan

January 6, 2012

Hon. Timothy Horrigan
7-A Faculty Rd.
Durham, NH 03824-2706

Dear Representative Horrigan:

After thinking we had an understanding it is greatly disturbing to have heard further complaints from petitioners before the Redress of Grievance Committee regarding what they believe is an attempt to disparage, intimidate, or influence the results of their petitions. As you know one petitioner indicated that she withdrew her petition entirely because of your postings. Now, having been forwarded your recent internet postings, I can understand their frustration. Because this Committee depends more than most on the need for its members to appear and to, ideally, remain objective I am going to ask that you terminate the public critiques of our citizens who are making use of the petition process and their petitions. Failing that I will request that the Speaker remove you to another committee per my authority in the Rules of the House. This is the only warning I will be giving.

Respectfully
Hon. Paul Ingbretson, Chairman
Redress of Grievances Committee

cc:
Hon. William O' Brien, Speaker of the House
Hon. Terie Norelli, Democratic Leader

Paul:

I am taking your letter under advisement. My inclination is not to "terminate" my critiques, although I do try to be fair and I have made several changes to my commentary based on input from the petitioners. You are threatening to remove a committee member who has been showing up and who has been doing the work, and that doesn't make much sense to me— especially when we have several members who rarely if ever show up and who never do any work. That said, you and I evidently have a different view of what the committee is all about. I think it is there to serve all the people of NH, not just the petitioners and their allies.

I will not be at the meeting on January 10th, but that is merely because of the election. Otherwise, I would be there.

I might also add that I was the only Democrat who voted for 5 years terms for judges on Thursday, and my vote was based on what I have learned from the citizens who have come before our committee.

Thanks,
Rep. Timothy Horrigan

September 9. 2011
NH House of Representatives

107 North Main Street
Concord, NH 03301

Michael Brewster
PO Box 94

Barnstead, NH 03218

Dear Mr. Brewster:

I have a web site which contains amongst other things, the texts of all the House Petitions filed since 2009, with some commentary attached to them. I know you don't have a computer, but many other people do have one (including myself and Rep. Peter Silva), so I will go ahead and tell you the web address for the page which has your petition on it:

• http://www.timothyhorrigan.com/documents/2011.house-petition.3.html

Right now my commentary on your petition reads simply:

Over the decades, Michael Brewster has been through at least three criminal trials related to his feud with the Department of Health and Human Services. He has two convictions on his record which led to jail time, and another time he was judged incompetent to stand trial. The little girl who was taken away from him is now a woman in her early 30s.

That version of my statement has only been on my website since August 11^th. I revised my Petition 3 webpage shortly after I heard Rep. Silva expressing his concerns at the Redress Committee meeting held on that day. Here is what Rep. Silva objected to:

Michael Brewster is the maddest of the "Mad Dads" who haunt the New Hampshire State House campus, attending any hearing even tangentially related to family law. His original gripe seems to have been that he paid about $2000 in child support payments which he thinks he shouldn't have been forced to pay— in the mid 1980s, to his own mother.  She is now either dead or pushing 90. The little girl who was taken away from him is now a woman in her early 30s.

Over the decades, he has been through at least three criminal trials related to his feud with the Department of Health and Human Services. He has two convictions on his record which led to jail time, and another time he was judged incompetent to stand trial. He has a permanent restraining order which forbids him to go anywhere near any HHS workers, except when they come to the State House. When he does come to the State House, which happens frequently, special security arrangements go into effect, although he behaved like a gentleman when he appeared before my committee.

This was a generally factual statement, although I understated the amount of child-support arrearages Also, I didn't mention that you owed support at various times in the past to your daughter's mother as well as your own mother. You owed somewhere between $4,000 and $7,000 when you were first thrown in jail, if I am reading the documents you gave us correctly— not $2000. (In any case, it was a relatively small amount of money compared to those involved in many other similar child-custody battles.) The term "Mad Dad" is a common one around the statehouse, and you certainly are a father who is angry with the system. I apologize if you found that phrase "hurtful," even though you yourself have been known to say hurtful things on occasion.

If you feel I have a conflict of interest or an ethical issue, you are free to take the matter up with the Speaker and/or the Chair of the Petitions & Redress Committee. Like any other citizen, you can even file a formal complaint with the legislative ethics committee.

Sincerely,

Rep. Timothy Horrigan

I have changed the preface to my collection of Petition 3 supporting documents since then: it now (as of a January 10, 2012 revision) reads:

• Michael Brewster provided 19 pages of old documents in support of his 2011 Petition to the New Hampshire House of Representatives. They have something to do with the fact that he got in a world of trouble back in the 1990s after failing to pay his child support. Apparently, Attachment #4 (pp. 9-14) is the key to his argument. Unfortunately, the document is from Massachusetts rather than New Hampshire and it is almost totally illegible. It shows that he paid some child support to Massachusetts (where his daughter and her mother were living) after losing a 1997 New Hampshire court case. Mr. Brewster's problem with the New Hampshire family-law system continued even after Massachusetts closed out his case, and in his view this (evidently) proves that New Hampshire authorities must have been acting in bad faith.
  
  I scanned the documents myself, and they are presented here "as is" aside from a few redacted social security numbers. They have all been photocopied, microfilmed, faxed and/or scanned multiple times over the years.

See Also:

• Michael Brewster's 2011 House Petition (#3)

• Brewster's supporting documents

• My 2011 Petitions page

• My 2012 Petitions page

Home

The Forgotten Liars

2012 Session