It's Time to Call in the Feds, Littleton
A few years back, the Boxborough Select Board asked the FBI to conduct an investigation into allegations of police corruption in town. At the time of the 2021 federal criminal probe, Littleton’s Assistant Town Administrator Ryan Ferrara had been serving as Boxborough’s Town Administrator—a small-world fact I thought worth pointing out.
In Massachusetts, the FBI has looked into all sorts of local criminal matters, targeting corrupt public servants, including a Boston City Councilor, a Massachusetts state representative, and a former chair of the Grafton Select Board, to name a few.
Suspecting that Littleton had its share of corrupt public servants, I began looking into the cannabis industry in town. Between November 16, 2023 and January 21, 2024, I published daily posts that described the unholy entanglement between Littleton’s Select Board and various cannabis business owners, all of whom need Littleton’s Select Board’s authorization to operate in town.
I combed through hundreds of public documents, spoke to dozens of people, and shared my findings, day after day for sixty-seven days, with the readers of my blog (www.jennabrownson.com) and my Substack (jennabrownson.substack.com).
On February 1, 2024, surely feeling the pressure to answer legitimate questions about the non-operation of a cannabis business that had received its license from the Select Board in the spring of 2020, Christine Nordhaus appeared before the Planning Board to request a renewal of her cannabis business’s lapsed special permit. When she was told she’d need to reapply, she told the Planning Board that she would do just that.
Fourteen months later, no such reapplication has been made by Christine Nordhaus.
Not one penny of the cannabis excise tax that this business would be required to hand over for the benefit of Littleton has been collected because the business isn’t open for business.
Having written so much about this narrow issue, I’ve been asked by many, many people, “Why hasn’t Christine opened her pot shop?” My standard reply is to pose a question in response, “Why do you think the owner of a multi-million dollar business isn’t raking in those millions of dollars?” The majority of the time, the answer I heard was “Because someone’s paying her not to open.”
This, to me, seems plausible, but without a deeper investigation, it’s hard to know for sure.
But here’s the thing: I don’t have the capacity to conduct a deeper investigation, because I’m not in law enforcement with the investigative tools at law enforcement’s disposal.
But the FBI surely has those resources.
As a service to the townspeople of Littleton who believe we’ve got corruption right here in town, the Select Board can rightfully call in the feds to look around, just like those in positions of power in Boxborough did in 2021.
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My name will appear on the ballot for a seat on Littleton’s Select Board.
Election Day is May 10, 2025.
My seventh policy objective: Request that the FBI come to town and investigate the cannabis businesses and their political enablers.