Jane Murray: Winning friends? Influencing people?

Here's a book that the Mayor should add to her summer reading list...

1. The latest influential person she has ticked off is Frank R. Thompson. Mr. Thompson is a very energized local man who has dedicated himself to doing whatever he can to rid our area of abused prescription drugs. His organization, Fix the Scioto County Problem of Drug Abuse, Misuse, and Overdose, (click here for their Facebook Page) is active and growing.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Thompson described his frustration in dealing with Mayor Murray. Thompson had some public events planned for July (including a concert on the esplanade on July 2) and had received permission from the Mayor to use the main display window at the Martings building for publicity. In late June, he learned that the Mayor had instead promised the main window to the Portsmouth Area Arts Council and Thompson would be moved to the corner window:

Guess what, people? Our display has been moved to the small corner window. I was furious. Talked with the mayor and her secretary. Mayor hung up - guess that's where we'll be displaying. My apologies to the families and friends of the victims for this dreadful change. (Thompson on Facebook, 5:58 pm, 6/23/10)

As the evening progressed Thompson reviewed his correspondence with the Mayor and confirmed that she had lied to him. His description of the events on the group's Facebook page (click here) tells a lot about  how Murray runs her office. Here are some of his statements:

I have copies of the correspondence and they are dated and verified. How do they expect this to ride? I have spent this week making setting up the unveiling, securing the band and speakers, and making and handing out fliers. This was all dependent on the window.

Deception in City government...

...the Mayor's secretary had the audacity to tell me that the mayor attended [all of the drug action team meetings.] I laughed and said, "I remember one and I haven't missed since I started on the Action Team in February"...

She balled me out for making her secretary cry...

Mr. Thompson's arrogant treatment by the Mayoress probably wasn't very smart. Thompson's group's website has over 3,400 followers. Now Thompson knows what it's like to get the royal treatment from the Queen of CrazyTown.

A couple of Mr. Thompson's recent postings are quite revealing:
* Yesterday: "Poll of the Day -- Mayor Murray recall? Yes or No" The results were pretty impressive.
* Another interesting post (complete with a picture that is familiar to our readers): "The forbidden photo of the Mayor's lovely bathroom."

2. Major mess in the Mayor's Office. In April, Murray hired a young Portsmouth man as her assistant. But after two months of office turmoil and abusive treatment, he couldn't take it anymore. He quit a few weeks ago. We won't name the young man here, but his title was Mayor's Assistant. After working so closely with her Highness, he knew that when he left she was likely to say terrible things about him, so he spoke to several City employees to make sure that his side of the story was known. Here are a few of the things he described about the mayor's office.

* The mayor never comes in before 10AM.
* She believes she is suffering from fibromyalgia, which she diagnosed herself. She is frustrated that no doctor will confirm this.
* Mayor Murray does not work well with men.
* He was regularly ordered around (and even verbally reprimanded) by Murray's "volunteer" staff.
* The Mayor's office is hopelessly unorganized and she can't even complete the simplest tasks.
* She is convinced that her office is "bugged" and that the judges' employees have broken into her office and have stolen files.

This gentleman joins a line of people who found that they were unable to work with Ms. Murray, beginning with Pete Mingus, the Mayor's "Chief of Staff," who left after just five days on the job, with similar horror stories.