Diaz won the office in 2004 and has run unopposed in nearly every election since. Even voters who do not trust her say she is friendly and kind and goes out of her way to help people. Many residents like her. A half hour before Tuesday’s town meeting, for instance, an older woman came by Diaz’s office on a walker and said, “Hi, Cynthia. I’m here to support ya.”
Her good standing has been obvious in previous elections. In 2007, she ran for re-election as town treasurer and clerk — offices she also assumed in 2004 — and won each with at least 80 percent of the vote, according to town election data.
But Diaz’s support now appears to be dwindling. On Town Meeting Day, some 200 people packed the little Coventry Community Center gym, filling nearly every folding chair and lining the walls. Many said they came to vote on an article that would transform the position of delinquent tax collector from elected to appointed. It passed by a tally of 120 to 22.
Diaz’s term in the job was ending, so it’s up to the Selectboard to choose her successor.
After the meeting, Selectboard Chair Mike Marcotte said the vote was a major achievement for the town, but it still faces challenges in straightening its accounts.
Around the time of her 2004 election, the Newport Police Department launched an investigation into a complaint that Diaz had embezzled from the local contractor Gray’s Paving and Sealing. In 2005, according to investigation documents, she gave the company’s owner a check for $20,500.
The Orleans County state’s attorney’s office dropped its felony embezzlement charge in 2007.
Diaz says she did not embezzle from the company.
In 2008, the Vermont attorney general’s office opened its own investigation into Diaz on the suspicion she was embezzling from Coventry.
The investigation shifted, however, and in 2011 the state charged Diaz with more than 10 felony counts of tax evasion. Later that year, Diaz settled for two misdemeanor counts of tax evasion.
Diaz says she didn’t owe taxes for the years in question.
State investigators said they learned Diaz was keeping an offshore bank account in the Bahamas and in early 2000 had received more than $90,000 in wired money from Panama.
After town meeting, Diaz said she has no account in the Bahamas, laughing at the prospect that she does, and she echoed an explanation she gave state investigators as to why she was receiving wire transfers from Panama. Her father-in-law, she told them then, wired her the money for child support because her ex-husband did not pay what he owed.
Asked for more details about the wired money, Diaz said, “It’s personal and has nothing to do with the town.”
Marcotte said appointing delinquent tax collectors, instead of electing them, will help. The board can fire an appointed tax collector. It can’t fire an elected one.
“But it won’t completely fix everything,” he said. “The only way to completely fix it is to have the clerk and treasurer be willing to work with us and be transparent.”
Diaz’s terms in those offices expire in 2019.
Marcotte hopes the Selectboard will appoint a new delinquent tax collector in two weeks. He said the board will review every application. Bound by equal opportunity employment laws, the board cannot bar anyone from applying, he said.
Voters are not. David Barlow said he has been reading news about Diaz for years. Before the town voted to restructure the position of delinquent tax collector, Barlow said people needed to act immediately.
“It is very important that this situation be struck down right now — not 12 years from now,” the retired military IT specialist said. “Right now.”
People clapped when he finished speaking.
Barlow has been regularly attending board meetings since Town Meeting Day last year. There, he watched an article to reduce town treasurer from a three-year term to a one-year term fail. That happened even as local newspapers were writing about Diaz’s inability to give auditors the financial documents they were requesting and to account for thousands of dollars in town funds.
“It’s the town’s fault,” Barlow said after Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s the people of the town’s failure.”
