Candidates Clash at Register of Deeds Forum

August 16, 2024
• The Norfolk County register of deeds and his former coworker questioned each other’s experience during a contentious League of Women Voters event Thursday.

Current Register of Deeds Bill O’Donnell faced opponent Noel DiBona in a virtual forum, during which the two Democratic candidates engaged in a fierce back-and-forth, at times prompting the moderator to intervene.

The register of deeds, a six-year term, is tasked with maintaining property records across the county and managing a 40-person staff. Norfolk County encompasses nearly 30 municipalities, including Needham, Quincy, Brookline and Dedham. The forum was held in partnership with several chapters of the LWV, including Needham’s chapter.

This primary election will be the first challenged one since 2004, when O’Donnell was first elected to the position. Before becoming register, O’Donnell served as a county commissioner in Norfolk County and as a Norwood Planning Board member.

Prior to his run for register, DiBona worked alongside O’Donnell as the department’s director of administrative services from 2021 until February 2024. A member of the Quincy City Council since 2016, DiBona also ran unsuccessfully for the Norfolk County Register of Probate in 2020, and before that, worked in the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office.

DiBona used his opening statement to highlight his family-owned landscaping company and briefly discredit a pro-O’Donnell campaign postcard, which apparently claims DiBona does not have “major administrative experience.”

DiBona addressed the mailer at several points in the forum, at one point calling it “an attack on my résumé.”

“This postcard, mailer that went out — usually, in this particular situation, the incumbent doesn’t send these out,” DiBona said. “I have not run a negative campaign at all. I have run a very positive campaign of what I can bring to the table as the register of deeds and how important it is, and the current register of deeds put this mailer out to the entire county attacking me, that I don’t have these qualifications.”

O’Donnell asked to respond, but Moderator Debbie Winnick redirected the candidates to the question, which concerned whether the position should be elected or appointed.

Earlier in the forum, O’Donnell cast doubt on DiBona’s record, after DiBona expressed his desire to modernize the department’s IT infrastructure.

“He was not a part of the upper management, senior management team. He never spoke with the IT or had anything like that to deal with the big issues, and in the three years he worked [there], he’s never raised a lot of the issues,” O’Donnell said of DiBona. “Every day, he could have come and raised some of the issues that he’s raising now and speak, and he never did.”

In a rebuttal, DiBona said that he did work in customer service and with IT while an employee of the register of deeds. He expanded on his experience as a city councilor, former School Committee member and a small business owner.

DiBona also took aim at O’Donnell for his two lawsuits against Norfolk County Director John Cronin and county commissioners. O’Donnell filed those complaints after Cronin and the commissioners opposed his intent to hire a chief information officer and, in turn, denied his attempts to use funds from the department’s budget on legal fees accrued from that lawsuit.

With that litigation in mind, DiBona stressed the need to “tighten up the budget” and called for transparency within the registry.

“Essentially, he’s suing the advisory board representative from your town,” DiBona said. “Your taxpayer money is being spent on legal fees incurred from the current register.”

O’Donnell did not respond to comments about the lawsuits until later in the forum, when he held up the printed court decisions — in which the judge ruled in his favor — and asked if DiBona had read it. He noted DiBona is endorsed by County Commissioners Joseph Shea and Peter Collins, who O’Donnell said are named in the lawsuits as having broken state laws. Those endorsements are also on DiBona’s campaign website.

“I don’t like suing anybody, but I took an oath as register to uphold the laws of Massachusetts, and laws are being broken,” O’Donnell said. “And as a lawyer, I’ve tried these cases on my own at no cost to the taxpayers.”

DiBona also expressed a desire to enhance the office’s accessibility, suggesting the creation of satellite offices. O’Donnell, however, said that such a move “will bankrupt the county or certainly the registry budget.”

DiBona became the first Asian American member elected to Quincy’s School Committee and City Council, and with several years of governmental experience under his belt, he feels he is poised for the position.

“I think it’s time for a little bit of a change,” DiBona said.

Toward the end of the forum, DiBona also described O’Donnell as having “gotten a little animated.” DiBona promised to devote his full time to the position, unlike O’Donnell, who he said is a practicing attorney running his own private firm. O’Donnell called the remark a “flat-out lie.”

In terms of his priorities, O’Donnell said he’d like to expand accessibility and focus on quality customer service.

“It takes qualifications, it takes experience, it takes a record of results to achieve registry priorities,” O’Donnell said, “and I would like to continue to do so.”

The Democratic primary is Tuesday, Sept. 3. Full coverage of the forum is available at needhamchannel.org.