I Filed a Gender Discrimination Complaint Against Nashua's Ethics Committee Chairman. Here's Why.
The numbers don't lie. After years of watching the city's Ethics Review Committee treat male and female complainants differently, I finally put it on the record.
On May 6, 2026, I filed a formal complaint with the New Hampshire Attorney Discipline Office (ADO) against Attorney Timothy Bush, Chairman of the Nashua Ethics Review Committee (ERC). This is my second complaint. I published a series of articles relative to the first December 2025 complaint which still remains active. My complaint alleges that Bush has systematically delayed or denied hearings for female complainants while fast-tracking cases brought by men, a pattern I believe violates state professional conduct rules that explicitly prohibit sex-based discrimination by attorneys.
Ten days later, I filed a supplemental submission with additional documentary evidence. I am publishing this article because the public deserves to know what I found and because the data is hard to argue with.
The 30-Day Rule Nobody Follows — For Women
Under Nashua Revised Ordinance Article IX, Section 12-33, the ERC is required to hold a hearing within 30 days of receiving a complaint. This is not a guideline. It is a mandatory statutory requirement. What I have documented over nearly a decade is that this rule has been honored consistently for male complainants and ignored repeatedly for women.
Here is what the record shows:
When Tom Prieto, a male complainant, filed an ERC complaint in April 2017, a hearing was held in approximately 35 days. A second complaint he filed that same spring was addressed in a similar timeframe. When Fred Teeboom, another male complainant, and one with a documented adversarial history with city attorneys, filed in April 2025, he received a combined screening and hearing in just 14 days. That is faster than any complainant in the record. Faster than any woman has ever received even a screening meeting alone.
My experience, and that of my co-complainant Laura Colquhoun, has been nothing like that. A complaint we filed together in April 2023 took 42 days to reach a screening. A complaint I filed in June 2023 dragged on for 130 days, and I received no direct notice of the meeting. A December 2024 complaint took 80 days to reach a hearing. And a complaint I filed in September 2025? As of March 1, 2026, more than 240 days after I filed it, no hearing had occurred, no explanation offered, and no continuance for good cause ever issued.
The 30-day statutory deadline had elapsed more than seven times over. My complaint simply ceased to exist, as far as the ERC was concerned.
The Words He Chose Tell the Story
The scheduling data alone was enough to bring this complaint. But there is something else I want people to see, because I believe it reveals how Attorney Bush actually thinks about women who appear before his committee.
Both Fred Teeboom and I raised the same issue with the ERC: whether the committee should adopt subpoena power. We both communicated this in writing. But in his official legal response, Attorney Bush described our communications in very different terms.
Describing me: "Mrs. Ortolano also repeatedly implored the ERC to allow subpoena power."
Describing Teeboom: "Mr. Teeboom wanted to know the status of subpoena power."
Read those two sentences again. "Implored" — emotional, desperate, supplicating. "Wanted to know" — rational, curious, procedurally engaged. These words did not appear in a casual conversation. They appeared in a formal legal filing, submitted by an attorney acting as chairman of a quasi-judicial body.
I do not believe that word choice was accidental. I believe it reflects how Attorney Bush perceives women who advocate before his tribunal and how he characterizes us when he writes about us in official proceedings.
Records the City Claims Don't Exist
In my May 16 supplemental filing, I reported the results of a Right-to-Know request I submitted on May 7, 2026 (RTK 26-329), seeking ERC meeting minutes, notices, and hearing materials predating 2023. The City's response was that all records are posted online or available at the Clerk's Office.
That response is false, and I can prove it. I visited the City Clerk's Office twice. I spoke directly with staff member Elizabeth Rossi, who confirmed that no ERC records exist there. The city's online portal only began posting ERC materials in 2023. The City's response to my RTK request was not just wrong, I believe it was unlawful.
To demonstrate that these earlier meetings did occur and that Attorney Bush chaired them, I have attached to my supplemental complaint, first pages of ERC meeting minutes dating back to 2017. Those records show Attorney Bush was Chairman and the dates of the hearings and findings. I have asked the ADO, if it has the authority to do so, to formally request the complete ERC records from the city. Pursuing them through litigation would take years, and this complaint has already waited long enough.
What I Am Asking For
I am asking the ADO to open a formal investigation into Attorney Bush's conduct. I am asking them to pull the complete filing and hearing dates for every ERC complaint during Bush's tenure as chairman, broken down by the sex of the complainant. And I am asking them to consider whether it is appropriate for Bush to continue chairing the ERC while a complaint he allowed to expire without a hearing, my complaint, remains unresolved.
The governing rules are straightforward. New Hampshire Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(g), in effect since July 2019, prohibits attorneys from taking any action with the primary purpose of burdening a person based on their sex. Rule 8.4(d) prohibits conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice. A tribunal that applies its own mandatory procedural rules to men and ignores them for women is not administering justice. It is administering something else entirely.
This Is Not About Me
I want to be clear about something. I have been involved in Nashua civic affairs for years. I have filed Right-to-Know requests, appeared before committees, and been a persistent, some would say relentless, voice for government transparency. Courts have criticized my tone. I have made mistakes. I own them.
But the pattern I am documenting is not about my tone, or my litigation history, or any judge's opinion of my advocacy style. It is about whether the chair of a quasi-judicial municipal ethics body applies the law the same way to everyone who comes before him, regardless of sex. The data says he does not.
Every man who filed a complaint got a timely hearing. Every woman, me explicitly, was made to wait some for months, one indefinitely. That is the record. I am asking the ADO to examine it.
I will continue to report on developments in this matter as they occur.