VBT Supervisor Combs announces LaMothe has decided to stay

By Rosemary K. Otzman
Independent Editor
At the end of the 10-minute work/study session of the Van Buren Township Board of Trustees on Monday, Nov. 18, Supervisor Linda Combs announced that her executive assistant Karin LaMothe will be staying on in that position.
At the VBT Downtown Development authority meeting that followed, Supervisor Combs announced again that LaMothe has decided to stay on as her executive assistant.
She said it was a mutual decision.
Combs said, “She is a great help to me and I’d hate to lose her.”
LaMothe had resigned for personal reasons effective Oct. 18 and then agreed to stay on until Combs hired a replacement.
LaMothe ran unsuccessfully for township clerk in 2012 and was hired by Combs as her executive assistant in January 2013, promoted to deputy supervisor in June, and demoted to executive assistant in August, after members of the township board criticized her sudden appointment as deputy supervisor.
VBT has never had a deputy supervisor in its history, except for this brief, two-month span.
In October Combs tried to put together a job description for LaMothe’s replacement, but the board had lots of questions on it so she took it off the agenda until the budget could be studied.
LaMothe was a leader of a recall and the person who signed the paperwork with the county for the 2010 unsuccessful recall attempt of the four new members of the VBT Board of Trustees that were elected in 2008.
Surviving the recall attempt were Supervisor Paul White, Clerk Leon Wright, and Trustees Al Ostrowski and Denise Partridge. White, Ostrowski, and Partridge lost their seats in the 2012 election, but Wright was reelected clerk.