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AOH ponders next move as parade meeting deadline passes

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Ray O’Hanlon

The big meeting never happened. March 30 came and went without the anticipated showdown between organizers of the New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade and leaders of the Ancient Order of Hibernians who are concerned over the manner in which the annual event is being organized and financed.

In addition, the national board of AOH has yet to see a series of documents relating to the parade that it wanted to inspect before the meeting, which was expected to take place in New York.

With no firm time and place for a meeting set by the end of last week, AOH National President Tom Gilligan instead spent the weekend in Pittsburgh consulting with the order’s national legal counsel, Bob Kennedy.

Gilligan had hoped for a meeting with parade leaders to discuss a number of specific matters, including the parade permit, corporate sponsorship, insurance and tax returns.

Gilligan, and other Hibernian leaders, have been concerned for some time over controversies swirling around the parade and have been attempting to secure a commitment from the AOH New York County Board, its offshoot Parade and Celebration Committee, and the more recently created parade corporation, that the parade would be run strictly according to the AOH constitution and bylaws.

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The failure to meet last weekend occurred despite the fact that plans for a meeting were earlier set in train by both Gilligan and a leading parade organizer, William J. Flynn.

Flynn, president-director of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Inc., had floated the idea of a meeting earlier this year.

But, according to a Hibernian source, Flynn’s proposal was unacceptable to Gilligan, who wanted an entirely different set of arrangements for such a gathering and said so in two letters to Flynn, who is also chairman of the Mutual of America insurance company and was a leading player in Irish-American peace efforts in Northern Ireland during the mid-1990s.

"Flynn was inviting the world for an open-ended session. And he was ignoring the specific issues that Gilligan was raising," the source said.

In a letter to Gilligan dated Feb. 23, Flynn told the Hibernian national president, "I intend to refrain from any further efforts to initiate any future meetings on this subject and so will so notify all of my invitees."

Flynn continued: "I am puzzled by the doubts you expressed as to ‘who is in charge of running the Parade.’ For me the answer is quite clear."

Referring to Gilligan’s "proposal for a new meeting with a new agenda and a different, more limited group of attendees," Flynn stated that the proposed date, which he wrote as March 31, was "completely out of the question."

"Not only is it incompatible with our schedules, but you will understand it simply does not give sufficient time for our Board to meet and take a decision on the questions raised."

AOH spokesman Mike Cummings said that the next likely move would be a letter from Gilligan to New York County Board President David Kilkenny requesting a convening of a County Board meeting.

The board is made up of Manhattan’s AOH division leaders.

Cummings said that the object of such a meeting would be to have the County Board members take a vote and "publicly affirm" what they intended to do about widespread concerns over the manner in which the New York parade is being run.

If necessary, he indicated, such a meeting would be supervised by the New York State Board president, Timothy Comerford.

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