New Haven Independent

The report is designed to change the organizational structure of town hall through the appointment of a Chief Administrative officer and at least three new department heads. It tries yet again for charter revision. If successful, the current administration would curtail or end the independence of the town’s review boards and regulatory commissions, putting them under a Board of Selectman umbrella. While they mouth the words “this is democracy,” in fact their plan would end the checks and balances in Branford’s Selectmen- RTM form of government, reign in the work of commissions and put the economic power of the town in the hands of a few.
Cheryl Morris had been in office less than three months last February, hardly enough time to know her way around town hall, when she asked for $25,000 for a study to reorganize town departments, saying 22 were too many for her to handle, a complaint never heard from prior first selectmen. The report, however, goes way beyond departmental re-organization, so much so that several RTM members told the Eagle that had they known the true scope, they would not have approved the funding. But they did. And Morris hired Lesley DeNardis, a political scientist and a member of faculty at the University of New Haven, to conduct the study. DeNardis also runs her own outside consulting company.
Why did the town’s First Selectwoman need a report with so wide a scope? Aside from the oft repeated public relations spin about New England towns outgrowing the old town meeting and coming into the 21st century, I got very little inkling until I came across this sentence: “Municipalities need not be bound by the organizational structure of previous administrations particularly when changing needs dictate a new form that will be most conducive to efficient and effective operations.” In other words, the model of the new CEO reorganizing his company should hold for a local town that changes its elected officials every two years. Given that the current administration is in its infancy, one might have thought a consultant doing a thorough job would look closely at past administrations, those with far more experience and expertise than Mrs. Morris. But no immediate prior First selectmen were interviewed, not Republican John Opie, who served one term, or Anthony “Unk” DaRos who served three.
A report is only as good as its methodology. And so we start with that. Dr. DeNardis’s 34-page draft report purports to locate Branford among the array of governing structures in Connecticut. She tells us that of Connecticut’s 169 towns there are “three major forms of government:” The Selectman-Town Meeting, 106, Council-Manager, 32 and Mayor-Council, 31.
Remarkably, for a report designed to assess how Branford’s government is functioning, Dr. DeNardis’s section on methodology makes no effort to compare Branford to the only other towns in Connecticut with the same form of government, the Selectmen-Representative Town Meeting. In fact there are only six: Darien, Greenwich, Groton, Fairfield, Waterford and Westport. Nowhere are they even mentioned as comparable RTM communities. They are just included with all the other Selectman-Town Meetings.
Under the Representative Town Meeting structure, a limited number of citizens are elected to represent residents and meet and vote on a variety of town issues. The DeNardis report is silent on why Branford turned to the RTM form of government some 50 years ago. The main reason is that population growth made it difficult for all the townspeople to actually assemble for the annual town meeting. So RTM forms of government, which in Darien and Greenwich are non-partisan, have large RTM groups in order to better represent citizens. Greenwich’s RTM has 230 members, Fairfield’s 50 and Darien, with a population of 19,000, has 100. Branford has 30. (Greenwich and Darien also have town administrators, but Dr. DeNardis did not interview them for insight on their responsibilities.)
Had she studied these communities she might have found several with far larger populations than Branford’s. We can’t know for sure, of course, but this form of government appears to be working well in Greenwich, population 60,000, Fairfield, population, 58,400, Groton, population 43,550, Westport, population, 25,749, Darien, population 19,607 and Waterford, population, 19,152. These statistics come from the 2,000 U.S. Census.
DeNardis’s primary argument for why Branford needs a new organizational structure and a new form of government (“In the long term, the consultant recommends the study and analysis of the feasibility of moving toward a town manager model,” she declares), is the notion of population growth. But, in fact, the growth in Branford has been modest—as her own figures show—an increase of 6,583 residents over 25 years from 23,363 to 29,946. So while a lot is made of this growth, an increase of 22 percent over 25 years, it is actually less than one percent per year.
Instead of picking “peer communities” with similar governing structures to undertake her “comparative analysis,” she picks Guilford and North Haven. Why they rather than others were chosen as “peer communities” is never explained. Neither of them has an RTM like Branford. Guilford and North Haven both have a selectmen -town meeting form of government and Guilford now has five selectmen, not three as Branford has.
The DeNardis report takes up none of the basics of a comparative analysis, not even the population, which we provide here: Guilford (21,000) or North Haven (23,492). What Dr.DeNardis does mention is that Guilford and North Haven both put their animal shelters under police department control, that Guilford has consolidated the Department of Public Works and Solid Waste into one department, which she recommends for Branford and that North Haven had placed all its zoning, land use, open space, wetlands, buildings inspection and economic development under Community Development, another recommendation for Branford. Could these be the reasons they were chosen for “peer comparison?”
There’s one other recommendation that makes us think this administration has a deeper plan that it has yet to unveil. Despite the recent resounding defeat by the RTM on charter revision, Dr. DeNardis seeks yet again to resurrect it. And of all things, she recommends that the current Board of Selectmen appoint this charter revision commission. But that cannot happen. Why? Because Branford town counsel, Ed Marcus, wrote a controversial legal opinion last December declaring the Board of Selectmen were not empowered to appoint a charter revision commission. Then he used his opinion, delivered by police escort, to disband the Opie charter revision commission. Is DeNardis now suggesting the Board of Selectman engage in an illegal act?
DeNardis’s position that every chief executive has the right to change the organization of government willy nilly runs contrary to reality, to common sense and to the way in which prior Democratic and Republican First Selectmen have governed. But this group has spent a lot of energy seeking to transform all aspects of Branford’s government. They have done so from day one. And the question is why.