New Haven Independent

In the last two weeks, DeNardis has taken her show on the road, emerging as Mrs. Morris’s hand-picked town consultant, designer and marketing agent. She rolled out her power point Reorganization presentation for the Board of Selectman on August 2nd before an audience of six. (There was virtually no public notice because the Board of Selectman’s agenda was released only the day before.) Last night, DeNardis took her power point show to a special meeting of the town’s Finance Board. In the next few weeks, DeNardis will meet with Town Hall Department heads to help them develop management goals that “will be quantifiable and measurable,” according to a letter Morris sent to town officials this week.

DaRos is now vice-chair of the Democratic Town Committee, whose majority has expressed deep unhappiness with the current Administration. He minced no words: “This report needs a lot of work. I hope this whole thing gets reviewed and torn apart and redone,” he declared at a DTC meeting in June. He emphasized “Lot of Work,” saying it very slowly. “Every little title should be studied,” he declared. He told the DTC members that the report could have a major impact on Branford and “everyone should read the report. Period.” He was not impressed with its research, saying “I think this report could have been done by a clerk.”

John Opie, the immediate past First Selectmen, put it this way: “Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that they (the Morris Administration) have done very little but propose changes to Branford’s government (some of them even conflicting) since they took office. If she (they) can’t handle the job why did they buy the election in the first place?” he asked.

Dr. DeNardis’s methodology has been challenged because although she chose as peer towns those that have Selectmen, like Branford, she failed to choose any of the six towns in the state have an RTM form of legislature, one of the most distinctive features of Branford Government. Eliza Cleveland, of Short Beach, said she had lived in Greenwich, a town with an RTM system, and it worked well. Cleveland asked DeNardis why she chose towns that were not comparable. “I chose towns with Selectmen,” was how she answered.

In an interview, DaRos said the report, if implemented, would create drastic changes. “Apparently our first Selectwoman thinks change is good,” DaRos continued. “But we are changing in the wrong direction. Normally you don’t create a bureaucracy when you are streamlining a government. She is going backward. She is actually creating a bureaucracy. I am going to be outspoken. It just doesn’t make any sense. You knew the cards you were dealt when you took the job.”

DaRos has been so upset by the goings on in the current Administration that he has hinted he might seek the First Selectwoman’s spot in November 2007. Opie has made similar sounds.

The report seeks sweeping change in town government, from a major reorganization of town departments, to the addition of at least three new department heads, plus the appointment of a new chief administrative officer to oversee the day to day operation of town government, a job Mrs. Morris had been elected to do at a salary of $86,586, a year.

Both men questioned the need for a new position of Chief Administrative Officer, saying that is what they did when in office. DaRos added: “you have to be careful of putting a layer between the public and your chief elected official….It is the development of a bureaucracy.”

Soon after the November election, Mrs. Morris said she could not manage the 22 departments that report to her. Opie and “Unk” both say that they never had a problem with managing 22 departments. Opie said each First Selectman “in his turn has dealt with the departments he or she was given as part of the job. We knew that going into it and none of us ever asked to have it changed once we were in office.”

Dr. DeNardis, echoing the priorities of the Morris Administration, also is pressing for a Charter Revision Commission “to perform a comprehensive review” of the town’s charter ” with the goal of amending the charter to provide for greater efficiency in government operations.” The RTM has previously rejected this move with bi-partisan support. But this Administration is nothing if not determined, raising charter revision yet again at Wednesday’s Representative Town Meeting. (Ironically, had the Morris Administration succeeded in its prior efforts at charter revision, the Finance Board might now be on the chopping block.)

Opie said, “Most everyone knows there are minor tweaks that could be done to the Charter to improve it, but it has worked well for 50 years and I don’t see any reason for massive changes.” Opie said town website access for permits and other key services are far more important for residents than are internal reorganizations.

Da Ros and Opie said the reorganization concept is so deeply flawed that they urged the Selectwoman to use caution in adopting it. At the Board of Selectmen meeting last week, Eliza Cleveland asked DeNardis if she had interviewed either Opie or DaRos, who have far greater experience in town government than does Mrs. Morris. She said she had not but would do so.

DaRos reserved his harshest words for the report’s assertions that the town’s well-respected, citizen run Commissions and Boards be subjected to greater oversight by the Board of Selectman. These are the institutions that provide checks and balances on the Selectmen’s agendas. The Commissions include, among others, the Police, Fire, Planning and Zoning, Sewer, Solid Waste, Inland Wetlands and Economic Development Commissions. Typically these commissions decide policy, do research, review budgets, in some instances may hire people for specific jobs, like consultants for projects.

At the DTC meeting, DaRos called the report’s effort to try to supercede the authority of many of Branford’s boards and commissions “very, very dangerous.” “Commissions,” he told the DTC, are “regulatory bodies and they cannot be superceded.” He said it was “suicide” for the Board of Selectmen to put a “czar over some of the boards and commissions,” a reference to the Chief Administrative Officer that Ms. Morris wants to hire.

Denardis’s Recommendation # 4 would create a new “Infrastructure” Department. This department would merge and consolidate Public works, Engineering, Solid Waste, the Sewer Authority and capital projects under one umbrella, an idea that upset DaRos. “The sewer authority has no business being in public works, no business whatsoever being in public works,” he declared. … You have to be very, very careful. This is a very important area.”

From DeNardis’s point of view, “policy competition results when some boards and commissions are empowered with functions generally associated with department heads and the Selectmen. Such a bifurcated management structure creates policy uncertainty as staff are given various and sometimes conflicting directives.”
To handle what she views as a problem, she proposes that there be a “routine evaluation of the town’s many standing boards and commissions” by the Board of Selectmen.”

Opie told the Eagle: “There is no evidence whatsoever that government in Branford is failing us, or even that it is in great need of reform, “Throughout the last campaign, no one, but no one, ever complained about Branford’s governmental structure,” he said referring to the election. ( As we recall Mrs Morris’s campaign was silent on all the changes she now seeks.) “In fact, most people who bother to understand it think it’s a good one. There is no ground swell by the taxpayers for change. Plenty of checks and balances and lots of ability for citizen input as it should be,” he said.

Kurt Schwanfelder, the Republican RTM leader, agreed with DaRos and Opie that the report was treading on dangerous grounds when it came to the authority and powers of the town’s commissions. He said commissions “work in tandem with the selectmen, not against them. That is normally what they have done through the years.” Selectmen are elected every two years. Commissioners serve longer, staggered terms so that they remain more politically independent, though the Morris Administration has manipulated that tradition on the Police Commission. Mrs. Morris and Dick Sullivan, the Second Selectmen, re-appointed Mrs. Morris’s husband, Bruce, and replaced a Republican with their close friend John Giordano, a former Democratic Town Committeeman, who became unaffiliated in order to be appointed.

At the Selectman meeting last week, Bill Horne, a Branford environmentalist, expressed concern about the relationship between Town Hall and the Inland Wetlands Commission. Under Dr. DeNardis’s plan Inland Wetlands, Economic Development, Planning and Zoning, and other departments would soon be joined under one unified “Department of Community Development”.

Horne told Dr. DeNardis: “You may be assuming that the people who are doing development are
highly attuned to environmental issues and are doing their best to protect the environment. I don’t necessarily assume that. I value the Inland Wetlands Commission very much…. I would agree with Eliza Cleveland that it is a real conflict of interest, that development and environmental protection are not natural allies. They are often in conflict. And it is important that any organization that brings these together does it in a way that enhances the cooperation of the staff in these areas and doesn’t subordinate the environment to the development process …..there is a lot of pressure on the part of the developers to do that.

“I will also point out that by state statute the Wetlands Commission is independent, and their authority comes from the (state) Department of Environmental Protection. So it is not something you can readily reorganize”

Peter Jackson, a DTC member from Short Beach, has lived in Branford for 35 years. He said: “Boards and Commissions are everything in this town. Having One Stop Shopping (one of Dr. DeNardis’s marketing slogans), a counter where you can go and get forms and it says Community Development on it is cute, but nothing, nothing can be streamlined by combining all these things. And there are a lot of arguments against it.”

Mrs. Morris did not respond to any of these comments. Instead she complimented Dr. DeNardis on her “well thought out presentation.”
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