New Haven Independent

Easter Howard (pictured), who runs a grant-writing company, promises not to run the CAA as the “grant-writing agency” it has come to be known as, doling out money to politically-connected friends.

Howard took over as CAA board chair at the end of last year, when Wooster Square Alderman Mike Smart resigned his chairmanship amid a power struggle with the Department of Social Services. After the agency risked losing all its funding, Smart resigned but got to keep his picks for the crew who will try to lead the CAA away from a history of political favor-giving and muddled finances.

Howard was one of his picks. An active member of the Fair Haven Management Team, she heads the Humphrey Place Condo Association. A former social worker, she now runs Grant-writing Solutions, a small company that puts together grant proposals for non-profits.

She now sits on a six-person board with the following of Smart’s picks:

• Jeff Klaus, president of marketing, Bank of America; Board member, CONNCAN
• Evelyn Dejesus-Vargas, recent Fair Haven aldermanic candidate, former social worker.
• Margaret Rogers, Community Mediation
• Robert Pelligrino, attorney, Pellegrino Law Firm
• Linda DeRosa, real estate agent

As chairwoman of the CAA’s board, Howard promised transparency.

“We don’t want to do anything in secret.”

In a visit to CAA headquarters Wednesday, she detailed the way forward as CAA seeks to restore public trust and avoid past mishaps. Instead of being chosen by territory, board members will be chosen for skill sets, especially fundraising.

Members will stem from three categories: Six who represent the interests of low-income citizens, six elected officials, and six representatives of “major private interests such as business, labor, religion, private social services, or education.”

New members will sign Conflict of Interest forms and will be trained in how to act as responsible members, said CAA CEO Amos Smith (pictured).

In the past, there was a “major, significant lack of maturity” among board members and a “lack of respectful distance between the role of the board and their day-to-day involvement,” said Smith. When he took the helm last May, he quickly learned “CAA has become a grant-writing organization.”

The Selection

A nominating committee meets today to begin selecting new candidates from a list of nominees.

Nominees’ applications, instead of being passed through friends to the CAA, will be filtered first by the CAA’s umbrella organization, CAFCA, then selected by a nine-person committee including representatives from CAFCA as well as independent local non-profits … everyone, it seems, except DSS (the state Department of Social Services).

The last time DSS wasn’t included at the table during board selection, former DSS Commissioner Patricia Wilson-Coker issued a seething missive to former chair Smart and threatened to take state funding away, a move that would have annihilated New Haven’s CAA.

Asked if DSS’s absence from the table was a problem, DSS spokesman David Dearborn said only that the new acting commissioner, Michael Starkowski, will be “taking a close interest” in New Haven’s CAA. “It is our understanding that no votes on new board members will be taken at today’s meeting.”

Will the new set of board members break free from CAA’s mired past?

“I wish them luck, [but] there’s nothing that gives me confidence,” said former board member Lindy Lee Gold, who resigned last year because she found the agency to be “corrupt.”

“I know a number of the new board members personally, and I don’t believe they’ll have any trepidation or hesitation to resign if they feel it’s just a continuation of the same behavior.”