New Haven Independent

His conduct, they assert, is the result of series of misguided decisions guided by political forces whose dictates he seems unable to reject. At this week’s meeting, Bruno’s actions centered on accepting a school case that was not within the RTM jurisdiction and sending an election case involving Rep. Lonnie Reed to state election authorities when it should have been handled by the RTM. Section 3G of the Town Charter says the RTM “shall be the judge of the election and qualification of its members.” In each case, Bruno went far beyond his authority as Moderator.

In a night of bitter confrontation that few could ever remember having so serious an impact, members decried what has now become a pattern of targeting political enemies, including RTM members and others.

This particular form of character assassination comes by way of a category that seems innocent enough”“Correspondence. It is what it says it is, a way for citizens to write a letter to the RTM about matters concerning the town. But recently, “correspondence” has taken on a whole new meaning. Letters appear and Bruno reads them to the RTM and beyond (meetings are televised for cable) regardless of their veracity. The targets hear the letters for the first time along with everyone else.

Whether Bruno is acting on his own is another question. At one point, Reed pointed out to him that it was reprehensible that these letters, “these allegations” are “being read off right onto television.”

To that Bruno replied, “I am sorry. I did what I was told to do.”

In January, Bruno read the now infamous Michael Milici- Daniel F. Baughman, Sr.
letter. The two former chairmen of the Democratic Town Committee (Baughman also ran Cheryl Morris’s First Selectman election campaign), accused Reed and three other RTM members of unethical conduct.(One has taken a new job and since resigned.)

The main target of the letter was Reed, a much respected, hard working and well-liked member of the RTM, who has publicly split with the Cheryl Morris-Ed Marcus administration and is now one of their targets. She has since become a key leader in a newly formed effort to return Anthony Unk DaRos to office as Democratic First Selectman.

Reed told the RTM she had hired a lawyer, that the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) had put the case on a fast track, and her answers to the complaint are due March 2nd.

“I am innocent. However, the fact that this was given a boost—-it arrived at the SEEC pretending to be sanctioned by the RTM, as if we had given it the dignity of our attention, let alone a vote, and you signed this, not as a private citizen but as Jim Bruno, moderator, is a hijacking of the process,” an intent to deceive the SEEC, she told the room of some 35 residents.

“Look at your job description. You are our moderator, not our dictator,” she declared as shouts and applause filled the room.

“I think a lot of us feel that the current mantra is: ‘you’re next.’ Folks on the RTM, on both side of the aisle, are very concerned about the modus operandi we can see going on in the town recently, that those of us who speak out, and there are many of us, are going to be targeted.“

The clear objective of the January Milici-Baughman campaign was to remove her from elected office on a residency issue that the RTM knew of at the time of the election, as did Bruce Morris, Cheryl’s husband and Branford’s representative to the state’s Central Democratic Committee. Bruce Morris thought so little of the so-called residence issue that he actually told Reed to use the couple’s address as her mail drop.

According to Bruno, someone”“he does not say who”“dropped the Milici-Baughman letter in his hands just before the January RTM meeting. He said he had not had a chance to read it. Then he read it. Many RTM members were stunned and upset and said so.

Then, quite off handedly, he said he would send the letter to the SEEC. As it turned out, Bruno was far more active than he let on, said RTM Rep. Anthony Giardiello as he stood to mount what would be a devastating critique of Bruno’s actions.

“This body, if I remember correctly, dispensed with the Milici-Baughman letter as without merit, without one dissenting vote,” Giardiello, a Democrat, said. “Yet I saw in the newspaper that Mike Milici was going to send a complaint up to the SEEC. Now I realize that curiosity killed the cat, but I had to see this thing. So I called them up and I asked them to send me a copy.” The SEEC sent Giardiello the Milici complaint and other documents. Milici signed and swore to the complaint on Jan 26 about two weeks after the RTM meeting.

“And much to my surprise, just so people understand procedures at SEEC, any citizen can make a complaint that is in writing and is notarized. And Mr. Milici filled out a complaint on their form and had it notarized. But apparently he did not send it up to them. Instead he gave it to Bruno. Jim Bruno had no cause to get involved. He is not Milici’s personal secretary.” But he did, Giardiello said.

The reason we know that Milici’s formal complaint wound up in Bruno’s hands is that Bruno himself wrote the cover letter to the SEEC, provided the Milici complaint, a DVD of the meeting, a copy of a column written by the Eagle, and the original Milici-Baughman letter. Neither the actual Milici complaint nor the Bruno cover letter dated January 31st ever came before the RTM.

Reed stood and gave Giardiello permission to read the material. Rep.Dennis Flanagan, the clerk, did so. And that was how the RTM heard for the first time the actual Milici complaint, a complaint that cites purported violations of elections statutes, statutes, we might add, that hold prison terms and fines, We do not know how Milici came to learn about these statutes, or who might have advised him. The RTM also heard Bruno’s cover letter that gives the complaint “some credence that we do not intend for it to have,” Giardiello said.

In his cover letter, Bruno asks the SEEC whether Reed’s prior votes on various issues are still valid. Then he asks: “Do I allow her to continue as a representative while the investigation is ongoing ?”

Giardiello was really furious about this question. “He can’t unilaterally remove a member. For whatever reason he implied to SEEC that he had the authority to decide that,” he said. Bruno claimed that the RTM agreed in January to send the material to the SEEC.

“We all agreed upon that,” Bruno insisted. But the majority of the RTM held firm, saying no way. Well, said Bruno, incredulously, I had the right to send it. “No, you didn’t,” many simply blurted out.

Rep. Sandra Reiners stood up: “Mr. Moderator, the fact that this is a correspondence from the moderator of the RTM I believe misrepresents the action or the inaction of the RTM one month ago. There was no action. There was no motion, there was no action taken by this body. That letter sent to the Secretary of State implies that this body is behind that letter. It is not.” The SEEC falls under the Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz’s authority. (She happens to be a friend of Town Counsel Ed Marcus, so much so that she came down to Branford to swear Ms. Morris into office in November, 2005.)

As the RTM seemed determined to hang Bruno, he now changed course. He told them he would send a letter to the SEEC to tell them that “the RTM is not in support of this. How’s that?” Ms. Reiners said that would be appropriate.

Then he confessed: “I misunderstood what my duty is here.” The response was a collective gasp.

“I thought when I said I will forward the complaint to the SEEC and when no one said, no you can’t, no you shouldn’t, well, why didn’t anyone say anything then?” Republican Michael Nardella responded: “I think we were dumbstruck.”

Giardiello noted that Milici’s formal complaint is a “specific request for action from a state agency.

“I want to make one more point because we are under attack. There is a provision in the Branford Town Charter that gives this body the sole right to judge the qualifications and elections of its members. And whatever submittal you send to the SEEC, I hope will make clear to them that they not take any action that infringes upon that right of this body. Because I believe that no matter what they decide that we will still retain the right to decide the qualifications of our own members.”

As for Bruno’s reading of a letter from parents whose children attend the John Sliny school, this letter, like the Milici-Baufman letter, set off a veritable scream within the room. Bruno insisted it be sent to an RTM committee.

The letter centered on a so-called “tickling” incident involving second and fourth grade girls and a male teacher at the school. RTM members, both Republican and Democrat, as well as the head of the Board of Education, Frank Carrano, became incensed.

Carrano called Bruno’s decision to read the letter “reprehensible.
Absolutely reprehensible. And I think you ought to apologize to the Board of Ed and to the Superintendent of Schools, because you don’t know what’s going on.” Others like Republicans Dennis Flanagan, Jim Walker, Robert DeFord, Pam Fowler, and Kurt Schwanfelder, and current Third Selectman John Opie, to cite a few, agreed. Some Democrats were furious that Bruno was trying to intervene in BOE policy when the RTM has no authority to do so.

“Ask your town attorney whether this is a matter that should be or could be discussed in public because she will tell you it is not,” Carrano said. Shelley Marcus, Town Attorney #2, and Ed’s daughter, was present. She sat silently in the room, next to Mrs. Morris, and said nothing to stop Bruno when it became clear what the lengthy letter was about.

And it wasn’t that she didn’t know it was coming. At the Democratic caucus earlier in the evening, Reiners and Reed raised strong objections to Bruno reading the letter. Neither Marcus nor David Doyle, also of the Marcus Law Firm, said a word to stop it, sources said, so Bruno went forward.

Carrano is also the head of the Democratic Town Committee, which sought to remove Ed Marcus from his town counsel position last year. The Morris folks actually proposed Bruno to be the chair, but he lost by a vote or two to, of all people, Frank Carrano. Cheryl Morris has made clear her deep distrust and unhappiness with her own party and some RTM members said as they left the room that Carrano had become the latest target.
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