New Haven Independent

If the RTM decides to do so, it could ask a state agency, for example, the state Attorney General’s office or another state agency to go further.

Granite-gate, as it came to be known last year, turned out to be a defining moment for the Cheryl Morris administration. The case centered on an unsuccessful attempt by Town Attorney Ed Marcus to use the police to investigate former First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos. The purported charge was that DaRos, a mason by trade, failed to pay royalties on granite located at his business in Stony Creek.

Police Chief Robert Gill found no evidence of “theft of services.” One of the fallouts of the inquiry occurred when the Democratic Town Committee asked Morris to remove Marcus, but she would not and the party has been deeply divided ever since. The RTM initiated an inquiry more than a year ago after DTC members Eliza Cleveland and Pamela Roy asked the RTM to investigate whether Marcus abused his authority in using the police to investigate DaRos’s granite inventory.

The four member committee, consisting of two Democrats, Scott Thayer, the chair, and Jan Doyle and two Republicans, Frank Twohill and John Prete held a final public meeting on Monday, June 18. The four were joined by an audience of five: Cleveland, Roy and DaRos, along with reporters from the Sound and the Eagle. Earlier hearings drew scores more. One reason for the tiny turnout was that the hearing was not placed on the town’s web-site calendar where meetings are listed. It is not clear why this happened.

The ad-hoc committee took no action against Marcus, saying on that issue the members of the committee have “to agree to disagree, but we do agree that we have to learn from this experience and avoid making mistakes like this again,” the report said.

Prete said that based on the evidence “provided to us” he believes that the Marcus Law Firm should be removed as Town Counsel.

In the end, all agreed that one thing was clear from the public’s reaction at the three hearings—“this should not happen again.”

The committee in a unanimous bipartisan report found that Marcus had committed “an error” in sending the police rather than an accountant to check on royalties due the town from the Stony Creek Quarry. No royalties were due, but had there been they would have amounted to less than five dollars.

“…Sending a police detective to the premises of someone who could be perceived as a political rival was an act that could easily and very naturally be perceived as an abuse of power,” the report said. “Even if it was done with the best intentions, failure to recognize this potential for the perception of impropriety was an error that should have been avoided.”

“Public servants,” the report said of the Town Attorney, “are held to a standard that requires not only that they avoid impropriety, but that maintaining the trust of the public demands that they avoid doing anything which even appears to be improper.”

As the meeting unfolded, it appeared that the unanimous report might not be achieved. RTM member Doyle, a loyal follower in the Morris-Marcus administration, would not join with the Republicans who demanded the addition of a last paragraph seeking to send the case to an agency that has the authority to compel testimony from reluctant witnesses.

Cleveland engaged Doyle in a lively exchange. Cleveland pressed Doyle to explain why she wouldn’t want answers when the report repeatedly says the committee was blocked because two key witnesses, Detective Duncan Ayr and Michael Milici, former chair of the Democratic Town Committee, did not give statements. Nor did the committee seek the input of key members of the Police Commission. The Commission was not held accountable for its superficial inquiry.

Doyle could not be persuaded to go further than the committee’s minimum powers. Cleveland was adamant that the truth be reached.

Then the target himself, Unk DaRos, provided a way for compromise. He intervened when it appeared the committee was reaching an impasse. He asked if he could speak. He thanked the committee for all their hard work. The committee thanked him.

“I am satisfied in the sense that I know it (Granite-gate) is not going to happen again. And I will tell you why. I happen to have a lot of people that were watching out for me. You know what? The average citizen won’t have that. If in fact, this error was made on the average citizen, that average citizen would have been ruined. In my case, I just take it as it comes. But the average citizen out there could be intimidated by something like this. That could destroy someone.”

“What I am saying to you is you went as far as you could go,” he told them. …For you to finish the thing out, all you can say to the RTM is if you want this to go further, you are going to have to give this to an authority that can actually do it.”

Once DaRos provided a solution—give it to the RTM to decide—the committee seemed genuinely grateful.

Thayer responded first: “That kind of sums up where I was willing to go. At least we have done what we can do. We can hand it off.” Doyle now felt comfortable with the decision and agreed.

Twohill, who is an attorney, told the group: “We did answer some of the questions. But it was difficult because the key people that we really needed to hear from chose not to appear. And we lack subpoena power. And we cannot fully answer the RTM as to what happened.”

Prete said earlier that unless the inquiry could be fully investigated he and Twohill would amplify a minority report they had been working on. Parts of that report were incorporated in the final version that all four members accepted.

Unlike most reports that outline findings, conclusions and recommendations, this one comes to only indirect findings, indirect conclusions and indirect recommendations.

The clear expectation was that the long-awaited report would be listed on the RTM meeting “call,” that is, would be part of a legal notice published in local newspapers that readers would see. Although there was plenty of time to put it on the “call” for next week’s RTM meeting, Republican RTM member Pam Fowler discovered it had not been. She wrote to Bruno who told her that the report would be discussed under “committee reports.”

Perhaps it was the timing. In the contentious Democratic race for First Selectman, the report can only help DaRos, who is running for the office he held for six years. The Democratic convention takes place on July 19th, a week after the RTM meeting.

The granite-gate hearings ended last September. The report was quite similar to a draft Thayer outlined in December, 2006. It was not made clear why the committee took an additional six months to meet again. But the Eagle does know that during this time an effort was made to interview a person believed to be the photographer, a man who lives in Branford, works for a private investigator and is a photographer himself. Why the committee failed to accomplish this meeting was not discussed in the report.

Throughout the final meeting, Doyle praised Thayer for his writing ability, saying a number of times how gifted with words he was. Thayer’s prose is remarkably similar to the distinctive writing style of Ed Marcus. For example, a new paragraph added to the report says that the testimony the committee most missed was that of Detective Ayr, the officer who had the one-on-one conversation with Marcus.

Here is how it reads: “Some have said that the (police) report has little to say about quarry royalties, so the inference to be drawn is that it was Mr. DaRos he went to investigate, not Stony Creek Granite Corp. Detective Ayr’s reluctance to appear or to answer written questions meant that for the Committee, inferences like these could not be refuted or confirmed.”

In fact, Ayr could not testify because Chief Gill would not let him. The chief said openly he did not want to drag Ayr into the politics of the town. So Ayr really had no choice. He could not disobey his chief, who, by the way, got short shrift in the report. But Ayr did write up the crucial police report that disclosed Marcus’s role, a role Marcus did not think would ever become public because he believed his conversation was protected by the attorney-client privilege.

More than Ayr, it is Milici who is essential to understanding the motives in this case. It was Milici, according to Marcus, who asked the photographer to take the photos. Gill told the Eagle that without the photos there would have been no police “query,” as he put it.

Marcus told the hearings that “Milici told me that he had a friend who also happened to be a PI who at Mike’s request was going to photograph the granite. My belief is that the photos were provided as an accommodation and were taken from a public thoroughfare.” Accommodation. Now there’s a word to be explored. Milici later delivered the photos to Marcus.

When it came time to come forward, Milici, who is a part-time contract assessor for the town, declined to give a statement. Instead his lawyer, Alfred Zullo, of East Haven, sent a letter to the committee, threatening possible libel actions.

Overall, absent the testimony of half the witnesses, there is much left undone. Prete believes some sanctions should be taken against town employees who did not come before the committee. Cleveland said, “I truly hope that the RTM does the right thing and takes the next step to somehow secure the testimony of those who refused to come before the committee.” Roy was philosophical: “Sometimes the silence speaks volumes and we must look at the empty spaces to find the truth.”
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