New Haven Independent

The candidates’ style and philosophy came into sharp focus last week as two debates took place. The first, sponsored by the Branford Chamber of Commerce and A T & T, drew some 200 people to the Woodwinds where they were served dinner afterwards. Mrs. Morris’s ringside table included Shelley Marcus, Town Counsel #2, outgoing RTM Moderator James Bruno and outgoing Democratic Majority leader John Smith and their wives, RTM members Lisa Avitable and Jan Doyle, Second Selectman, Dick Sullivan and Mrs. Morris’s husband, Bruce.

The second debate, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, took place Thursday at BCTV, the town’s cable television studio, and had no outside public audience on the set. The Eagle watched the debate on closed circuit television.

At both debates Morris sat between Opie and DaRos. Her role in this campaign seems to be one of the spoiler; she has no official slate of RTM members backing her, but several RTM candidate including Avitable and Margaret Bruno are running as Democrats. She has no one running on her ticket for town clerk, for town treasurer or for tax collector. She has Sullivan, an engineer, running again for Second Selectman and James Bruno running for the Board of Education. Compared to 2005, her campaign budget as of Oct.1 is tiny. So free air-time is important to her.

To that end she barreled through the two debates, ignoring questions put to her in favor of delivering a talking point commentary. Most of her wrath was aimed at DaRos, who won the Democratic Town Committee (DTC) nomination unanimously after she bowed out of her former party’s nominating process. She delivered one or two minor jabs at Opie, but generally left him alone.

This election may well be a referendum on the Cheryl Morris-Ed Marcus style of politics. Morris appointed Marcus, a former Democratic Party State chairman and close family friend as town counsel right after she was sworn in. The influence of Marcus, along with her husband Bruce, a force in Democratic politics for years, led to a dramatic upheaval in the workings of town government, one that few towns in the state have experienced.

Despite a demand from the DTC last year, Mrs. Morris refused to let the firm go. However, in recent months Marcus decided to end his relationship with the town in which he lives. He moved his seven-member law firm from New Haven to North Branford and he and daughter Shelley, a partner in the firm, seem to have assessed their priorities differently. Shelley Marcus now says that even if Morris won the current race the firm will no longer represent the town.

But the impact of the law firm on town government and its cases, big and small, continued to be an issue in the debates. At one point DaRos said if he were elected he would ask that the RTM be given the authority to appoint and to remove legal counsel—a clear reference to the problem.

Morris said: “As far as town attorney goes: I am at the point where I am so fed up with politics in this town that the time has come for the town to have an in-house hired attorney to be available to the staff and to be available to attend meetings in the evenings and to take the politics out of who is town counsel,” she said, claiming without specifics that all prior town attorneys were political, too.

At the League of Women Voters debate, the candidates were asked what they thought were the two or three most important issues facing the town.

“DaRos said, “we need to start to rebuild the faith and confidence in our town government, and town leaders; we need to take a careful, sophisticated look at the town’s situation given this disastrous verdict in the Tabor trial and we need to begin to lay the groundwork for a successful campaign in Hartford to get more funding here for the town of Branford,” specifically he added, the immense impact of Special Education on the school budget.

Opie said he would work hard to prevent residents from having to move because of high property taxes. After taxes, Opie said the next most important issue facing the town was the financial exposure in the Tabor Drive case. Tabor, he said, “has been far too politicized and that is why I am calling for the appointment of an independent counsel to review the legal advice we have gotten from beginning to date, including my own administration. Tell us what went wrong and when.”

Within days of her election in 2005 Morris allowed the tiny Marcus Law Firm to take over the town’s legal work, including the Tabor land cases, then handled by two outside law firms with expertise in land values and eminent domain. The Marcus firm then set out to settle the case and would have succeeded had the Representative Town Meeting agreed. But it rejected a settlement that would have put 354 residential units on the 77-acre parcel. The RTM acted in the belief that the parcel, which lies next to the town dump, might be contaminated. David Doyle, a Marcus attorney, told the RTM it would have expert financial and environmental witnesses at trial. But that did not happen.

Mrs Morris delivered her campaign litany on what she had done for the town. Occasionally she was booed. Sometimes the audience clapped for the other candidates, prompting Smith to deliver a note to the moderator to end audience reaction. In answer to another question, Morris did not say when eminent domain might by used by towns. Instead she gave a summation on Tabor that the developer’s lawyers would have been proud of, one she has given before.

There is no way yet to ascertain how the enormous $17.5 million Tabor verdicts will affect the outcome of this election. But DaRos hinted the town might have other legal recourses, though he did not name them. “We’ve got to explore whether an appeal is all we can do. And I don’t mean laying blame. It is obvious that the case should never have been taken away from the attorneys who got us an (initial) decision that said the plaintiffs had no evidence to support their claim. To say yes, the town needs to appeal, yes, but we need to look deeper than that to protect the town.”

Charter Revision also came up and Opie was quick to correct Morris when she began to rewrite history. He reminded her of her actions in undoing a Charter Revision Commission he started and she abruptly dismantled by sending a police officer to deliver her letter along with a legal opinion from the Marcus Law Firm, demanding that Opie’s Commission be disbanded. Even so, the Commission, consisting of dedicated town citizens, continued its work. In the end Morris ignored their findings and treated the Commission’s members rudely. Had Morris and Marcus succeeded they would have eliminated the RTM and the Board of Finance in favor of a 9-member Town Council, with the Democrats in the majority. They also would have eliminated or reduced the importance of town commissions and boards.

But the RTM prevailed. Over nearly two years it has been instrumental in examining publicly key Morris controversies: Charter Revision, Granite-gate, the Stony Creek Quarry’s new and controversial lease and the secrecy that led to it, Marcus’s first effort at developing the Queach property, special treatment to help state Rep Peter Panaroni lift a Wetlands lien on his property, the Tabor case and most recently, the patronage appointment of John Smith to a top town job.

Morris now takes full credit for keeping the Queach open space although DaRos and Opie played substantial roles in that effort. DaRos said he was in court for six years on the Queach and significant environmental court decisions came about as a result. The ultimate credit for Queach, DaRos said, belongs to the people because Morris only changed her mind when confronted by 400 citizens who demanded open space.

As for Mrs. Morris, she repeated her version of success, but she never did answer the question, as Opie pointed out, of what she thought were the key issues facing the town. One of them might just be the fallout from her own administration.
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