New Haven Independent

Blumenthal (pictured), Connecticut’s attorney general, paid a visit Monday night to City Hall, where the aldermanic Legislation Committee was debating a proposal from Hill Aldermen Jorge Perez to reform the way the city doles out work to marshals. His proposal was one of a series of reforms prompted by a city towing scandal.

Noting that two politically connected state marshals were getting the vast majority of the city’s lucrative foreclosure work, Perez called for divvying up the wealth through a new rotation system. He also called for creating a municipal licensing system for marshals. Click here for a previous Independent story detailing his proposal.

Aldermen invited Blumenthal to join them as they took up the controversial topic for the first time Monday night. The issue has gained traction across the state as communities learn just how much state marshals are profiting from the nationwide foreclosure crisis.

Blumenthal, rushing back from a Marine Corps dinner, missed the agenda item. He jotted notes to himself as he waited for unrelated testimony on graffiti to conclude.

Taking a seat at the aldermen’s oval table, he offered general encouragement but shied away from specific guidance. In general, he said the city is within its rights to “raise the standard” for marshals who do city-related work.

“The City of New Haven has very broad discretion and authority to set standards and qualifications and select marshals who do work for the City of New Haven,” Blumenthal said. “Those standards in my view can be set by the city of New Haven as long as they are consistent with state law.”

A Fee Cap?

With the state’s top lawyer in front of them, aldermen pitched an idea they had tentatively settled on earlier that night.

East Rock Alderman Roland Lemar reasoned that what constituents really complain about isn’t which marshal gets the work — it’s the “ridiculous” fees they charge.

Marshals charge $30 to serve a paper to a single defendant, and $30 for each additional defendant unless they live at the same address. They can also charge 40 cents for signing their name, once.

“I would love to create a regulatory system where we are controlling costs,” said Lemar.

C.J. Cuticello, the city tax collector, agreed with Lemar that the fees are “absolutely” the single biggest cause for complaint at his office. Fees can easily pile up to equal the amount that citizens owe in taxes, he said.

Citizens complain every day about the fees, he said: “They say the costs are too much to bear.” There were 991 city foreclosure writs in 2007, Cuticello said. They cost an average of about $440 per person.

Foreclosures papers are served by state marshals. The city has contracts with law firms to carry out the foreclosure work. Those firms pick which marshals they want to use. Michael Fumiatti, the city purchasing agent, shook his head at Perez’s idea of forcing those law firms to rotate which marshals they use. He said it would take “another body” in his department of three people to make sure that the law firms were rotating through the marshals properly.

Consensus appeared to form, however, around another idea: Cutting costs by putting the marshal work out to bid or capping marshal fees.

What if the city put out a Request for Proposals for marshals who might be willing to take a fee that was less than the state maximum? Could the city impose a cap on marshal fees for city-related work, lower than the state cap?

Fumiatti said the idea would work from his end.

Blumenthal declined to give a legal opinion, yet, on whether the city could impose such a cap. He stuck to general encouragement and offered his help in the aldermen’s efforts.

Some aldermen wanted more.

RIP Marshals?

“Is there a way to reform this entire process?” Lemar asked the attorney general. He said the system is an “archaic” one, comprised of old, white men grandfathered in from a system of political patronage. Looking around at other states, Lemar said he found nothing like Connecticut’s system. Other states use FedEX to deliver papers, instead of requiring marshals to do so. Of the 56 marshals in New Haven County, only one is female.

Could the marshal system be eliminated? Lemar asked.

Such a move would require action by the state legislature, Blumenthal responded. “It will take political will to make it happen.” He recalled how hard it was in 2000 to reform the old sheriff system, by which all sheriffs (now called marshals) were political appointments made by a high sheriff.

“I was told there was no way anyone could change that system,” Blumenthal recalled. “Indeed the sheriffs were extraordinarily powerful,” deeply politically entrenched, and “controlled highly lucrative sources of income.”

The system was reformed in 2000, creating a new State Marshal Commission. The commission oversees a testing process for new candidates and hears grievances. The demographics of the workforce have been slow to change, however, because most of the current marshals have been grandfathered into the system.

Blumenthal concluded “there may be a need to revisit even the current reforms.”

Beaver Hill Alderman Carl Goldfield, president of the board, wasn’t satisfied.

“I was hoping to hear that you would champion this reform,” Goldfield said. “Other states find no need for this system. The system is basically one totally dependent on politics. It really needs to be reformed entirely. I was hoping to hear you say that you would champion a fundamental reform and get rid of” the inequitable system in place.”

Blumenthal said his staff has been looking at ways to reform the system, but he wouldn’t commit to rising to Goldfield’s challenge.

“Maybe I should say ‘stay tuned,’ Blumenthal replied. “It’s a little late in the evening to be making a major new pronouncement.”

Aldermen agreed to pass over the proposal pending further changes and a legal opinion from Blumenthal and from City Hall lawyers.

Voigt Drops City Work

Outside City Hall, Goldfield came across one of the targets of Perez’s proposal: Susan Voigt, Democratic Town Chairwoman and the county’s only female marshal. Voigt has been doing marshal work for about nine years. In May, news reports that sparked outrage over how much money she was making on city foreclosure work: In 2007, she took in $132,419 from firms that do foreclosure work with the city — about a third of the city’s $400,000 in foreclosure work.

Monday, Voigt revealed she has stopped doing city-related foreclosure work. She said she wrote a letter to the mayor in May saying she would refrain from doing the work “until there was no longer a sense of impropriety about it.”

Voigt said she welcomed the aldermen’s review of the system.

Of the proposal to cap fees, she cautioned: “This is a lot of work to make service — if we’re going to have it done, and have it done well, it needs to be fairly compensated.”

Previous coverage of New Haven’s towing and marshal industries:

8 Towed Who Didn’t Owe

There’s A New Sheriff In Town

Marshal Plan Would Spread Wealth

Marshals Lose Towing Gig; Foreclosures Next?

Mayor’s Favorite Marshal Rakes In $196K

“They’re Thieves”

Marshals Sent To School

DMV To Towing Companies: No Sealed Bids

Third Towing Scrape Detailed

Clergy “Exemption” Detailed

New Towing Probe Sought

$200 For 4 Hours

Towing Program Halted

Kimber Gets Off The (Towing) Hook

“We’re Not Double-Dipping”

Alvin Goes For The Chevy

Towing Co. Ducks Tax Bill