New Haven Independent

The housing authority board gave clearance this week for its chairman to participate in meetings by phone from the West Coast.

When it came time to vote on a bylaw change allowing commissioners to participate in board meetings electronically, long-time Housing Authority of New Haven board chair Solomon abstained. The measure still passed.

“I wish,” Solomon joked self-deprecatingly, “there had been more controversy.”

The vote was spurred by Solomon’s imminent sabbatical from his post as a Yale Law School professor, said HANH’s executive director, Karen DuBois-Walton.

In July Solomon is beginning a sixth-month sabbatical from his post at the Yale Law School.

However, since the bylaw change now permits him to participate by electronic means — a mute charcoal-colored speaker-phone sat right before him on the board table — he will not be taking a sabbatical from this important volunteer post helming HANH’s commissioners, which he has been doing since 2003.

Why does he think he needs to call in from the far-flung beaches and libraries of Berkeley, where he will be spending much of the sabbatical time?

“The Housing Authority,” he remarked in a post-meeting email, “is the City’s largest landlord. It administers the largest rental subsidy program, is a large employer, and is involved in well over $100 million in redevelopment.”

Its decisions, he went on to write, affect the physical assets of the city, the way it will look and function over the next 50 to 70 years, Solomon said.

The gravity of the decisions made also appears to be one reason why Solomon has if not second thoughts, then slightly rueful ones about his physical absence from the ongoing affairs of the authority, especially the public meetings.

“Even in an electronic age, physical presence and visual contact are important,” he said.

“I believe in make these decisions in the public, where you can look people in the eye, and explain why you are doing what you are doing. That’s why when I have reservations, I try to lay them out, that’s why I ask questions when I think the answers need to be public, and why I occasionally allow people to break the rules by making public comments out of order.

“I believe deeply the more we listen, the more informed we will be.”

Solomon does all this with a wry humor that helps cut through a lot of complex material as well as makes the HANH commissioners’ meeting something to look forward to.

Karen DuBois-Walton said that Solomon will not be chairing the meetings electronically. That will fall to the vice chair, Reverend Jason Turner.

Will he be able to contribute as much, or, as importantly, be as entertaining, without that physical presence?

It remains to be seen, or rather heard.

“Maybe,” said DuBois-Walton, “we can do it by video-link up.”