Kane, one of the job candidates.
Two human beings — and two companies — are vying to take the helm of New Haven’s public-financing agency.
The agency, the Democracy Fund, which approves and hands out government matching money the campaigns of qualifying mayoral candidates, has been without an administrator since Ken Krayeske departed when his contract expired in June.
New Haven is the only city in Connecticut with a municipal financing program, which aims to enable more candidates to compete for public office and limit the influence of special-interest donors. The Fund became a significant election issue in the 2013 Democratic mayoral primary, with Justin Elicker and Kermit Carolina opting in and Henry Fernandez and current mayor Toni Harp opting out.
At its monthly meeting Wednesday evening in City Hall, the Fund’s board announced that four applicants have expressed interest in filling the administrator post: consulting firms Jade Consulting Services and Millennium Strategy Group, state House Democrats press secretary Alyson Heimer, and former Fund board Chair Patricia Kane. Kane stepped down for the board in order to apply for the position of administrator, as required by the city’s Code of Ethics.
The Fund will hold interviews with the candidates as early as next week pending scheduling. The goal is to have a new administrator in time for the next official board meeting in November.
The part-time job pays $70 an hour, up to $25,000 a year.
One of the first tasks the new administrator will face is completing a still-unfinished audit of the 2013 mayoral election.
Two of the candidates, Heimer and Kane, were present at Wednesday evening’s Fund board meeting. Heimer said she has worked on various candidates’ publicly-financed campaigns, such as State Sen. Gary-Holder Winfield, Jeffrey Kerekes (who ran against former Mayor John DeStefano in 2011), and State Rep. Roland Lemar. She is a member of New Haven Votes.
“I’d love to get aldermen involved and to make a process available for them to get public financing as well and abide by clean election rules,” said Heimer (who requested that her photograph not be taken at the meeting). “I’d really like to ensure that people throughout the city understand what the [Fund] does and how they can be a part of it.”
Kane said she has been involved in the Fund and has already started doing some of the work the administrator is responsible for. She recently helped to recruit newest board member, William Wynn, as well as schoolteacher and former Guilty Party mayoral candidate Leslie Blatteau, who has applied but has yet to be confirmed to join the board.
“I went out and recruited new board members, and I worked with the new administration to get their assistance in expediting appointments,” Kane said. “I sat and revised the bylaws based on problems that emerged. When you don’t have a quorum, you still have to business to do.”
Though the board considered other options, such as hiring an independent contractor or having Fund board members themselves carry out some of the work, it ultimately decided to focus on hiring a new administrator. Having the new administrator complete the 2013 election audit would also serve as a way to train the new administrator, members agreed.
Struggling For Quorum
Diana Li Photo
Whoever becomes the new administrator will have to focus not only on finishing the 2013 audit but also on creating a robust board that can reach quorum and meet regularly.
Currently, though the board technically has seven seats, it has only four official members: Chair Jared Milfred (pictured above), Gerald Martin, Tyrone McClain, and William Wynn.
Because quorum is reached with four members, all four board members must attend to reach quorum. Wednesday’s meeting was actually scheduled for last week, until one member could not attend, forcing the board to postpone the meeting until all four could attend. Quorum challenges explained why the board did not meet officially meet between January and September (though it did hold informal meetings).
“We have lots of trouble scheduling meetings when all four of us can be here, and this creates lots of hassle,” Milfred said. “If we had seven members, it would be easy to schedule meetings and there wouldn’t be such great pressure on each one of us to show up. Hopefully we’ll get up to a full board of seven within the next few months.”
Milfred’s vision for a full board may prove difficult to reach. Currently, there is only one member who has applied and is waiting for confirmation, Leslie Blatteau. Even when people apply to be on the board, the confirmation process can often take months – it took nine months after Milfred first submitted his application before he was finally confirmed to sit on the board. (He applied in November 2013 and confirmed to the board this past August.)
Though the board is focusing on longer-term outreach to the community to inform people about what the Fund is and what it does, it also needs to make sure it has enough members to function.
The board also faces certain constraints in its recruiting: no more than three members of the board can have the same party affiliation. With Milfred, McClain, and potential future member Blatteau all Democrats, the Fund will have to start looking for non-Democrat candidates in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. (Martin is a member of the Green Party; Wynn, pictured, is a Republican). The board is also seeking a Spanish-speaking member to join the Fund.
“It’s going to have to be a one-on-one kind of recruitment,” former chair Kane said.
I don't know about Ms.Kane, but what I've observed about Ms. Heimer is that she's got a well tuned BS-detector and that would probably make her a good person for this position.