Contractors Scaffold Harp Reelection

After receiving contracts for building new schools and renovating public housing, Giordano Construction repaid the favor by hosting a top-dollar fundraiser for Mayor Toni Harp’s reelection campaign.

Vincent Giordano, Jr., the company’s vice president, put on the party at East Rock Brewing Company on Tuesday afternoon. The suggested contribution of up to $1,000 per person got donors access to Mayor Harp at a two-hour open bar, complete with a spread of pizza and veggies.

“We are all benefitting from Mayor Harp’s administration,” Giordano wrote in his emailed invite to contractors, ​“and we ask that you help support her re-election.”

In a conversation after the event, Giordano noted that his family has worked in New Haven for four generations. He said that meant always keeping a close relationship with whoever was in City Hall.

“I don’t care which mayor it is; we’ve always had a good relationship with the administrations. And why wouldn’t we support them? It’s our bread and butter. To a large degree, it works both ways. So I don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed, in any way, shape or manner, to support any credible mayor — and they’re all credible — who’s running for this office,” he said.

Did he worry about the appearance of a conflict of interest in holding a fundraiser for the mayor who’d directed city contracts to his company? Giordano said no.

“We’ve been here too long to be accused of that. This is where we work and where we live, and this is what we care about,” he said. ​“The reality is that candidates have a certain amount of say in what happens in this city, not necessarily who does it, but it doesn’t hurt to be on the right side. I don’t know how more delicately to put it, without sounding as if that’s what it’s all about, because it’s not. It’s just coincidence.”

Giordano said that he’d supported Harp, too, before she even took office back in 2013 because of his previous business relationships with her late husband, an architect and developer, as well as his appreciation for what she was able to get done at the statehouse as a senator.

“When she decided to come to the city, it was kind of like a no-brainer,” he said. ​“Certainly Mayor Harp has proven herself not only at the state level, but also in her terms so far here. We all know what’s happening in New Haven, and I’m just a very small part of it.”

Big Builder

The Branford-based company has overseen at least a quarter of a billion dollars in school construction. That includes building the $52 million Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, the $28 million Hill Central School, the $31 million Roberto Clemente School, the $26 million John C. Daniels School, the $43 million Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Childhood School, as well as the renovations of the $22 million Nathan Hale School and the $33 million James Hillhouse High School.

Mayor Harp personally reviewed bids that Giordano later won, including for the $45 million project of building Strong School on Southern Connecticut State University’s campus, now known as Barack H. Obama Magnet University School.

In October 2016, at a meeting of the 15-member Citywide School Building and Stewardship Committee on which Mayor Harp serves, the committee picked Giordano among the seven submissions. Their share of work was for about $2 million.

Committee members said they went with Giordano because it had the best track record of past work with the city on projects, the lowest price among four finalists and the greatest willingness to find small and minority contractors through a partnership with Eco-Urban Pioneers.

At the event Tuesday, Mayor Harp said that she wasn’t doing any personal favors for Giordano. She said Giordano had won Strong School’s construction management contract through the city’s regular process as the lowest among the four qualified bidders. She added that the company had supported her since she entered local politics in 2013.

Elicker: That’s Pay-To-Play

Harp’s opponent for the Democratic mayoral nomination this year, Justin Elicker, said the event looked like pay-to-play politics.

“Too often in New Haven’s history, people that have a financial interest in contracts or jobs that the city gives out donate to campaigns in exchange for favors. The Harp campaign has been benefitting from this practice for quite some time. I think it needs to stop,” Elicker said in an interview on Tuesday afternoon. ​“At the end of the day, the only people that suffer are the taxpayer. We’re not getting the people that are the best for the job, but the highest bidder.”

Elicker is running against Harp with public financing through New Haven’s Democracy Fund, which matches donations up to $30 in exchange for capping individual donations at $370 and not accepting donations from political action committees. Harp, who’s not participating in the program, may accept individual donations up to $1,000 and donations from political action committees.

“I believe strongly that money should not influence politics,” Elicker said. ​“No person is going to have undue influence over me, because I’m running my campaign in a way that limits any individual from financially influencing me.”

Harp, who as a state senator supported clean money campaigns by voting to create the Connecticut’s Citizens’ Election Program in 2005, said that New Haven’s program has too many rules and too little money to make her participation worthwhile.

“In all honesty, the whole system of working with the public financing at the state is very different. There’s more money available for one thing, and it’s not as difficult to understand. It’s really quite simple,” she said. Locally, ​“there’s not enough money. In fact, the reason that anybody can do it at all — and it will probably be only one person — is because I put money in.”

Harp added that she believes the Democracy Fund is an excessive use of city money to justify, given how far the current budget is stretched.

“I really think that, given the fact that we have the kind of financial problems that we have, it’s really almost exorbitant for us to spend $200,000 in our budget for this,” she said. ​“We do it anyway because people like it, but they don’t like raising taxes.”

New Day For Minority Contractors

Throughout the two-hour event, a stream of donors arrived to enjoy East Rock Brewing Company’s range of German-inspired beers on tap.

Before heading inside, many African-American contractors attending the event chatted with the Independent about what they called a turnaround in the opportunities available for local minority-owned businesses. They credited Giordano Construction and the Harp administration for seeing that federal and state minimums on hiring small businesses were actually enforced.

“She’s done a lot of good in New Haven, and she’s given me the opportunity as a contractor to get a lot of work,” said Mike DeNicola, owner of the North Haven-based Modern Painting & Remodeling. ​“I’ve been doing business for 20 years, and this is the first time I’ve had a mayor” who can bring in money from the state like this. Better than her predecessor, John DeStefano? ​“I didn’t know the right people,” DeNicola said. ​“All I know is since Toni Harp’s been there, it’s a whole different thing.”

Previously, employers got around local hiring pledges on big construction projects by saying they couldn’t find anyone qualified, but no one checked to see whether they’d even looked, said Bill Jackson, the owner of TLC Services, an abatement and demolition contractor in New Haven and Monroe.

Jackson said that the Harp administration had helped to make sure that companies that could do the work weren’t being disqualified. He said the city Small Contractor Development Program’s offering, especially a $5,000 line of credit through Liberty Bank, were especially helpful in getting started.

Rodney Williams, an independent contractor who has long advocated for more work to go to local minority-owned businesses in Dixwell and Newhallville, said that Giordano had set a model for New Haven. As vice-chair of the Citywide School Building and Stewardship Committee, he said, he saw how the company helped small companies jump through the hurdles of financing, bonding and insurance to work on Strong School.

Wearing a reflective orange vest to the event, Williams said that the city doesn’t need to start over with new leadership, just as ​“the seeds are starting to be planted” in building the capacity of minority-owned businesses. He said he hadn’t heard Elicker articulate any small business development plans for his neighborhood.

Williams added that donating to a campaign didn’t mean he expected something in return. In his case, he said, he supports Harp’s reelection because her late husband had been ​“like a father” to him and because of what she’s done for small businesses.

Others weren’t so open about why they were backing Mayor Harp’s reelection. Most city employees at the fundraiser declined to comment; white business-owners in blazers ducked inside without giving their names.

“We’re probably not right for your story,” said one woman visiting from California. ​“I’m not a voter.” Just a donor? ​“Absolutely,” she said.

Outside, five thirsty guys tried to get in, before realizing the brewery wasn’t open for business. One carried a copy of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and an empty growler. He said he hadn’t paid much attention to the mayoral election, but that he’s concerned about school layoffs.