nothin Whistleblower Case Targets Housing Authority | New Haven Independent

Whistleblower Case Targets Housing Authority

Paul Bass Photo

DuBois-Walton, housing authority chief & mayoral campaign treasurer.

One night Karla Miller was being congratulated for helping cops sweep crack and prostitution out of an elderly housing tower. The next day a housing authority official objected about a news article that quoted Miller about the prior problems — and she was instantly booted from the premises.

That tale of alleged free speech retaliation emerges from a whistleblower complaint filed with the state Commission of Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO).

Karla Miller filed it, one of two CHRO complaints. Miller (pictured above at her home) used to run a program for the disabled and for seniors living in Fair Haven’s Matthew Ruoppolo Manor public housing complex. She worked for The Connection Inc. (TCI), which had a contract with the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH).

This past May, TCI gave an award to then-top New Haven cop Sgt. Herb Johnson for his work cleaning up the complex. Johnson asked that Karla Miller be included in an Independent story about the award; he said she pushed him and his cops to address the problems then played a key role in cleaning them up.

An article appeared quoting both of them about the progress at the complex. The same day Miller and Johnson attended the awards ceremony. TCI’s top officials congratulated Miller on the article and on her work at Ruoppolo, she said. (The article quotes her saying of the pre-clean-up Ruoppolo: “There was human feces in the hallway. There were needles, condoms in plan view. There were lights out.”)

The next day an unidentified HANH official called TCI angry about the article and Miller’s reference to the previous problems at Ruoppolo, according to Miller. TCI instantly called her to a meeting at corporate headquarters, reprimanded her for speaking to the press, took her Blackberry, and told her she couldn’t step foot in Ruoppolo again. Subsequently they said if she wanted to keep her $35,000-a-year job she could take a demotion to a beginning position and commute from New Haven to a facility in Torrington.

Instead, Miller filed the two CHRO complaints against TCI and HANH. One is a “whistleblower retaliation complaint.” The other alleges wrongful termination based on racial discrimination. Miller is black; her bosses were all white.

Now, Miller, who’s 46, said in an interview in her upper Westville home (which backs up to the mayor’s house), she’s battling an ulcer. She hasn’t landed another job. She and her husband Edgar, a general contractor, are under “tremendous financial pressure,” she said.

“This was traumatic. I still don’t believe when you’re doing the right thing,” you should get pushed out of a job for answering a reporter’s question, she said. “This was the hardest job I ever had in my life. The most important job. These old people and the disabled don’t get to pick their battles. They were locked in [their] apartments at night. They were scared. They were crying.”

“The crazy thing,” Miller added about the incident, “is [that] it shined a good light on them [the housing authority and TCI].”

Police said they were able, with the help of Miller and others, to build cases to arrest people who were dealing crack in Ruoppolo. Tenants said the complex became safer.

“The community policing that the mayor wants to do—for people to speak out—this is what happens when you get involved?” Miller observed.

Miller’s cases are currently open before CHRO and the files sealed, according to an agency spokesman. A TCI spokeswoman said the agency won’t comment on a pending matter. HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton—a mayoral appointee who at the time of the incident was simultaneously serving as Mayor John DeStefano’s reelection campaign treasurer and representing him at campaign events—is on vacation and couldn’t be reached for comment. The attorney representing the housing authority declined to comment or provide a copy of the written responses filed to Miller’s complaints.

The Miller incident is one of at least three free speech retaliation cases involving local government in 2011.

Another, like this one, involved an employee of a Branford-based private contractor called O,R&L hired by government to do government work. The employee, police station custodian Michele Kearney, was fired in February after an Independent reporter quoted her saying the rank-and-file was upset with then-Chief Frank Limon. (Limon lost a 246-21 no-confidence vote that day.) O,R&L fired her for violating a shut-your-mouth-to-the-press policy. Mayor John DeStefano at first said he had no sway over the firing and that he won’t interfere with labor decisions by city-hired contractors. Later that same day, after public protest, Kearney got her job back. That case, like Miller’s, raised the question of whether government-funded workers doing public work lose rights when the city privatizes and outsources their jobs.

In the second instance, a Wilbur Cross High School student named Isaiah Lee led a student protest on the Green against some education budget cuts. After that Principal Peggy Moore disbanded his political club and then nullified the results of a student election that Lee won. She even canceled an event by a group he led helping kids with disabilities. Mayor DeStefano publicly defended Moore’s actions.

Fear In The Tower

Miller, a former substance abuse counselor for the APT Foundation, began work as a TCI case manager at Ruoppolo in 2009. For years tenants had complained about conditions at Ruoppolo. Like many elderly public-housing complexes, it started drawing drug activity and other crime under a federal policy combining disabled” tenants such as substance abusers into the mix.

At the time,” Miller’s complaints state, the living conditions at Ruoppolo were deplorable and the elderly and disabled residents were living in unsanitary conditions. The crime and unsafe conditions at Ruoppolo, at that time, were so poor that even the New Haven Police Department was reluctant to respond to 911 calls to that facility. At the time of my hire, the security at Ruoppolo was ineffective, which opened Ruoppolo to squatters, drug dealers, drug users and prostitutes placing the elderly residents at risk.”

It got so bad, Miller said in an interview this week, that crack dealers began leaving free samples by the doors of people who had managed to quit their habits for week. The dealers sometimes sold out of apartments. They did especially brisk and aggressive business when government assistance checks arrived at the beginning of the month.

According to the complaint and according to Sgt. Johnson, Miller immediately pressed the police to get more active and work with people at Ruoppolo, leading to the busts and the better conditions. Miller and Johnson also brought student groups and others to do clean-ups and other work with the tenants. In April 0f 2011 TCI promoted Miller to a program manager position. The CHRO complaints quote a TCI supervisor suggesting giving Sgt. Johnson the agency’s Consumer Client Award” and telling Miller these accomplishments had never been achieved to this degree in her 16+ years … [S]he constantly reported that the program was being managed and run the best it had ever been run.”

Sgt. Johnson, case manager LaRose, & Miller at Ruoppolo in May.

The complaints also quote Johnson saying he had insisted that a feature story on his work include Miller because I was his partner” and I initiated the collaboration.” And it states that HANH was given advance word of the Independent interview. All of that is true. The statement also refers to an entire conversation” with a TCI supervisor about the upcoming interview. The response: That’s great. Let me know how it goes.” No one told her to refrain from the interview.

Indeed, after the article’s publication Miller received face-to-face and email praise about the article from TCI’s boss on down, according to the complaints. Praise like WOW!” (allegedly from agency head Peter Nucci) to Awesome job!”

The, around 3 p.m. the next day, one of those supervisors who offered praise and encouragement for the story told Miller to drop whatever I was doing and get to Corporate right now” to meet with top bosses. She asked why. A supervisor responded, “[It] is something about the article, the housing authority is not happy about it,” according to the complaint.

We got a call from the housing authority, and they’re pissed!” Miller recalled a supervisor telling her.

Nucci and other supervisors, including the agency’s head, were waiting for her in the corporate headquarters in Middletown. They ambushed and admonished [me] for violating an unknown agency media policy stating that I got on my soap box and offended their funder. They continued to question and taunt me. Who were you representing? Again stating, You got on your soap box and represented yourself,” according to the complaints. The supervisor with whom Miller previously had the in-depth discussion” before the interview now claimed to have had no prior knowledge that I ever was to speak to a reporter,” the complaints state.

I was told I had offended a funder’ and therefore I had to pay.”

Miller was then told not to return to Ruoppolo for any reason” and to turn in my Blackberry” and keys.

At the time, HANH boss DuBois-Walton refused to discuss the decision. She called it a personnel matter” involving a private contractor, not HANH. In September, as DuBois-Walton helped the aldermanic campaign of a candidate she recruited to run against a City Hall critic, she told the Independent that she does not believe her prominent role in DeStefano’s campaign presented any conflict with her role a housing authority chief. I don’t work for a city agency,” she said. (The housing authority is technically a federally funded agency; its board and director are named by the mayor.) DuBois-Walton does all her campaign work on my own time,” she said. She said all the housing authority employees who gave money to the DeStefano campaign (such as administrators Sheila Bell and Jimmy Miller) also gave money to his campaign before she was the head of the authority.

Karla Miller’s CHRO complaints charge HANH and TCI of, among numerous illegal and unconstitutional acts, violat[ing] my right to free speech which is protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution … [and] as protected by C.G.S. (Connecticut General Statutes) Sec. 31 – 51q.”

Miller’s lawyer, Michelle Gramlich, said attorneys for TCI and HANH have argued that before CHRO, among other claims, that Miller was not fired because she was told she could have another job.” Under case law, Gramlich argued, the taking of Miller’s phone and keys and the order to leave her job immediately and remain off the premises is considered termination, even if a lower-level job at a distant location is subsequently offered. Gabriel Jiran and the office of Nicole Chomiak, counsel for TCI and HANH, declined comment on the matter and declined to offer their submitted responses to the claims.

From the housing authority’s perspective that’s an ongoing legal matter and we are not able to comment at this time,” said HANH Chief Operating Officer Renee Dobos. That includes not commenting on who at HANH made the call to TCI to register the original complaint about Miller’s quotation, Dobos said.

Next Steps

Gramlich said she is waiting on a decision” on the racial discrimination complaint. That has moved along the CHRO review process.

A decision on the whistleblower complaint may take longer. Much longer.

In January, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget cuts led to the de-staffing of CHRO’s Office of Public Hearings, which considers whistleblower claims. People like Miller have continued filing claims. But they’ve been on hold.

Everything is sitting in limbo,” Gramlich observed. As much as she has a great case, she has had no opportunity to be heard.”

Limbo is coming to an end, according to gubernatorial General Counsel Andrew McDonald. McDonald, said Malloy filled two referee positions (the people who conduct the hearings) on Dec. 12. They are presumably beginning the process of restarting the hearings,” McDonald said. Interviews are underway for a third position.

Meanwhile, back at Ruoppolo, tenant Marian Rondon (pictured) said the complex has maintained the progress from earlier in the year. Before it was crazy,” she said this week. Then it calmed down.”

Tenant Armando Fernandez echoed what tenants said in an earlier visit in May: that Miller had made the difference.

This lady,” he said, fixed it.”

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