The city hired back a former city official for a part-time parks job — while she simultaneously serves on the Board of Ethics — drawing the ire of an alderman and a union chief.
The city hired the former official, Tina Burgett, on Aug. 6 for a seasonal caretaker’s job in the parks department. Mayor John DeStefano previously appointed her to the Board of Ethics.
“It really is terrible,” Cherlyn Poindexter, president of Local 3144, the union that covers most city workers, said Monday. “I had a person laid off in the parks department who would love the opportunity to get a job for $22 an hour.”
Poindexter noted that Burgett used to run the city’s human resources department. During her tenure, the city lost a landmark case regarding the hiring of city firefighters. She had a “tumultuous tenure,” then-Register reporter Elizabeth Benton (now a mayoral spokeswoman) wrote at the time of her departure in 2008.
Poindexter also took aim at Burgett’s simultaneous placement on the ethics board. “If someone asks her for an opinion, do you think they’ll get an unbiased opinion from someone making $22 an hour from the city?” she asked.
Also Monday, Wooster Square Alderman Michael Smart questioned the “propriety” of Burgett’s hire, given city regulations regarding conflicts of interest.
City spokeswoman Benton Monday said corporation counsel is looking into the question of potential conflicts of interest.
In a letter to the mayor, Smart raised a two-fold objection. First, to appoint Burgett to the Board of Ethics after she served the administration as a department manager “raises questions,” since her position on the board requires her to be unbiased, Smart wrote.
Second, he argued, for Burgett to serve on the Board of Ethics at the same time that she is on the city’s payroll as a parks department employee is “ill-advised.”
“It may or may not directly violate the City Charter and Code of Ordinances, but it certainly raises a potential question as to whether she will be able to fairly and equitably discharge her duties on the important Board of Ethics, which is itself given the responsibility for issuing advisory opinions concerning possible conflicts of interest and unethical behavior by others associated with city government,” Smart wrote.
Smart’s letter quoted extensively from parts of the the New Haven Code of Ordinances covering conflicts of interest, including a section of the city charter that states, “No person shall receive compensation for service on more than one board or commission or for more than one position in the city government.”
The ethics board position is unpaid.
Smart concluded by asking for the mayor to look into the matter and “take appropriate action to address this serious concern which I believe compromises the integrity and effectiveness of the Board of Ethics.”
Spokeswoman Benton said she doesn’t know when corporation counsel may issue an opinion on the matter.
Paul Bass contributed reporting.
The intelligence of hiring back an employee who didn't stand up for rational, intelligent HR decisions that ended up costing taxpayers millions and millions of dollars is not just ill-advised. It's disrespectful of the public and frankly, just not very smart. That DeStefano would appoint the same person who was part of his inner circle, that helped execute a policy of politics over the proper adjudication of HR decisions for an ethics panel is just rotten.