Over the course of four decades, Steven Mednick has blended his private law practice with public affairs, from being a New Haven alder in the 1980s to an expert on the fence that once divided Hamden and West Rock’s public housing developments.
Mednick joined the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities’ program “Municipal Voice” on WNHH FM to talk about the many ways his public and private legal careers have overlapped.
After New Haven tore down the Hamden-West Rock “Berlin Wall” in 2014, Mednick wrote a 106-page treatise on the case with over 450 footnotes.
“I like forensic law,” Mednick explained.
He described going through document after document in a “several month odyssey” to find out that the fence could have been torn down at any time in the 60 years it stood. Mednick’s research led him to title his report, “There Are No Angels In The Room.”
Mednick dives deep into public documents for other causes too, including town and city charters.
“A big city charter, like the Hartford, Waterbury, New Haven or Bridgeport charter, is a very dense document,” Mednick said.
Mednick said that municipalities have up to 17 months to look into a town or city’s charter and make changes. Some towns need only a few months, but that’s not always the case.
Mednick has seen his fair share of peculiarities in these documents. For instance, the city of New Britain has the ability to create a militia. Bantam Lake can be policed by Waterbury.
Some municipalities, but not all, have given mayors the ability to issue executive orders.
Mednick’s expertise has come in handy during the Covid-19 pandemic. He has collaborated with CCM, the Council of Small Towns and Connecticut Association of Councils of Government on interpreting and providing feedback on Gov. Ned Lamont’s executive orders.
Occasionally, this role has meant seeing debates about local power up close.
Regional school district budgets became one of these debates, Mednick said. Since towns are no longer meeting in person, boards of selectmen and boards of finance have become approving bodies. For regional school districts, this power was given to the regional board of education.
Mednick said that local governments were able to convince the state that they needed to be more involved, with possible veto power. Boards of selectmen did win a role in the process but not a veto. Mednick said that this power might be an option later if the pandemic stretches into another year.
The process of reopening local economies is going to require separate governing principles and more uniformity, Mednick said. These principles could come from an executive order, the Office of Policy and Management or the Department of Economic and Community Development.
“We need to take a look at a lot of areas of concern,” he said. “How do communities work together?”
For the most part, Mednick said, municipalities have implemented these new governing principles pretty easily considering the circumstances — thanks in part to professionals like Mednick who have guided municipalities through the complex legal web for decades.
“The Municipal Voice” airs every other Wednesday, the next episode airs on June 3. Listen to the latest episode by clicking on the video above in this story.
Connecticut desperately needs law reform. Town attorneys need to be forensic analysts? Save it for the classroom. Local government should be efficient, equitable, and easy to understand. Not this. No offense to Attorney Mednick is intended by this comment at all.