In a contentious three-hour meeting that resembled baseball’s winter trade meetings more than a City Hall hearing, an aldermanic panel passed and sent to the full board its recommendations for the makeup and agenda for a Charter Revision Commission.
The final 15-member list was close to the nominations sent over by Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s administration. The agenda was exactly what was presented by Chief of Staff Sean Matteson in a March 12 letter to the Aldermanic Affairs Committee.
That was the source of the contention.
The commission is being set up to review and suggest changes to the city’s charter. New Haven has to set up such a commission each decade. This year the commission will look into whether to expand mayoral and aldermanic terms from two to four years; and whether to shrink the size of the 30-member Board of Aldermen.
The committee chose 15 people, 13 of whom were on the list Matteson sent over on March 9, to serve on the committee. It also chose two agenda items for the committee to mull: a four-year term for the mayor and a Board of Aldermen with fewer members.
The recommendations now go to the full Board of Aldermen, which must pass them by a two-thirds vote. The commission’s work must be done in time for its recommendations to be reviewed by the Board of Aldermen again and sent to the Secretary of the State in September so the proposed changes can be put before the voters in the November elections.
The trading for the starting 15-member squad began when the committee was told that one of the mayor’s recommendations, Daisy Abreu, would not be able to serve. (She runs the downtown Special Services District and sits on the Redevelopment Authority.) Her place was finally taken by former Green Party Alderman Allan Brison, after cultural affairs advocate Douglas Hausladen was briefly on, then sent back to the minor leagues as an alternate.
Just as a baseball team can’t have too many players at any position, the commission may not have too many Democrats, the members learned. According to the state law on charter revisions, Chapter 99 Section 7 – 190 ‚the charter commission cannot have a majority of more than one member for any political party. Hausladen is a Democrat, so he had to go. Former West Rock Alderman Willie Joe Moore, who aldermanic staff said had been a Democrat recently, is now an independent. That left the list as eight Democrats and seven non-Democrats.
But the trading wasn’t over by a long shot.
The aldermen were then informed that the state law also says the commission cannot have more than a certain number of elected or appointed officials. The problem is the interpretation, which the panel decided meant six, so Audit Commission member Martin O’Connor got the boot in favor of Orchard Street resident Porsche Collins, who had shown up to offer her services.
Leonard Honeyman Photo
Committee Chairman and Beaver Hills Alderman Thomas Lehtonen and most of the members wanted to pass the mayor’s suggested list with as little fuss as possible. West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson and Committee Vice-Chair and East Shore Alderman Alphonse Paolillo Jr. said the panel was rushing and not taking into account the fact that there were 39 applicants for the commission. None had been interviewed by the committee. Paolillo also said the panel should “do its due diligence” and at least talk to the administration’s candidates before passing on their names to the full board.
Goldson made a half-dozen nominations for the panel, all of which were voted down by 4 – 2 margins. Paolillo and Goldson voted for and Lehtonen, Yusuf Shah, Katrina Jones and Stephanie Bauer voted with the majority. Many of Goldson’s motions had to do with trying to remove Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden from the list because he is a City Hallstaff member who would be available to the commission in any case. Bolden stayed.
The evening began with Matteson (pictured with City Hall legislative liaison Adam Joseph) urging the panel to accept the administration’s list of committee nominees and urging the agenda to include a four-year term for the mayor and the aldermen.
“…The two-year election cycle takes too much focus away from governance. You are elected one year and the next you are running for re-election,” he said. The two-year cycle is too hard on the voters, he said.
As far as the number of aldermanic seats, he said the administration had “no direct opinion” on the size of the board, but said other large cities have legislative bodies with fewer members. Waterbury, Bridgeport and Hartford have smaller boards. For example, New Haven has one alderman for each 4,100 residents, while Providence has one for 11,000 and Bridgeport has one for each 7,000 residents.
After the presentation, Goldson launched into a barrage of questions about legislative pay and the size of legislative bodies in smaller towns as well as the last time a New Haven mayor served only one term. That drew glares from Lehtonen and Shah. Matteson said he would get back to him with the answer.
Ward 2 Democratic Co-Chairman Gregory A. Smith (pictured) had submitted four proposals for the commission, including creating an elected school board, banning city officials to work for the Board of Education, separating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from the city, and creating an oversight committee on school construction. He also asked the committee about how to get nominated for the committee. Goldson tried to get his four recommendations for agenda items passed to no avail, with various motions and amendments failing by the same 4 – 2 vote.
Smith’s appearance, as well as that of Collins, Westville activist Tim Holahan — who mentioned four people as worthy candidates — Westville resident Andrew Orefice, and the announcement that Abreu was not available to serve, led Goldson and Paolillo to try to slow things down, but with no success.
Holahan said he was disappointed in the evening,
“I think we saw a process that was a little – I think Alderman Paolillo said it best — that didn’t honor the traditions of even this committee, because clearly some member of the city government is eager to push through the Charter Revision Commission on two specific issues,” he said.
He called it a “darned shame” and said the process “has to be more open.”
He said many people support the four-year term, but “then the other issue –they want us to reduce the size of the board, which needs a lot of debate. But there are other stuff as well…preventing Board of Ed employees from serving on the Board of Aldermen. Very much worth discussing but voted down…” he said.
He said the rush to have the commission’s work completed as soon as possible was simple to figure out.
“The mayor wants the next election to be for four years. Unless this gets underway in the time frame, that’s not going to happen,” he said.
After the meeting, Paolillo said there was no process in place to examine candidates’ qualifications, so the committee went back and forth for the last hour or so of the meeting.
“Everybody who wants to be on a board or commission in this town comes before us. There were 25 people outside of the mayor’s list. They deserved an equal opportunity as well. There has to be equity in the process, It’s giving everyone the same opportunity and you saw for yourself tonight that that wasn’t the case,” he said.
Goldson said he didn’t know if the best commission was seated.
“There are a lot of good candidates. I’m not saying that these candidates are not good candidates. I don’t know from this process that they are the best. They came to the table with a list,” he said of the administration.
Goldson said, however, that the process has just started.
“They have to have two-thirds of the Board of Aldermen to approve that. That means they have to have 20 votes and they don’t have 20 votes yet. So, they still have to negotiate this list. They might have forced this down our throats on this committee, but they are not going to be able to do it on the whole board.”
For those people who weren’t chosen tonight, don’t lose hope,” he said.
Chief of staff Matteson denied that anything was forced down anybody’s throat..
“I don’t know how you can say this was forced through the board by the administration. It was submitted as a recommendation, debated and voted on. The board added names and took names off,” he said.
Matteson said he hasn’t gauged whether the votes are there in the full board
“ We take one step at a time,” he said.
Although the aldermen may give direction, the Charter Revision Commission can work on its own to take up issues it wants to.
The aldermen “cannot tell them what not to look at. The first thing the commission will do is hold a public hearing and take testimony as well.
“It is a completely transparent democratic process,” he said.
The board named the following people as members of the commission, subject to the vote of the full board.
Porsche Collins
Sandra Trevino
Victor Fasano
Allan Brison
James Rawlings
Cherise Dykes
Jorge Perez
Arline DePino
William Ginsberg
James Segaloff
Larcina Carrington-Wynn
John Cirello
Victor Bolden
Willie Joe Moore
William Celentano
Let's just say the Mayor picked his list well. People who are close allies, those who cannot afford to piss him off. including someone who runs a nonprofit that receives city money???