Now that the beginning of the Perez corruption trial is imminent, can he really function as Mayor?
According to the Hartford Courant:
Perez has maintained that he can participate fully in his defense and also govern effectively, and repeated that belief in a brief interview last week. He said that no mayor runs a city alone and that he'll count on staff and the city council to do their jobs and help him do his.
"I'm very confident everyone is on point and I'm going to continue to do the job to the best of my ability," he said. "There's a great team here and the team gets the work done."
I am quite frankly tired of hearing about the "Perez Management Team". Most of this "management team" wouldn't be qualified to run a McDonald's restaurant if they were judged by their performance at City Hall. Most people in the private sector would be terminated immediately if they ran up a $60 million "budget gap" or overestimated their revenues as the Perez "management team" has for this fiscal year.
Most "management teams" in the private sector would be shown the door if they "forbid" a member of the Board of Directors from speaking with a Department head as Susan McMullen just did to Dr. Deutsch.
But putting all that aside, we as voters in Hartford elected a Mayor. We did not elect a "management team". We deserve, and we should demand, a Mayor that can focus on the business of Hartford. Hartford is headed into most likely the toughest budget period it has ever seen.
Hartford can not afford being led by an absent Mayor because he is in residence in a criminal courtroom. I have felt from day one of the Perez arrests that he should have resigned. Eddie Perez is a dark cloud over the City of Hartford and continues to bring embarrassment, shame and skepticism over Hartford's future every day he remains in office.
Is Eddie just prolonging the inevitable for his own personal gain or does he really care about the City? Many feel that Perez's exit from City Hall is only weeks away, being brought on by a conviction as a result of his criminal trial. That is several weeks that could be used by "Mayor" Segarra for righting the sinking ship that Perez has captained like Captain Queeg for the last nine years.
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14 comments:
Perez spent his childhood in Hartford as a gang banger and helped form the ghetto brothers street gang who later merged with the Savage Nomads to become the Los Solidos. (google it if you don't think so, CT Department of Corrections has extensive documentation on gang history)
His brother still runs a lot of the drugs along Park Street and many Solidos rely on Eddie's position to keep HPD off their backs and the money flowing.
Too much money is depending on his position as Mayor. He will NEVER voluntarily relinquish a single ounce of his power so let's hope the criminal case against him is so strong he has no choice but to fold.
Why isn't our new town chair saying anything about this? Where is a press release from Ms Holloway requesting the Mayor's resignation?
Does anyone have any confidence that Ms Holloway will put this issue before the town committee for a vote of " no confidence" against Mayor Perez at the next town committee meeting? Don't hold your breathe on that one.
There is no doubt that the mayor should resign, and would if he were more concerned with the well-being of the city. Where are the local pols calling for him to leave? And, by the way, where are the folks who advocating changing the charter to provide for a "strong mayor?" I think it is at least reasonable to ask if getting rid of the city manager form of governance was a mistake. The city manager form was originally installed precisely because it was deemed to be less prone to corruption. Now we have corrupt mayor with a staff of ten and a salary three or four times as much as previously. Whether Eddie is convicted of a crime or not, he is a self-serving liar who cannot be trusted with a public office.
The political class has been silent on the Mayor's resignation.Look at Representative Minnie Gonzalez for instance.The connection between Minnie and Mayor Perez runs through Senator Fonfara.In 2008 the Mayor's person Evelyn Mantilla was on Fonfara's payroll and received a check as a "consultant" for $4500. on 11/4/08 while Minnie's husband Ramon Arroya was also on Fonfara's payroll and received a check for $$4,000. on 11/4/08.Since 2008 Minnie and Ramon have had a curious "detente" with Mayor Perez and havent publically rebuked the Mayor like they used to do.
In addition to the above fonfara/minnie/perez connection both minnie and fonfara successfully lobbied Hartford Cop and State Rep. Hector Robles to support Jean Holloway for Democratic Town Chair.Mayor Perez has long called Robles his (political son)and while Robles has some internal "IAB" issues, you can be sure that Perez and Minnie will continue to work together with Fonfara and Robles.
Let's not get silly. How can Fonfara, Minnie, and Eddie all be on the same page when Minnie and Ramon were backing Jean, Eddie was backing Sean, and Fonfara was doing his best to be Switzerland, since he had friends on both sides? And before anyone says "ah-ha! that proves Fonfara is the one pulling all the strings" consider this - if Fonfara wanted Jean to win, why go through all the trouble of lobbying Hector and getting Minnie to help? David McDonald on the 6th District town committee works for the Energy Committee, of which Fonfara is co-chair. If Fonfara really was the puppetmaster, all he had to was ask David to get sick yesterday and Hector could have voted for Sean, Jean would have won, and Hector, a far more valuable tool for the puppetmaster than David, wouldn't now be incurring the wrath of many folks in the 6th and at City Hall. If we are going to peddle conspiracy theories, let's at least try to make them good ones.
Dear Anon...Fonfara wasnt "Switzerland" and was known to have been making calls on Jeans behalf.In Addition David is very close to Kathy and Janet...2 of Sean's most ardent supporters and gave his word to them and Sean to vote for Sean.Unlike many on the HTC he kept his word.Word is that Fonfara cleared David's vote for Sean and was all the while calling Hector and others on his payroll like Minnie,Ramon,Clorinda..etc. for Jean.
Let me get this straight - Fonfara let McDonald -- who works on his committee and who he paid good money to manage his last campaign for senate -- off the hook so that he could keep a promise to a friend that Fonfara supposedly wanted to see go down in flames (even though that friend supports Fonfara) and then expended his time and effort to persuade a sitting state rep to break the same promise even though doing so might put in jeopardy a deal in the 6th under which everyone would support Sean, Hector, and Fonfara, and which would also risk the support that was pledged to Fonfara by Sean's 4th district slate? I guess Fonfara must be a tactical savant, who can manipulate people to do what he wants, but a strategic idiot, who would risk blowing up his own endorsement so that Jean could be town chair because that's somehow better for him than having Sean - who pledged his support to Fonfara -- as town chair. Please. That's almost as absurd as saying Fonfara had to call Clorinda to get her to support Jean when Jean and Clorinda live in the same neighborhood, were on the same slate, and are pretty good friends. What's next? Saying that Nick Carbone calls the Mayor every AM for his marching orders? That Kevin Brookman has a mole inside City Hall named John Rose? I don't know exactly why Hector changed his vote, but I bet it has something to do with Sean Arena cutting a deal with Luz Sullivan to swtich away from Jean under which Luz would get proxies she could use to vote for Ed Vargas, even though Sean & the 4th district had already pledged their support to Fonfara.
Dear Anon....you have your theories and I have mine...in the end though the fact remains that Ms Holloway is now the Chair.I was disappointed in her acceptance speech when there wasn't one word about the Mayor's issues....or if he should resign...the corruption at city hall.
I am willing to give her a chance...but I want to see action...action in the form of an agenda item at the next town committee meeting dealing with the Mayor,town committee discussion about the above and a vote...yes a vote of no confidence in the Mayor...which should be distributed to the press and public.
Ooooh ... a vote of no confidence .. yeah, that's sure to scare Eddie into resigning. What Hartford needs IS action, not symbolic gestures. The council has no power to force Eddie out, and he isn't going to step aside, so we just have to wait for the outcome of the trial.
Anon...if you were smart then you would realize that a vote of no confidence from the party on the eve of jury selection is a big deal.
In any event since the party didnt talk about Eddie or the plight of Hartford at town committee meetings, any change would be an improvement,though I have it on good authority that this new chair and her insiders want the party to be as somulent as the last one was...in effect there is no change.
On the eve of jury selection? I see, so what you want is to give Santos an excuse to ask for another delay due to unfavorable publicity about Eddie?
Face facts -- this council will not do anything until they are 125%sure Eddie is going away. If he weasels out of it, he comes back and destroys them in revenge. Plus you are never going to get five votes for anything anti-Eddie there, it's been tried, it never happens. They're paper tigers.
anon...nonsense...that motion was already tried and denied and one article in a paper wont change a thing.BTW Eddie wont be "weaseling out of it"
Actually, it was the argument over unfavorable publicity after his arrest last September that got the trial moved to May. And unless you are a state's attorney, you don't know what their evidence is, so you can't predict the outcome. Neither can I. If the powers that be in Hartford were sure he was going down, then Rjo and Calixto would already have switched sides already instead of resolutely rejecting any anti-Eddie move. If Perez is going to jail (as I fervently hope), they have nothing to gain by sticking by him.
Eddie's biggest problem is that he lied to investigators about paying for the bathroom. The extortion charge is hampered by the fact that the star witness is a convicted felon and the potential other witness will be Abe Giles trying to cut a deal for himself. Any competent lawyer carves those two to pieces on cross-examination.
But to get back to your original statement -- you first say a vote of no confidence on the eve of jury selection would be a big deal, then you are saying it wouldn't have any effect on the jury selection. Which is it? How is it a "big deal," or anything besides empty symbolism? It does send a message that Kennedy and crew don't like/trust Eddie, but we know that already.
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