HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF

Some people can plead ignorance once, but twice for almost the same thing is beyond ignorant.

A source I spoke with this afternoon, said that Hartford's Acting COO Saundra Kee-Borges had gone through a very similar scandal as to the caviar soiree during Mayor Mike Peter's term when she was the City Manager. The source said it was over shots known as "slippery nipples" and other items ordered and paid for by Hartford's taxpayers in 2000.

After getting off the phone I "Googled" Saundra Kee Borges Slippery Nipples the following article came up. you could almost replace Carbone's with Max Downtown and Slippery Nipples with Caviar

Her is the Courant's story from 2001. I guess some people never learn. I guess some things never change

Where's The Accountability?

January 28, 2001

Last fall, Hartford Mayor Michael P. Peters, City Manager Saundra Kee Borges and several city council Democrats had a ``council meeting'' at Carbone's Ristorante in the South End. While deliberating, they ordered fancy appetizers and a bunch of drinks including 14 glasses of wine, some beers, brandy, a highball and an exotic concoction called a Slippery Nipple. They had the gall to stick the taxpayers with the tab, almost $300.
City hall denizens like to pass off such ethical lapses by officials as isolated events that the news media and residents shouldn't get worked up about. But they're wrong. As other recent incidents show, key city officials have a blind eye when it comes to ethics and the need to enforce high standards of conduct. They -- the mayor, the manager and council members -- just don't get it.

 

There has been a pattern of ethical misconduct at city hall for years -- maybe it could be called the Slippery Nipple Syndrome. But the incidents have become so common and the response from top officials so lenient that cutting corners has come to be seen as the way of doing business.
Ethics -- or the lack thereof -- ought to be an issue in this fall's municipal elections. The only question is, Have Hartford voters become so accustomed to shoddy ethics that they're beyond disappointment? We hope not. Here's more of city hall's pitiful record:
On Dec. 30, the city's public works director, Arthur Miller, attended a UConn women's basketball game at the Civic Center during a heavy snowstorm while ordering the rest of his employees to stay on duty. That absence of leadership was bad enough. Mr. Miller compounded his error by accepting a free ticket to the game from Connecticut Light & Power. So did a number of other city officials, including the mayor. The ticket taking was an apparent violation of the city's ethics code and gift ban, not that the ban is uniformly enforced.
And what did Mr. Miller's boss have to say about his decision to watch the Huskies rather than be on duty with his troops? ``It probably was not the best judgment'' was as stern a response as Ms. Kee Borges, the city manager, could muster.
No wonder officials keep crossing the line.
On Police Chief Bruce Marquis' first day on the job in December, some dissident officers egged his car. That's vandalism, and it would be investigated if a citizen complained that his or her car was the target. But Mr. Marquis decided not to investigate, saying he wanted to move forward. The city manager's office acquiesced.
In other words, the vandals got away with it. That's no way to impose discipline on an out-of-control department.
In November, acting Police Chief Robert Rudewicz was given only a two-week suspension without pay for lying on an accident report. Again, Ms. Kee Borges said she was ``disappointed at his poor judgment.'' What would happen to an average person who falsified an accident report?
Early last year, Fire Chief Robert Dobson resigned -- finally -- after a number of embarrassments, among them using a city car on city time to drive to Bloomfield to work at an art gallery and framing shop owned by him and his wife. Sometimes he failed to show up at fires because he was moonlighting.
In September, the city's enfeebled ethics commission took council members to task for accepting bathrobes as gifts from a group helping a local developer with a proposed downtown project. Judging by their comments, the council members thought they had done nothing wrong and resented being called to account. One called the ethics proceeding ``a sham and a farce,'' and another -- no longer on the council -- declared the hearing a ``kangaroo court.''

 

For years, Hartford firefighters used city property for private gain. They were paid by out-of-town fire departments, whose personnel received training in the city under the supervision of Hartford firefighters. The improper practice ended only in September after city officials were embarrassed by stories in The Courant.
Those comments typify the attitude of Hartford's elected officials toward ethical standards. It took the council more than three years to pass rules and procedures for the ethics commission. During the time the body lay dormant, never meeting, the term of one initial appointee came to an end and another resigned. The council breathed life into the commission in 1997 only because, said then-Majority Leader John Stewart, the mayor wants ``to get the press off our backs.'' And before jump-starting the commission, the council watered down its powers.
Let's face it. Mr. Peters, the city policy leader who could use the bully pulpit to demand high standards of conduct, has not done so. Neither has Ms. Kee Borges, who appears unable to lower the boom on offending department heads. Nor do council members leave the impression that they give two hoots about squeaky-clean government.
City voters should hold them accountable at the next election.