Hartford will never be able to advance and get out of its own way if the mindset at City Hall doesn't change.
Tonight, the Hartford City Council will be conducting interviews for the position of Town and City Clerk. The position was opened up on the recent retirement of John Bazzano as City Clerk.
Bazzano was appointed City Clerk after the sudden tragic death of former City Clerk, Dan Carey.
The position of City clerk is one of the few political patronage jobs left in City hall, besides Council aides, which have no legitimate standards for hiring.
City clerk is an "appointment for life" made by a resolution from the City Council, and although the Council talks about "transparency", this selection process may be the furthest thing from transparent. The Council will be putting on a good show tonight as they pretend to interview three candidates. At least two of the interviewees are political hacks looking for their reward from the taxpayers of Hartford.
One, Noel Mcgregor, is a retired Hartford Police Officer. Mcgregor was also Democratic Town Chairman and close to the corrupt former Mayor Eddie Perez. McGregor has several highly questionable skeletons lurking in his closet that need to be examined to judge his credibility for the position of City Clerk.
First being is the circumstances under which he left HPD. The Internal Affairs reports may not still be available but there are still people that know the details and are willing to talk. One I spoke with today was very familiar with the allegations and evidence obtained after Connecticut Natural Gas officials apparently made a claim that natural gas was allegedly being obtained illegally (stolen) after persons in McGregor's restaurant on Albany Avenue removed the gas meter and replaced the meter with a "straight pipe" to essentially steal gas for the restaurant by bypassing the meter. One person that spoke to me today stated that they were lucky there wasn't an explosion resulting from the shoddy job bypassing the meter.
Eventually Mcgregor's property became a subject of the Perez Grand Jury when it was discovered that a scheme was developed to over inflate the appraisal that the City of Hartford had obtained for the property as part of a redevelopment project in the Woodland Street/ Albany Avenue area. At one point investigators for the State's Attorney's office uncovered an e-mail detailing the scheme from Perez's Office with the comment "we need to make sure we take care of Noel".
Will the Hartford City Council now go out of their way and "take care of Noel" again ? They probably, will considering it is Hartford we are talking about here.
The only serious contender being interviewed tonight, as far as I know, is Eric Lusa. Eric was in the Registrar of Voters office and moved to the City Clerks Office shortly after Bazzano took over. Lusa worked under Bazzano's supervision and mentorship for almost ten years and has shown a very competent work ethic and strong customer service skills in the Clerk's Office the entire time. I guess that will probably disqualify him because the last thing we want in City Hall are competent people that aren't puppets to the powers to be.
One other of Bazzano's former staffers Kelly Bilodeau would have been more than capable of assuming the reins, but she was driven out of City Hall a couple years ago with the nonsense. Bilodeau is now the Town Clerk in East Hampton
I doubt the powers to be at City Hall will pay attention to any of this or even do their due diligence before making their "appointment for life".
It is the Hartford way to take care of the political hacks at the expense of the taxpayers.
