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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

ANOTHER POSITION IN THE MAYOR'S OFFICE?

A comment posting on another blog story here left a link to hartford.gov, the City of Hartford's website. to follow the link, click here.

The PDF file attached below announcing another new position in the Office of the Mayor was attached to the link. Yes, that's correct, another new staff position in the Mayor's Office.

According to the City Charter, any positions in the Mayor's Office above and beyond those authorized by the Charter require Council approval. I need to do some more checking, but I don't recall any discussion by the Council to allow creation of this position.

Only time will tell if the Council does anything about it.

Building Automation System Mgr 3-18-10

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

A CITY OUT OF CONTROL , ANOTHER UPDATE


"Anonymous" posted this comment earlier under another posting on the blog:


Guys, let's not argue with each other over minutia. As I had suggested to Kevin in an earlier post, I recommend to all interested parties that you request an org chart for each city dept and the Bd of Ed. Org chart should include name of position/title, name of employee occupying title, salary, and a brief description of the each dept and each div within the dept. Unless I am off, I believe you will see much duplication and overlap within depts and between depts. In most municipalities, Human Relations is a division of Human Resources, not a separate dept with its own hightly paid administration. Check out the assessor's files. It would appear that Eddie's campaign headquarters were housed in property owned by his Director of Human Relations, Lillian Ruiz, who actually resides in Bloomfield. Doesn't the city charter specify that dept heads live in the city??? Maybe she used her investment property as her residential address; not sure why Santiago Malave's cracker jack staff didn't notice. Okay, here's some more duplication/overlap: Why does the city have a Dept. of Health & Human Services, an Office of Young Children AND an Office for Youth Services as three separate stand alone depts??? Yeah, a rhetorical question, but here's the answer, Eddie wanted to give more of his peeps high paid administrative/director jobs. In other cities, there would NOT be three separate depts. Wait, there's more. The city has a Grants Administrator in both the Management & Budget Dept and in the Development Services Dept. Wait, there's more. The Development Services Dept has numerous divisions all headed by either directors and/or Administrative Operations Managers; in other cities the functions of planning, economic development, housing, and community development are in one division, not four as in Hartford. Are you seeing a pattern here??? Yeah, three of Eddie's boyzzz head up three of the Dev Services divisions. You wanna see some creative writing, FOIA their respective job applications and compare them to the actual job postings. I believe the investigator and state's atty in Eddie's corruption case also examined this patterned issue. Santiago's crew is very lenient in its interpretation (pun definitely intended) of the boilerplate language found on most if not all city job postings ("Wherever possible, appropriate equivalents will be considered.") I'd like to see their definition of "appropriate". I bet Cotto knows.

In theory this is a good idea, but the letter below from Hartford's Corporation Counsel John Rose shows what happens when someone has the "audacity" to request public documents.

Steve Goode at courant.com/cityline, originally posted about this. You can read Steve's posting here. Apparently the Yankee Institute has set up a website that lists all state employees and their respective salaries and state pensions at sunlight.org.

It seems as though they were trying to expand the site to also cover municipalities. They made the mistake of requesting public documents from a public agency in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act and were chastised by Rosie.

Hopefully the information you requested can be gathered and is probably available from the Council as a response to a budget question about salaries. I'll try to post it here when available. The other issue is that FOI is only for documents that exist, it doesn't require an agency to produce a "new" document or do research other than to find and provide a document that is requested. If an organizational chart doesn't exist, the city doesn't have to make one. The information would have to be culled from other documents obtained or requested.

Below is Rose's response to the Yankee Institutes FOIA request. As a side note, Rosie makes it a point to point out a misspelling in the original letter. How many mistakes can you find in Rosie's letter, start with the date, since when does March have 285 days?


John Rose Yankee Institute Letter

EVE OF THE TRIAL, COURANT CRANKS UP THE HEAT AND SOME OF MY THOUGHTS


Tomorrow the dark cloud hanging over Hartford will become even darker, the Perez corruption trial testimony begins.

The Hartford Courant seemed to come out swinging tonight with both an editorial calling for Perez to step down as well as a call for the Council to reject his proposed budget and it's increases. You can read the editorial here.

The Courant also is running an on-line poll regarding whether Perez should stay or go. You can go to the poll and cast your vote by clicking here. Not surprisingly, as of the time of writing this entry, the numbers were over whelming in favor of the "needs to go" column, 83.5% said he should go, 16.6% said he should stay. Not scientific, but none the less interesting.

This editorial and poll seem to be in contrast to the Courant article over the weekend which, in my opinion, seemed to trivialize the scope and depth of the entire investigation.

I spoke with many people who were concerned after reading that article, and my question to them was "how many felony charges would you like before it matters?". In most towns, one charge of corruption would be enough to start the outcry for a corrupt politicians resignation.

Apparently in Hartford it takes more than five felony charges for corruption to be taken seriously. Possibly the two reporters from the Courant who were there at the beginning of the probe, Jeff Cohen and Dan Goren, might have given a different overview of the investigation if they were still at the Courant.

I did ask someone in the know about the investigation why certain aspects did seem to be left out, as the Courant article suggested. The answer was that the State wasn't on a fishing expedition. They were going with the solid charges that were a definite violation of the public's trust.

One of my questions was an example of what I thought was a glaring criminal violation and a larceny from the taxpayers of Hartford. Remember back to the revelation that Perez and Abe Giles had apparently cooked up a scheme to clean out Giles's warehouse on Windsor Street. When they instructed a city employee to send a few Public Works dump trucks to the warehouse, the employee balked and reminded them that inspectors from the State were nosing around.

They then came up with the brainstorm to bring in large construction dumpsters to clean out the warehouse and bill the dumpsters to the city. Only after the State's Attorney's investigators caught wind of it was Giles actually billed for the dumpsters.

That seemed a pretty clear cut issue, but it wasn't part of the final charges.

Another issue was the allegation by Hartford's former Tax Collector that Perez had committed "illegal activity". In an e-mail that I obtained through an FOI request, Tax Collector Donald Lefevere had accused Perez of illegal activity after Perez collected an overdue tax payment from a Maple Avenue business. In collecting the payment, Perez "waived" several thousand dollars of interest and penalties for the business owner and an apparent Perez campaign donor.

There are many other examples, but I think you get the point.

I think the most interesting thing about the pending trial though is the first witness the State is planning to call. I would think that the order of progression for the jurors would have been to start off slow and layout how government bidding and the process starts so they would understand the allegations.

Instead, the State is apparently going to call the potential "smoking gun" as witness number one. Carlos Costa has been told to be ready for the witness stand at 10:30am. Is it possible that Costa will testify and make the whole situation clear that reasonable doubt will be gone on the first day?

Is it possible that Perez's old buddy will lay out a scheme and conversations where the dirty deal was cut? Will Carlos tell the story how Perez laid out the "one hand washes the other" conversations? You want Park Street renovations, I want kitchen renovations, lets make a deal buddy.

Maybe Carlos will reveal the frantic phone call from the Mayor's cell right after Inspector Sullivan left the freshly renovated Perez homestead. Maybe Carlos will detail how the Mayor told him to make up a phony invoice for the renovations because the State was onto their scheme. I think they call that fabricating evidence.

You might ask how we would know that the call came from the cellphone? It's clear, after Inspector Sullivan was pulling out of the driveway, Eddie was jumping in his car to head to the Hartford Federal Credit Union to apply for a loan to now cover the "quid-pro-quo" renovations for the "Dark Emperor's" granite counter tops.

And that is just witness number one. Those 12,000 e-mails that the Perez Defense team seemed to be worried about should prove interesting. And lets not forget Abe Giles, you never know what is going to come out of his mouth. The only way to be sure about him is with a roll of duct tape to keep his mouth shut.

It could be over quick, or it could be a very interesting several weeks.

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND?


On the eve of the start of the Perez corruption trial, it seems as though one of his alleged co-conspirators has been able to fly under the radar.

Republican Councilperson Veronica Airey-Wilson was also arrested at the same time as Perez, and I haven't seen any outcry for her resignation....yet. The demands for Perez to step down have been initiated by Council members claiming he can't perform his duties fully. The same demands for Airey-Wilson's resignation have been non-existent.

If her recent performances have been any indication, in fairness the Council should also be questioning her capacity to fulfill her functions.

Airey-Wilson was a no-show at the public budget session at Bulkeley High School and apparently decided to skip the public comment session of last night's Council meeting. Her attendance at her office at Hartford City Hall has also been scarce lately.

Maybe the Council is waiting until her trial draws closer, her next court date is June 12, 2010. I'm sure there is no double standard here, if Perez should have stepped down I'm sure her colleagues will be demanding that Airey-Wilson step aside also. And as with Perez, who's paying for Airey-Wilson's attorney and legal fees? Are the taxpayers of Hartford on the hook for that?

It's only fair, right?

CITY OF HARTFORD CHECK REGISTER FOR APRIL 2010

Last week I posted the City of Hartford's Check register for March 2010.

The April 2010 register is now available and is posted below as a PDF file. I do have to give credit to Hartford's Chief Operating Officer David Panagore for his efforts in providing the register promptly on both occasions when I requested it through an FOIA request.

I will be requesting the register monthly and posting it here.

Also, in fairness, please keep an open mind when reviewing these payments. In a conversation with David Panagore, we discussed the perception of how some payments look on the face value, but in many cases there is a plausible explanation behind payments.

If you do have questions regarding any payment, documentation should be available and hopefully the Finance Director would be able to answer any questions and/or provide documentation if asked. Hartford's Finance Director Christopher Wolf can be reached by e-mail at wolfc001@hartford.gov.


Hartford+Checks+for+April+2010[1]

Friday, May 7, 2010

IT'S TIME TO STOP FIDDLE PLAYING , HARTFORD IS ON FIRE


Sometimes you have to wonder if the Hartford City Council realizes what their function is. Without making this sound like an attack on a specific Councilperson, I will say that there is enough blame to go around for everyone on the Hartford City Council.

Today, Councilperson Cotto was making the media rounds in support of his upcoming resolution demanding that the City of Hartford not do business with Arizona companies. This is a result, apparently, of the State of Arizona tightening their state laws to address immigration problems.

A polarizing issue? Most definitely yes. Is it any business of the Hartford City Council? Absolutely not.

At a time when the City is facing dire budget problems and a multi-million dollar deficit, a failing education system, huge losses of jobs and businesses fleeing the city, unaffordable tax increases, an understaffed police department and even potential conviction of a corrupt Mayor, are the priorities in order?

In addition, the resolution is pretty much meaningless. I asked another Councilperson and a city staffer in the Finance Department how much business the city does with Arizona companies. Surprisingly, the answer was that to the best of their knowledge the answer was zero.

I guess we could also ask how many companies boycotted Hartford businesses when we became a "sanctuary city", and although I don't have any real numbers, I would venture to say that number is zero also.

Resolutions such as this may make the Council feel warm and fuzzy because they are doing something, but does it further the business of the City? Again, absolutely not. Does it bolster the image of the Council people in the community. Maybe, but then again maybe not.

Many people are not focused on what happens in Arizona. I'm sure they are trying to focus on what happens in Hartford though. Will they be able to stay in their apartments when the landlord increases their rents to pass on tax increases. Will they be able to keep their cars when the taxes increase and they can't pay them? Do they make the tough decision to pay the increased car taxes or pay their car insurance?

Or do they maybe take a lesson from the Hartford playbook and like our former Democratic Town Chairperson totally beat Hartford out of the revenue and find an address in another town with a lower mill rate to register their cars.

Councilperson Cotto is not the first councilperson to lose sight of his obligation to the people of Hartford first and foremost. In the past, numerous resolutions have been introduced for reasons totally unrelated to the duties of a Councilperson.

I can recall the resolution a few years ago addressed to the Bush Administration condemning the war in Iraq. That was such a powerful piece of legislation by the Council, that from what I understand, George W. laid awake for months unable to sleep since his policies had lost the support of the Hartford City Council.

And while the Council is on a "correct all ills" resolution binge, how about a resolution banning doing business with any California business. Aren't they the State that passed Proposition 8 banning same sex marriage. And a resolution against the Catholic Church might be in order, they are oppressing a woman's rights to choose how she wishes to treat her own body. And there must be a resolution in the making for something banning doing business with businesses in Alaska. After all, that's where Sarah Palin is from so something has to be wrong there.

While we're at it, lets pass a resolution banning any use of BP Petroleum products in the City of Hartford, look what they have done to the Gulf and the concrete around the device that failed was poured by Haliburton. Oh, and lets not forget a resolution banning any Hartford resident from staying at a Marriott Hotel. Remember the charge and the lawsuit led by Mayor Perez when the Hartford Marriott wouldn't unionize its workers and all the money the City spent on that battle? Something must be wrong there, so let's show them also.

Maybe once this Council takes care of the illegal border crossings in Arizona, they can renew that resolution opposing the war. But then again, someone might raise the issue that this council can't even control what is going on in its own borders.

To the "Nero's" of Hartford fiddling while Hartford burns, please focus, focus, focus.

Once you solve the problems of Hartford that you were elected to address, feel free to move on and solve the world's problems.

The entire bill is attached below. The notion that anyone can be stopped at anytime because of the "way they look" would seem to be untrue. I know, I'm caucasian so that is easy for me to say, but look at line 20 on page 2. The law only allows for verification "after any lawful contact by any law enforcement official". Jumping out of a cruiser, pouncing on someone because they "look illegal" as the protest t-shirts imply, seems to be unlawful. According to the law, probable cause needs to be present for the initial contact in the first place.

That is the same standard we deal with every day. A police officer needs probable cause to stop anyone of us for a minor motor vehicle violation. Is it easy to establish "probable cause"? Usually yes it is, a broken tail light, a bulb out, something hanging from your rear view mirror are all motor vehicle violations that can establish probable cause. Can it be abused by a police officer? Yes.

But on the other hand they are motor vehicle laws, enacted by our government that we have put into place. The same can be said of our immigration laws that have also been put into place by the government that we put into place. How do we make the decision which laws as a society we are going to enforce? Is there a mechanism we can use to change laws we don't agree with? Yes, it is called the voting booth ( or privacy kiosk if you are from Connecticut).

I've never used heroin, but there are those that choose to. Does that mean they have a right to break that law and ignore it without any repercussions? I don't think the argument would work in court. The same might apply to crossing Arizona's border illegally. Do you agree with the process and how it is enforced? Maybe, maybe not, but it is a law and there are alternatives to become a US citizen legally.

Can a police officer arrest someone because they "look" like a heroin addict. Definitely not. Can a police officer arrest someone if they have "probable cause" to believe the person is involved in drug activity and after further questioning find heroin on the person, then they have every right to arrest the person. We are a nation of laws and that is the way our system works. Enforcement of all laws , not just those we like or agree with.

Millions of others have played by the same set of rules, what makes Arizona's borders different.


Arizona Senate Bill 1070