
Once Eddie Perez was convicted,resigned and was sentenced I removed a lot of the information and mug shots here thinking that would be the end of the Perez years and we would move on.
I guess not.
It seems that our former Mayor, and now convicted felon, has landed a job with a non-profit that received almost half of its annual operating funds in 2009 from the Perez Administration. The Connecticut AIDS Resource Coalition has hired Perez as a "consultant".
In their 2009 IRS form 990, the Connecticut AIDS Resource Coalition listed funding from the City of Hartford of at least one grant of $154,268 and another of $498,108.The annual budget for the organization is listed as approximately $1,450,000.
And now back to the title of the posting. What would you do if you were the Executive Director or Board member that had to decide if Eddie Perez should be hired?
As anyone who reads this blog is well aware, I am not a fan of Perez. I am sure that many people will draw the connection between Perez getting his job and John Rowland and his jobs. The big difference is that Rowland had completed his sentence after violating the public's trust. Perez has yet to begin his.
The first thing is that non-profits must have the public trust and confidence to complete their mission in the community. My feeling is that hiring Perez erodes that trust and confidence and draws the entire organization into question.
In an interview and story posted on Jeff Cohen's blog on WNPR radio (link is on the right)the agency's Executive Director John Merz stated to Cohen "that he hadn’t been in the market for a consultant before he hired the former mayor, Merz says hiring Perez just made sense. He calls him a good strategist, and – given his circumstances – he’s a bargain."
Then why hire a convicted felon and disgraced Mayor as a consultant if you hadn't been in the market to hire one? It just reminds me of that phrase we heard so much during the Perez corruption trial "quid pro quo". It might be hard to say no to a man looking for a job who could have said no when your half a million dollars in grants was on his desk each year.
Situations like this raise more questions than answers and unfortunately cast a dark shadow over an organization that otherwise may be very legitimate and actually doing good work.
So again, what would you do and would you have hired Perez ?
The form 990 for the Connecticut AIDS Resource Coalition is below:
Form 990 Connecticut Aids Resource Coalition


