Last week the Hartford City Council touted their huge accomplishment, at least in their minds, of shaving about $1.7 million dollars off of a $550 million dollar budget. That comes out to roughly less than 3 tenths of one percent.
But fortunately, I have a suggestion for the Council to be able to shave a lot more than that. Hire some attorneys in the Corporation Counsel's Office who actually know what they are doing, especially in the area of Labor law.
Huge amounts of money each year are spent defending and appealing the City's stinker cases when it comes to wrongful termination of employees. Much more has been spent, I'm sure ,on defending losing cases that most likely should have never been brought in the first place. Let's see what the Dan Nolan case costs the City of Hartford taxpayers in the end just for legal costs, not to mention what I'm sure will be a rather large Jury award in Dan's favor also.
Add onto that Willie Edwards, Robert Lawlor, Robert Murtha and others that have already been silently settled behind the scenes.Hartford has a terrible track record when it comes to apparently violating employees rights and then trying to defend their actions.
The latest Court decision came today after the City of Hartford decided to ignore an arbitration award in favor of Hartford Police Officer Matthew Secore. Secore was terminated from HPD, went through the appeal process with the Labor Board and they decided in Secore's favor.
The Board agreed that Secore's actions were wrong, but that the termination was too severe and ordered a 90 day suspension instead. The City and the brain trust in the Corporation Counsels Office decided to appeal. Today Judge Satter resoundingly affirmed the Labor Boards decision and threw out the Corporation Counsels argument.
To read more about the Secore case from an earlier post, click here
That decision is below. In true Hartford fashion though, most likely egos will win out over common sense and I would bet that another appeal will be on the way. What does Judge Satter know compared to the legal geniuses in Corp Counsel?
Secore Decision 5-27-11
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