No, that question wasn't meant as a joke, I'm serious. Is anyone held accountable at City Hall?
We pay some very big salaries to people who are supposed to be "managers" of City government, yet we continue to see , day in and day out the continuous missteps, mistakes and "lack of oversight". Sadly , many of those City salaries are also way out of whack with comparable jobs in the private sector.
The other sad part is that we see many of the "mistakes " being made by the same people repeatedly with hardly any accountability or repercussions for their acts. Darryl Hill is one name that immediately comes to mind, yet he is still left in charge to move on to the next mistake, driving Hartford further off the cliff every day.
I won't rehash it here all over again, but the Stadium is just one more example of people put in charge of oversight for things they know nothing about
In a recent blog posting I described normal construction management procedures. You can read more here.
Briefly, I wrote ;"Typically on a construction project someone is monitoring, and enforcing all relevant requirements. Is your licensing up to date and current? Do they have copies of you current license? Is your liability insurance up to date and current? Do they have copies of your current insurance certificates? Is any required letter of credit or bond up to date? Do they have current copies?"
Where was the checklist. I would think that would be critical to any move, especially before throwing a contractor off a project as large as the Stadium. Did anyone ask our "owners rep" from Chicago what was the best way to proceed before taking the shut down actions? Isn't that what we are paying them for, to protect our interests. Or did we rely on a couple of people who have already shown they know nothing about crisis management and planning?
The names I. Charles Matthews and Darryl Hill keep coming to mind. Maybe they should be working for FEMA instead of the City of Hartford since they are so good at running into disasters. Unfortunately many of those disasters have been created by them. But also, Mayor Bronin is the Administrator who is responsible for keeping this mess in check, he can't continue to blame the "previous Administration" for the mistakes, especially when he is willing to give his PAC money to prop up that previous Administration.
With the stadium I just wonder what else they have overlooked, what is the next screw-up we will hear about? The lights and water have been shut off because no one transferred the bills from DONO when the Mayor threw them off the project? This stuff would also be comical if it wasn't the reality of the way the "Keystone Cops" brigade at City Hall operates.( No offense to our real cops who are doing a great job under difficult circumstances)
Maybe it is time to create a new position for Darryl Hill of Chief Financial Officer since he has done such a great job so far as COO ( hopefully that reign for Hill is about to come to an end with the arrival of Bonnie Malley now that the Phoenix merger is complete)
I can almost envision the day the Mayor, Darryl Hill and I . Charles Matthews pull up in front of City Hall in the Shriner's little clown cars and laugh and tell us the last six months have all been been a joke.
These aren't abstract concepts, much of it is called common sense, and that is what we are paying the big bucks to some people to protect our interests, not put a potentially $100,000,000 plus project in jeopardy by failing to carry insurance coverage. It is called "MANAGEMENT". And the same person who continually screws up has also been given more control as the "Acting Finance Director" for the City of Hartford? What could possibly go wrong there?
The Union issues, the Stadium problems, the lack of insurance the stunning failure of Senate Bill 464 have all been crash and burn moments for an administration that we all hoped was bringing in sweeping change January 1st. What happened?


