The Truth Is Out There

Come January 1, 2009 we will know two things. Who will be the next president of the United States and that garbage trucks will be heading down to Meadow Street. We’ll of course have known who will be the next president for a couple of months by then, because it will be old news. Just as we know now that there will be a solid waste transfer station on Meadow Street now, because it is old news. For some reason, opponents of the City managed transfer station neglected to follow the maxim, you can’t manage what you don’t know. That maxim is one my standard bearers. The irony was that opponents of the contract used this lack of knowledge as a raison d’etre for why the Common Council should vote down the contract allowing City Carting to manage the Meadow Street facility on behalf of the City of Norwalk.

The funny thing is, being a graduate of school house rock, is that I believe that government is by the people for the people. And thus, government, as a legislative and regulative body, can do more for the quality of life for all citizens than private enterprise because government can marshal resources without focus on turning a profit as the desired outcome. So it’s kinda surprising that the Common Council’s Democrats came down on the side of, well on the other side of government. It seems, the Norwalk Democrats have a heady case of X-Files addiction, because they spoke, and spoke and spoke about the truth, er Truth, being out there.

I ask out where? The Truth about CRRA is a bit more complicated than the Truth about City Carting. First, it should surprise no one that State Senator Tom Gaffey D-Meriden is an executive with CRRA. He is also teh chair of the Education committee of the state senate. Gaffey is the same legislator who has been mired in strange behviors up in Hartford, while Democrats largely ignore them. Except for Norwalk’s State Senator Bob Duff and Stamford’s State Senator Andrew MacDonald who have called for an investigation into the so-called� Connecticut State Univeristy bonding scandal. Gaffey was dating a married lobbyist, Jill Ferraiolo, the assistant vice chancellor for CSU governmental affairs,� while he was working the legislature for the billion dollar bonding proposal for CSU. Gaffey is on the bonding committee. As chari of the Education committee, Gaffey decides ECS funding, which Meriden gets a healthy amoutn of, while Norwalk and Stamford do not.

The Education lobby is one of those of special interest in connecting the dots of political influence, because State Rep Bruce Morris, D-Norwalk spends an awful lot of time working on issues that somehow seem to always benefit New Haven and Meridan. But that’s education, and we are talking about garbage.

CRRA has been audited by towns like Vernon, for the imposition of increased tipping fees, as detailed in this Journal Inquirer story. The 70 member towns in the Hartford area have been suing CRRA since 2002, first with the Enron scandal and then over the� infalted expenses detailedin a motion filed by the towns following a budget audit. Things like Gaffey’s inexplicable untimely reimbursemnt to CRRA detailed here in this Business New Haven story.

So the smoking gun, that some people have tried to point to in the dealings of the trasnfer station contract, really seem to be more appropriate to the dealings of CRRA, the Democratic lobby and how Bruce Morris and Amanda Brown tried to move a mountain for their friends.