I am still stunned that the common council managed to spend more time debating the reimbursement of council member Nick Kydes’ legal bill than the operating budget. To hear Democrats on the council say that its not up to them to make recommendations on where to seek costs savings is pretty outrageous. So much for the “strong council” type of government.
From a political standpoint, Mayor Moccia has executed a brilliant play here. He lets the Democrats vote on a pass-through budget and then as he votes to move the budget through, suggests that he’ll ask the BET to sharpen the pencil and dig into some cost savings. Slick move there, and showing what a weak council we have.
Meanwhile, despite the hour or so of debate on the Kydes reimbursement, it is amazing that the none of these council members managed to nick a penny off the bill. Not after Andy Conroy and Doug Hempstead pointed out that there was an item for writing an apology letter. Not after Amanda Brown pointed out that there were more hours billed per day than the typical 8 hour work day. And since it’s the city picking up the tab, not a single discussion on the floor asking for a discount to be negoitated. All that time Krummel spent going on and on about nothing, and he utterly failed at even asking for a motion to have corp counsel attempt at getting a discount!
To see why this is such a catastrophic failure, you need only look at how it is the council committees that oversee all departments in this city. All the finance committee chair Carvin Hilliard had to do was ask corp council to negotiate a potential discount on the bill. Amanda Brown hit the areas worth looking into, and she’s on the finance committee. So why didn’t that happen? Not that the Republicans did any better. They discuss areas where the bill should be negotiated, and then fail to make a motion to have the bill reviewed and negotiated.
Where oh where are the fiscal conservatives in Norwalk? Certainly not on this council.
