Norwalk- We are now up to three people arrested in the transfer station payoff scam. According to John Nickerson of the Advocate, Milton Kyriakydes was arrested for making cash payments to former DPW employee Robert Grover as a way to avoid paying tipping fees to dump trash. I hear there’s more to come on this. Read more at the Advocate.
To understand why DPD Director Hal Alvord has been pushing for the elimination of the “three ton free” policy at the Norwalk transfer station, you have to understand how the transfer station works. If you are a resident, and you have a resident sticker on your car or SUV, you can drive up to the transfer station and unload your trash and recyclables at the station free of charge. If you have a commercial truck, or trailer, you drive into the transfer station, drives onto scales with the garbage and are weighed. Then you dump your trash in the commercial section of the transfer station.
The City of Norwalk pays about $75 a ton to haul away trash from the transfer station. That number doesn’t change whether you pay a lightly higher mill rate because your garbage is collected by the City of Norwalk curb side, or whether you drive it to the transfer station yourself. The City of Norwalk still pays the same amount at the end to haul away the garbage.
Clearly this COuncil is having difficulty grasping big picture costs and expenses. Instead of identifying the overall costs, and trying to figure out how to reduce the amount of garbage being hauled away, which would actually be good for the enviroment and encourage residents to waste less, they focus on how “brilliant” they are at saving residents money without any data to back their assertions up, and nothing more that anecdotes based on heresy.
When we last looked that administrative process that DPW used, they relied on software manage the tracking of the amount of garbage. On file was teh wieght of each commercial vehicle. The software is apparently antiquated enough to not have a way to assign varying fees for the type pr amounts of garbage. Nor can it calculate cumulative totals on amount of garbage dropped off. So instead, it is done manually by DPW administrative staff. And then billed out to the vehicle owner and which is yet another administrative cost and then it has to be collected and so on. The cost of the “three free ton policy” is according to Halvord about $300k. He has brought this item to the attention of the Common Council since 2007.
DPW Director Alvord wants to eliminate the free tipping free policy in order to shift the payment of the tipping fee to sooner rather than later. Which means that the weigh-master would the ability to collect fees on the spot. Which means that contractors, who are the chief hauler of trash to the transfer station would pay the cost of the City of Norwalk having to haul away their trash.
For some reason, no one on the public works committee asked the number one question that they should have, which is whose trash are the contractors dumping in Norwalk? The answer, not surprisingly is the entire area’s trash, not just Norwalk, because every other transfer station or town dump has been raising fees on trash dumping because every municipality is facing the same issue– not enough revenues to keep up with the costs of services presently provided.
For Norwalk to move into the 21st century, it must start addressing how it does business. That means taking a critical look at who is being serviced by policies, reviewing the actual data, and making things easier and more cost effective for residents. Our government should not be asking residents to pay more in taxes just because council members can’t figure out that they are subsidizing contractors.
In case you missed it, Jon Lender of the Courant, wrote an update to the long sad tale that starts the CRRA cesspool of corruption. He writes:
For every fact revealed in a political scandal, several others remain hidden. The big revelations lead to firings or indictments and headlines. Other rumored circumstances can’t be confirmed or reported as news before the scandal passes, the guilty are punished (or not) and life returns to normal.
But every once in a while, long after the trouble has blown over, some old and tantalizing secret comes to light when old allies turn against each other. This can be helpful in understanding the relationships among powerful people in government and business who later emerged as scandal figures.
That’s what’s happening now, six years later. Robert Wright, the former president of the state’s trash authority, is suing members of the prominent New Britain-area Tomasso family, claiming they reneged on a secret deal to hire him as head of one of their companies in 2002.
Remember that ties in politics go long ways when you think about the CRRA. So it’s important to pay attention to how things were done, to get a handle on how things continue to be done.
Wright was never accused of any criminal activity. But back in April 2002, his job as the $153,000-a-year head of the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority was in jeopardy because of a public uproar over the CRRA’s loss of $220 million (much of which was later recovered) in its deal with the soon-to-collapse Enron.
The uproar had claimed its first victim weeks earlier — Ellef, who, in addition to serving as Rowland’s staff chief, was chairman of the CRRA’s governing board. He was forced to quit both posts.
It was rumored that Wright had lined up a safe landing place with a Tomasso company. But no one would confirm that, and when he quit the CRRA under pressure in late April 2002, all anyone would say was that Wright had found another job.
The rumor seemed untrue when Wright didn’t go to work for the Tomassos, and instead found a job with Klewin Building Co. of Norwich — a state contractor that two years later would rile prosecutors and legislators by giving the disgraced Rowland a lucrative consulting job after he quit as governor in mid-2004.
But now, after all these years, it turns out that the rumor was true. It’s all in Wright’s pending lawsuit against the Tomassos, filed in federal court in 2007 after first being lodged in state court.
Wright, with an introduction from Ellef, obtained a written offer in March 2002 to become president of the Tomassos’ Tenergy water technology company in New Britain, documents show. “Your base salary will be $165,000 annually,” Tenergy executive Michael Tomasso wrote to Wright on March 15, 2002.
But later, documents show, the Tomassos withdrew the offer by letter April 29, 2002, after the CRRA-Enron mess was deepened by calls for a criminal investigation of the CRRA that materialized by the end of the month.
The Tomassos helped Wright get the job with Klewin, though, and at least one of them talked of funding part of his pay at that firm under a contemplated joint venture that did not happen, documents show.
Ellef, was chief of staff to Rowland and head of CRRA when this all went down. And the CRRA is still offering plenty of murky news. This November 2007 reminds us of Lender’s opening premise a few months later.
It’s the second such silence ruling against the CRRA in the last year. The order covers CRRA officials and members of the board, which is comprised of mayors and first selectmen from throughout the state, including Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti.
Lauretti, in a brief interview Thursday afternoon, declined comment on the scope of Eveleigh’s order, other than to predict that it will be appealed by the CRRA.
“I don’t understand the rationale used for the gag order, nor do I appreciate or understand its need,” Lauretti said. About four years ago, the upstate towns of New Hartford and Barkhamsted sued the CRRA over the Enron deal. In February 2006, the 68 remaining Mid-Connecticut Project towns joined in the litigation, which reached trial a year ago. On June 19, Eveleigh ordered CRRA to pay those towns $35.8 million. Less than 10 days later, the CRRA appealed the ruling.
The case involves repercussions from the scandal surrounding Enron, which declared bankruptcy within weeks of the December 2000 deal with the quasi-public CRRA.
Lauretti has his own issues to deal with lately (from the Courant):
A Fairfield County developer has been indicted on bribery and a half-dozen other offenses for providing cash and other gifts — including a home addition — to eight-term Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, people familiar with the indictment and the investigation that preceded it said Monday.
In addition to bribery of a public official, James Botti, 45, of Shelton was charged with lying to the Internal Revenue Service, mail fraud and financial crimes associated with attempts to conceal large cash payments.
Lauretti, a rising star in state Republican politics, was not identified by name in the indictment and was not charged. In the indictment, he is identified as “Public Official #1″ and described as “Botti’s co-conspiractor.”
But people familiar with the case said Lauretti is Public Official #1. Lauretti filed an application to build an addition on his house in 2002, the year Botti is accused of paying for the work.
And why is this so interesting? Lauretti is on the board of CRRA. Appointed in 2002. The story of CRRA has never been fully told. And when people in Norwalk start advocating on its behalf, knowing the long history of corruption, the ties to criminal organizations, it really makes you wonder.
source: Courant, Long After Scandal, Secrets Emerge, Jon Lender, December 7,
All along you had to prove you were a Norwalk resident to take trash to the dump. But now, the new guys in charge of the place, that would be City Carting, are planning measures to enforce it. The Hour reports:
Starting Jan. 2, persons hoping to use the city’s transfer station on Crescent Street, or yard-waste disposal site off South Smith Street, will need a ‘beach sticker’ identifying themselves as a Norwalk residents affixed to their vehicles.
Non-residents using the facilities has been more of a problem at the transfer station than at the yard-waste debris site, according to Director of Public Works Harold F. Alvord.
Regardless, a driver’s license won’t suffice at either location next month.
“Starting Jan. 2, City Carting will have a person at (the transfer station) gate checking stickers, and if a car is not displaying a beach sticker, they’re going to be turned around and not allowed to enter the transfer station,” Alvord said. “We’re putting this (information) out now to remind people, so they don’t have an excuse come Jan. 2 — pulling up there without the sticker.”
Starting next month, City Carting & Recycling, Inc., the Stamford company that currently handles recycling in Norwalk, will begin handling trash-hauling, as part of a five-year contract approved by the Common Council in July. Alvord said the contract includes resources to staff the gate at the transfer station.
Norwalk residents who do not have a beach sticker, are advised to visit http://www.norwalkct.org/parksrec/beachstickers/2005BeachStickers.htm for instructions on how to obtain a two-year sticker. Those with questions should call the city’s Customer Service at (203) 854-3200.
source: The Hour, Sticker will be required at Norwalk transfer station, By Robert Koch, Posted on 12/08/2008
For some reason, there’s a fascination with garbage over in District B Democratic headquarters. Wait, do they even have a legal headquarters? Today the Hour reports that Bobby Burgess held a press conference to announce that he was angry. The Hour used “blasted” the press release said “Mayor of the city of Norwalk and others are engaged in a flagrant violation and contempt of the Freedom of Information Act due to continued non-compliance with the FOI request dated August 8, 2008.” Funny, the city of Norwalk’s response was pretty straightforward at the time. Something along the lines, of tighten up the scope please, and you are asking for many dead trees of stuff are you sure you want it.
Needless to say the braintrust of flagrant use of hyperbole decided to ignore any request to actually figure out what they wanted copies of, and now are claiming that they just want to look at stuff. Amazing, maybe they should talk to Diane Lauricella who managed, during the whole garbage debate, to head down to DPW and look at stuff. But, that would be too logical. That would mean that Burgess had a legitimate issue and was seeking information. What he really wanted was yet another press conference.
Except that Joe Mann, Executive Director of NEON, didn’t seem to happy about Burgess’ use of the front of NEON as the staging area. With good reason, NEON is not Burgess’ fiefdom. Anymore.
The Hour reports:
District B Democrats took up the fight on Aug. 8 by filing a five-page request under the Freedom of Information Act, asking the city to release “all sent and received information” regarding the municipal trash-hauling debate. To date, the city hasn’t complied with the request, according to Bobby Burgess, District B Democrats chairman.
“The administration of the city of Norwalk, including Richard Moccia, mayor of the city of Norwalk and others are engaged in a flagrant violation and contempt of the Freedom of Information Act due to continued non-compliance with the FOI request dated Aug. 8, 2008,” Burgess said. “Mayor Richard A. Moccia and other city of Norwalk officials have clearly demonstrated disregard for the law, a systematic and calculated attempt to delay, stall and prevent the disclosure of information that will benefit public welfare.”
On Monday morning, Burgess and Al Ayme, another District B Democrat, announced during a press conference outside the South Norwalk Community Center that they have written Gov. M. Jodi Rell and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, appealing them for “the prompt resolution of the case.”
“We want to let them know that the city is stalling, and we want FOI to move on this,” Burgess told The Hour afterward. “I want to see all the records, so we can make a determination if there were environmental conditions at Crescent Street that could affect the people.”
The press conference comes a month after Burgess filed a formal complaint with the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission in Hartford.
“Sixty days and nothing but excuses. That’s all we’re getting,” said Ayme, a 2nd Taxing District commissioner and former Republican.
Not all were pleased with the location of Monday’s press conference.
Joseph E. Mann, executive director of Norwalk Economic Opportunity Now, which is housed in the South Norwalk Community Center, said NEON had “absolutely nothing to do” with the event.
“We would certainly be appreciative if this activity could be carried out somewhere other than in the front of NEON where it might well create an obstruction to those attempting to enter our facility for services,” Mann said.
The Freedom of Information request dated Aug. 8 seeks letters, e-mails and other correspondence about the trash-hauling matter from Moccia, council members, members of the council’s public works and health committees, employees of the city’s law department, the director of finance, director of health, director of public works, director of purchasing, city clerk, and “all ‘consultant’ and/or any independent contractors hired on behalf of the city of Norwalk.”
M. Jeffry Spahr, deputy corporation counsel in the city’s law department, said the information request is overly broad and would require a “massive effort” to assemble. Moccia concurred.
“Basically, do we give them two years of every document that had the word ‘City Carting’ in it and ‘garbage’ in it, because (City Carting also does) our recycling?” Moccia said. “We were trying to narrow it down in scope.”
Moccia cited the costs of photocopying the information — 50 cents per page — and noted that District B Democrats don’t believe they should have to pay for those costs. Ayme, for instance, said the fee is waived by law for elected officials seeking information.
Moccia labeled the information request politics.
“The last guy in the world who should ever talk about hiding anything is Bobby Burgess. When he was chairman of NEON, you had to fight to get the legal fees and the lawsuits revealed to the public,” Moccia said. “He’s the last guy that should be talking about FOI. … This is just politics.”
Spahr cited the city’s response to the information request and his request that the FOI Commission step in. In a Sept. 11 letter to the commission, Spahr asked for “an opportunity to sit down with you so that we may discuss a method and procedure by which we can facilitate the production of the requested documents.”
“I took it upon myself, for the first time ever, to call the FOI ahead of time, and say to them, ‘Could you come and help us? I said to Bobby in my letter, ‘To resolve this, I’m more than happy to have somebody from the FOI come down, and to sit and to meet and to talk,’” Spahr said. “I was trying to get the FOI down before a complaint was filed. Now that a complaint has been filed … it’s going to take months and months and months.”
Tom Hennick, public information officer for the FOI Commission, said he could not address details of the case because of the pending complaint. Speaking generally, Hennick said the commission is not in a position to intervene — as requested by Spahr — unless both parties request such intervention.
Now that a complaint has been filed, the commission will review it, send letters to the respective parties and begin mediation “almost immediately,” Hennick said. If mediation fails, he continued, the matter will be scheduled for a hearing. Hennick wouldn’t address the scope of the request nor how long it should take to fill it.
“There’s clearly a strong difference of opinion as to how long it will take to fill the request. The city believes that it is an enormous task,” Hennick said. “That’s at the nub of the matter.”
Burgess and Ayme reject that assembling the documents will require a “massive effort.”
Said Burgess: “They can just tell us where the files are, and we can sit down in their office and look at the files.”
source: The Hour, Dist. B Dems accuse city of foot-dragging on FOI request, By ROBERT KOCH, October7, 2008
The New Haven Independent reports that former Branford Corporate Counsel, The Marcus Law Firm, is being sued by the Town for legal malpractice.
…This lawsuit comes against a backdrop of an ongoing political fight between two Democratic factions in Branford;…
It is not every day that a law firm gets sued, especially when the moving party is a town. Ed Marcus issued a furious statement aimed at the town for filing the suit. Specifically he targeted the town’s first selectman, Democrat “Unk” DaRos … DaRos regained his job in a three-way race last year riding in part on anti-Marcus sentiment.
[Marcus'] close ally, former State Sen. Bruce Morris, is married to Cheryl Morris, the candidate who beat [Republican John Opie] in 2005 and then tapped Marcus to become Branford’s town counsel. (Morris was the person DaRos subsequently unseated in 2007.)
Following this? It took me a few reads.
Complicated, but there is a whole lot going on here.
Marcus is a serious and dangerous opponent. That is why I’m not going to say much that might be characterized as critical of him, for fear of being sued. I’m not kidding:
Marcus said that after he successfully defends this “political lawsuit,” he will “unfortunately for the town seek damages against the Town and other parties that may be appropriate, for defamation, slander and the increase that may occur in our professional liability insurance.” He has made similar threats in the past.
Feel that – this is the real deal.
The Independent piece includes:
…the Marcus lawsuit, … may well shine light on the inner workings of the lawyering [in the subject case]. This could be accomplished through the discovery process, as the town seeks documents, emails and other material to establish its case. But Marcus gave every indication he would fight such a move. “We are not going to be bullied or intimidated by DaRos and company and we will do whatever is necessary to protect our position in this matter.” [Emphasis added]
This may prove to be a rare opportunity for us average folks to learn how the game is played. We’ll be following it closely.
Source: New Haven Independent.
Continue reading
District B Dems, have “gone all in” on the latest political round of Texas Hold ‘Em. They delivered to City Hall a FOIA request that so broad that, well, let’s paraphrase, and then you can look at the actual document.
Please give us a copy of anything that contains the world trash in it, electronic or paper that anyone who walked through City Hall doors has received or created.
See for yourself:
The lawyer who drafted this gem of an FOIA request should be disbarred. I’ve seen rookie prosecutor discovery motions that look better than this. But maybe the point of this wasn’t to actually review documents containing the world trash. Maybe the District B Dems are attempting to score political fantasy points with some misguided notion that they will get another week of press when they actually accomplish pretty much nothing day to day. I’m guessing here, because crazy political strategy is not really my forte, and the starting estimate for this mountain of paper is approximately 10,000 pages. So at .50 a page, you start at $5,000. Now, just where is District B going to get that kind of money? And why would they want to spend $5,000 for a bunch of documents that have for the most part, been on file in the DPW office for about two months. I certainly hope this is a cash in advance payment situation.
But I’m looking forward to this, because amongst the appropriate emails of substance as in Councilmember X to Councilmember Y : “Did you read the the latest trash proposal” will be the invariable Councilmember X to Councilmember Y email that said: “xxxxx certainly looks trashy today. Get a load of xxxxxx on xxxxxx, pretty xxxxxxx hot.” I have self redacted because children read this blog, but I’m sure Councilmembers all 15 of them are now thinking about what lurks in those email boxes.
And not just the 15 active councilmembers, according to this FOIA. Any councilmember since November 22, 2005. They’ve also requested Hal Alcord, Gerald Foley, Tom Hamilton, Tim Callahan, Mary Roman, the entire legal department including Bob Maslan, and every document from the Norwalk Museum. I kid you with that last one.
One of the more interesting aspects of this will ofcourse be the privacy of councilmembers emails. Since the city does not provide email addresses to its elected councilmembers they use their own email addresses. Which are not hooked into a data retention system that makes compliance issues rather a breeze to achieve. Lawyers salivating in the wings might want to explore this Connecticut Supreme court destined argument that FOIA can’t extend to private email services. At the federal level, this was an issue with emails being sent to and from the White House via RNC email accounts. Congresscritter Henry Waxman details that scandalous investigation here, and you can bet your last soggy dollar that his FOIA requests were concise and eloquent.
Notably Phylis Bolden, Mike Geake and Carvin Hilliard are not signators of this FOIA request. And I’m sure the other 6 Democrats on the council are thrilled with this move. This will subject all their emails, to DTC members and constituents as well, to this FOIA request. That should certainly make them comfortable to know that District B Dems want to know every private thought they shared with anyone about the trash issue in email.
Meanwhile Bruce Morris was busy copying the contract between City Carting and the City of Norwalk today. The Norwalk Public School system, didn’t require his services apparently.
I’ve gathered all the trash posts into this handy list o links. Just to make it easier to find them all as various people piece together the story. Start at the bottom and work your way up.
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/08/05/holy-confidential-batman-morris-blasted-for-meddling/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/08/01/norwalk-dems-need-to-look-at-the-real-trash/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/08/01/brown-reveals-morris-gave-her-crra-letter/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/07/31/brown-keeps-digging-a-hole/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/07/29/lionel-hutz-strikes-again-political-silly-season-arrives/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/07/25/norwalk-rtc-goes-after-brown/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/07/22/common-council-meeting-of-july-22nd/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/07/22/lawsuits-and-prayer-vigils/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/07/21/council-now-has-to-vote-tommorrow/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/07/18/transfer-station-hearing-thoughts/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/07/17/yet-another-public-hearing-on-a-garbage-contract/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/06/24/poop-happens-ii-and-more-on-garbage/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/06/23/the-truth-about-trash-and-nimbys/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/06/19/much-odor-about-trash/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/06/11/common-council-meeting-of-june-10th/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/06/10/biggest-whopper-of-the-year/
http://www.yourct.com/new/2008/06/04/trash-is-in-the-news/
Today the Mayor held a press conference to announce that at long last, the Solid Waste disposal contract was signed with City Carting. Technically, the Mayor did it yesterday, but today he announced it. So no staged ceremonially signing. Instead, the Mayor was armed with documents and ain’t-got-no-statisfaction with State Rep. Bruce Morris. And Amanda Brown too.
“As you know we had a long process to determine who would handled our trash over the next five years,” explained Mayor Richard Moccia. Moccia explained that the contract was signed after a thorough review by Holland and Knight, the law firm hired by the Common Council.
That was short and sweet. The next part was all about the breaking of confidentiality and the procurement process. The Mayor opened with a statement:
“I am very concerned about the apparent political pressure that came from elected officials to continue the contract with CRRA, and the release of confidential information that was for council people only to other elected officals. Our staff had prepared some confidential information for our council people to evalaute the bids to look at. And, it did say confidential. That information was released to State Representative Morris. This compromises us in many ways.”
Corporation Counsel Robert Maslan added, “The whole process of procurement is governed by procurement guidelines which the council had put in place several years ago. To release confidential information during the negotiation process and prior to actually approving and signing a contract undermines the process of competive bidding and it comprimises the integrity of the procurement process as a whole.”
Mayor Moccia then walked through the documents that he obtained copies of from the Art Scialaba filed FOIA request. He pointed out that councilmember Amanda Brown forwarded the document labled confidential to State Rep Bruce Morris.
“It’s interesting to note that in the email that Tom Kirk ,who is president of CRRA, sent to Representative Morris, he titles it Representative Morris and it says: I regret we are unable to meet last week. I hope we get the opportunity to meet before the next session begins. That’s not a private citizen that’s a State Representative.
Notably the July 22nd email FOIA document in question is here, and State Rep. Bruce Morris used his cga.ct. gov email address.
The Mayor also points out that there’s another letter documenting a meeting with Enviro Express.
“I don’t tell the state what to do and I don’t expect the state representative using his position to try and tell the city what to do.”
When questioned about what Morris’ personal interest in how the contract turned out, the Mayor responded that he didn’t know but that the District B Dems had voted to make a recomendation to reconsider the contract last night. Mike Geake was asked to make a motion to reconsider the vote since he was one of the council members that had voted for the contract, and the rules governing reconsideration require that a vote to reconsider be made by someone who had voted for the motion.
The Mayor also pointed out a number of times that the issue of using Meadow street was always a fair issue to debate and discuss. But Morris, by contacting CRRA, obtaining with Brown’s help confidential information during the negotiation process and seeking bids 7 months after the bid to the RFP had closed, had crossed a line.
“This administration is not going to pressured into doing anything.” stated Mayor Moccia.
The confidential information was about the bids that responded to the RFP and was dated on February 21st. The procurement guidelines provide for confidentially so that information about competing bids are not made public while the negotiations are ongoing. Much of the negotiation on complex bids concerns technical requirements that can be clarified and determined if they meet the RFP.
Mayor Moccia questioned, “why would a State Representative involve himself and get involved so deeply into a [city] contract?”
That line of questioning is certainly interesting. Was it CRRA reaching out to Morris, or Morris reaching out to CRRA. Or yet, was there a third party invovled?
“Somebody had to make an inquiry to Mr. Kirk about an bids or any offers,” emphasized the Mayor.
The timeline of this contract, the paper trail of communication certainly lends credence that something happened.
“Mr. Kirk never once contacted me and told me any of this or any other infomration about Enviro and arranging a visit,” reminded Mayor Moccia.
The May 15th letter to Moccia from CRRA was not a public document, it was not delivered to the Council because the bid had been closed and could not be considered. All of the communication between Brown, Morris and CRRA occurred after the bid had closed.
Which is exactly the type of stuff we read about in other towns, and then the investigations start and what turns out to be another reason to keep calling Connecticut “corrupticut.”
The Mayor was acutely aware of that history, “That’s what gotten this state in trouble, I don’t know how to make make it any clearer. All you have to do is look around from Bridgeport to Waterbury to Hartford to the [former] Governor. That is what has gotten this state into trouble with the pressures, the end runs and again, I’m not saying that anything was done illegally, it is the appearance of a State Representative using their influence trying to get [Norwalk] us to stay with a company.”
Appearance, appearance, appearance.
Galen Wells just had to write a letter to the editor published in today’s Hour. I will post it first, and then explain just how bad this letter is making Norwalk Democrats look.
Is dumping everything on South Norwalk latest strategy for GOP?
To the Editor:
On July 22, the Common Council voted to reject the mayor’s proposal to send all of the city’s garbage to the Meadow Street transfer station. With the mayor casting the tie-breaking vote, the council approved a bid by City Carting to transfer this garbage at the Crescent Street station. In connection with debate on the latter proposal, Democratic Councilwoman Amanda Brown read from a letter from CRRA citing its proposed cost per ton of garbage if the city decided to continue with CRRA.
On July 25, Art Scialabba, the Republican Town Committee Chairman, filed a Freedom of Information request against Ms. Brown. According to the front page article in The Hour, Mr. Scialabba said, “We need to get to the bottom of this and find out why council people are having potentially independent negotiations.”
If he had bothered to ask her, he would have found out that there was no correspondence between Ms. Brown and CRRA. She was referring to a May 15 letter from CRRA to the mayor that described CRRA’s proposed costs, which were significantly lower than Mr. Alvord had stated.
Previously, on June 18, Mr. Scialabba published a letter in The Hour attacking Democratic District B Chairman Bobby Burgess concerning changes in the rules governing taxi pickups at the South Norwalk train station. The mayor had made changes in the rules governing these taxi pickups without consulting the South Norwalk community or the taxi companies. Under the changed rules, taxis were no longer allowed to pick up fares on the eastbound side of the station. The taxis had no place to wait and were forced to burn fuel circling the block. The South Norwalk community was concerned about convenience, safety and handicap access. Most people at the meetings Mr. Burgess held were his constituents from South Norwalk.
Mr. Scialabba, with no information whatsoever about the relationship of the parties, publicly accused Mr. Burgess of having a financial interest in the matter and questioned his motives. These were outrageous, gratuitous charges with no facts to back them up.
You would normally expect this kind of behavior from Karl Rove, not from a local Republican official. Is this the Norwalk Republican Party’s version of a “Southern Strategy” — dump everything on South Norwalk and accuse anyone who complains of impropriety?
Galen W. Wells
I bet, if Galen Wells had a clue, that she’d be feeling mighty foolish for making these statements about the motives of all involved if she paid any attention to Democratic politics statewide. You see, the corruption of CRRA was fairly well documented in 2002 by Bill Curry, who was the was the Democratic candidate for governor in 1998 and 2002. Curry, previously was counselor to President Bill Clinton. But let’s go to his own words, in a 2004 interview with corporate crime reporter about corruption in Connecticut and the Rowland years:
CCR: In your two runs against him, you never accused him of being corrupt, did you?
CURRY: Actually I did. It was one of the two main arguments of the 2002 race. One of the amazing things to watch now is everything I talked of then coming true. One example is the CRRA/Enron deal. I said at the time it was clear that Rowland had transacted an illegal deal to benefit a private company – Enron, if you can believe it– in exchange for campaign contributions to the Republican Governors Association, which Rowland then chaired.
CCR: What is CRRA?
CURRY: It is the Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority (CRRA), a quasi public authority, operating under the state of Connecticut, then run by the Governor’s Chief of Staff, a man named Peter Ellis, who apparently as chief of staff didn’t have enough to do. Rowland assigned him this hobby, running CRRA, so he could control the authority to steer business to his own and his cronies’ advantage. And he did. The first major deal was Enron. The authority made the illegal loan of 220 million dollars to Enron just before Enron went belly up. The state never recovered a dime.
That was in 1997 to 1999. We hammered that home. Unfortunately for us, once again the Attorney General of the state, Richard Blumentahl, a Democrat allied himself with Rowland and announced that he would represent rather than investigate Enron.
He appeared with Rowland at a press conference announcing they were going to sue the accountants and lawyers in New York who they said had deceived the state. It was so much blather.
They knew the people of Connecticut would be 1000th in line going after the bankrupt Enron and its lawyers and accountants after one of the greatest corporate meltdowns ever. It was such an obvious trade of taxpayer dollars for campaign contributions to the Republican Governor’s Association.
CCR: How much did Enron put into the Republican Governors’ Association?
CURRY: Enron raised about $1 million for them when Rowland was either the number one or number two guy at RGA. The deal was a complete scam on taxpayers. The paperwork made it appear Enron was buying energy from state regulated utilities. It wasn’t. The whole thing was like a shell game with no pea. The state’s $220 million loss was the largest single financial transaction and of course the largest single financial loss in state history.
The Governor denied ever having met with Enron, but it turns out that he met with Ken Lay himself and had numerous meetings with Enron officials.
And then there was the massive bid rigging. For this scam, Rowland arranged to have changes made in state statute regarding competitive bidding. Ella Grasso, Connecticut Governor in the mid-1970s, had brought us into the modern age with competitive bidding statutes. Under that law, you could forgo competitive bidding only in a real emergency.
“Emergency” was carefully defined. If water was coming over the levee, and you needed more sandbags, you didn’t have to go out to bid. Otherwise, you had to play it straight. Rowland went from that standard, to one where the commissioners of his departments could just
declare an emergency.In our campaign, we looked at those projects, and it turned out the commissioners had only declared emergencies where the contractor was the Governor’s largest donor, the Tomasso family from New Britain and their associated companies. No other emergencies had apparently arisen with respect to any other contractors.
We took those contracts – I believe there were four at the time totaling over $100 million – and we brought them to industry analysts who said they had come in 15 to 20 percent over what was then the going rate in our market. That’s 15 to 20 percent over a normal, reasonable profit. That somewhere between $15 million and $20 million into the pockets of that one family just for those projects.
This is the same family that bought the Governor a car, provided many of the free vacations and travel, provided the free improvements to the cottage he got at the private sale with a subsidized mortgage from a nature conservancy. I held a press conference on September 24, 2002 and laid out the scheme.
Isn’t the part about competitive bid corruption really interesting? So Galen Wells would have you believe that the Norwalk Republicans are just out to “get” little ole Norwalk Democrats with “outrageous, gratuitous charges with no facts to back them up.” Well I think the facts, portray a completely different story. The problems with CRRA, go far beyond the political parties, and into the shady world of political insiders, lobbying, and influence. Those activities bring us right to the door on bid rigging.
And as it happens, up in Danbury we have a federal racketeering investigation that mostly explains just how a bid can be rigged. From the announced plea deal:
Judge Burns sentenced GALIETTI at the high-end of the federal sentencing guidelines range of 37 to 46 months, stating that GALIETTI was an “important cog in the Galante machine.” In arguing for a sentence of 46 months, the Government noted that GALIETTI used his contacts in law enforcement to attempt to ascertain if he was under investigation, convened meetings with competitors to quell potential price wars, had competing carters “locked out” of transfer stations, bullied customers seeking to obtain more favorable rates, threatened non-compliant carters with violence and, in one instance, damaged the property of a competitor.
When he pleaded guilty, GALIETTI specifically admitted that from approximately June 2004 to August 2005, he agreed with others to improperly control the trash hauling industry in Connecticut by having participating carters respect a fellow carter’s claim to a customer, either by not competing for that customer or, when solicited by the customer, declining to pursue the opportunity or collusively bidding at a prearranged price designated to lose the contract.
For those interested, here is the town by town breakdown of trash haulers in the affected Connecticut territory.
Maybe Connecticut will get better about investigating corruption. Maybe not. It will perhaps be up to the Feds to look into this more closely. It’s not like they have to start from scratch. On June 30, 2008, Amanda Brown received a letter from Enviro Express, about the bidding process and the contract. You can view it here: page1 and page2. Enviro Express has a certain problem that the New York Office the State Comptroller identified in September of 2005. I’ll quote the relevant bits here, emphasis added:
Worth/Enviro Joint Venture was a business created between Worth Construction and
Enviro Recycling, which was a division of Enviro Express, a Connecticut waste
hauling company. One of the partners in Enviro Express is Tommy Milo, the known
member of organized crime and convicted felon noted above.
The above bit referenced?
Pontoriero was a partner in Equities of 47th St, along with three other individuals,
Gerald Fiorino, Vincent Vigliotti and Tommy Milo. Fiorino and Vigliotti were
subsequently indicted by the NY County District Attorney for Enterprise Corruption,
and Tommy Milo has been identified as a known member of organized crime and is
also a convicted felon.
According to Morris and Brown, apparently what’s not good enough for the State of New York is apparently a-okay for the City of Norwalk. Enviro Express, btw, is the trash hauler that Norwalk currently has under the expiring contract with CRRA. CRRA does not haul trash, Enviro Express does, and that is how they are linked.
Morris in today’s Alexandra Fenwick’s Advocate article said he wants the council to reconsider the vote and then send the issue back to committee. Really? Is this really in the best interest of Norwalk? Galen Wells would have you believe it is. So would Amanda Brown. I suspect that this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and that once again the good ship Norwalk Dems is full steam ahead when they really, really, should be learning from past history.
source: Corporate Crime Reporter 18 Corporate Crime Reporter 3(8), January 19, 2004
