You want an accomplished labor attorney? Hire Tom Bucci. The former mayor (full disclosure: I worked for him) has represented a steady stream of current and former city employees against the city over a variety of labor relations issues. When it comes to understanding laws governing working rights in the municipal process, Bucci knows it as well as anyone, with a mighty record against the city’s Labor Relations staff. CT Post reporter Brian Lockhart has the latest on Bucci client Berndt Tardy, the city’s purchasing agent.
Berndt Tardy, who as acting purchasing director for more than a decade was caught up in the 2013 controversy over developer Manuel “Manny” Moutinho’s no-bid driveway, has won a chance to keep the job on a permanent basis.
In December 2013, about six months after Hearst Connecticut Media first reported on the Moutinho scandal, the city advertised for a full-time purchasing chief and Tardy was among the four finalists who took written and oral exams last summer.
Full story here.
Wouldn’t you love to have a list of all his clients who have sued and/or settled with the city and know the amount of each award? Then wouldn’t you love to know how much the city has had to pay Bucci in each of these matters? And the list just grows and grows.
Tom Bucci does it the old-fashioned way. He knows the Charter, the law and the rules and his clients can count on him to insist on them being followed.
Tom Bucci is one of the best with these types of cases and you would think the City would get its act together but they won’t so there is a big need for Mr. Bucci to keep the City in line.
I have made it a practice to attend different Board and Commission meetings. It helps to see signs of belief in public integrity, caring about individuals as well as the public in general and an awareness of conflicts of interest.
Yesterday’s meeting was a treat to listen to Tom Bucci, look to our Charter for guidance on Civil Service Commission activity and to the State of CT from statutes and legal decisions upholding certain principles and standards. The right to expect to have the oral exam presented by five people unknown to the candidate was not observed by the Civil Service Director, for his own reasons, when he selected four City Hall administrators who knew little or nothing about purchasing to question candidate Tardy.
Mr. Tardy cried foul as to the Oral Exam process and hired Mr. Bucci. The Civil Service System has Attorney John Mitola from the City Attorney’s Office representing them. And John Bohannon was hired by the City to represent it in this action. Mr. Bohannon was not tongue-tied as he admitted, despite his serious and advanced search he could find nothing in the law itself or in subsequent cases in this well-contested area that would allow this major failure on the part of the Civil Service process to be honored.
So the law as written won the day. And the taxpayers still had to pay for overreach or underperformance by the Director, though he was probably following orders. I have been calling for a sheriff in many instances of failure to follow the Charter, Ordinance or Statute. Here was a case where the Civil Service process and three attorneys and four ‘law-abiding’ members of the Civil Service Commission found a way to follow the law.
Purchasing is an area taxpayers must have confidence in. But that is a subject for another day, believe me. Perhaps the City Council will be interested in looking at the purchasing procedure once again. Time will tell.