In March OIB reported that federal investigators are probing allegations that AJ Perez received an unfair advantage in the police chief testing process such as advance help with questions by a subordinate. That contention places Perez directly in line with the federal investigation.
That is in part what federal agents are reviewing as the city’s legal and consulting bills mushroom in response to a summer 2019 federal subpoena for records. Several city employees and current and former police officers have faced federal questioning while attorneys’ fee mount.
CT Post reporter Brian Lockhart has an update:
Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration has spent over $500,000 responding to a months-long federal criminal probe into City Hall, including hiring private attorneys for the mayor, his chief of staff, the police chief and personnel director.
“They’re experienced lawyers in federal matters,” R. Christopher Meyer, who runs the municipal law department, said Thursday. “That includes information gathering by outside agencies (seeking) to determine whether there was anything done inappropriately.”
According to documents Meyer’s office provided this week to the City Council, outside attorneys J. Bruce Maffeo and Kerry Lawrence signed contracts last July to represent Ganim and his second-in-command, Daniel Shamas, respectively, in connection with an ongoing investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices of Connecticut and the Southern District of New York.
Full story here.
Maffeo was part of Ganim’s criminal defense team in 2003 when he was convicted on public corruption charges.
Here we go again, the Flucking Taxpayers footing the bill for Joe Ganim and his cronies!
Where does it say that we pay all legal bills for ex employees?
I’ve spoken in the past about Randi Frank Consulting LLC and you can look for yourself and you will find that this testing company has NEVER given a police exam with a city like Bridgeport with its population and its racial make-up of Bridgeport. Randi Frank Consulting LLC does testing for very small towns nothing like Bridgeport, they are trying to build their resume on Bridgeport so that they can get larger cities and towns but thy can not show that they have given an exam where blacks have done well.
Randi Frank Consulting LLC
7700 Hoover Way
Louisville, KY 40219
I’m just hoping that the feds had bugs near the little table outside of the kitchen (open air) -that they were surveilling back when they started up this investigation. All of Testa and Ganims boys would sit around and have espresso in the morning and discuss who get what. Shamas, AJ and all the rest. If there were bugs, these guys are fucked. Mario will not be touched Just like the last time when they bugged his restaurant.
I’m a no nuttin about nuttin…I was a making da pisa….
And AGAIN- costing the taxpayers a ton of money to defend these creeps not to mention everything else lost by way of bad management of the PD, public works and the rest of the entire city etc etc etc.
Great pensions though as the final kick in the ass to taxpayers as they go!!!!!
Cheers!!!!!!!!!!
Mario should know the drill. In his old shop on Madison Ave during the Ganim 1 days, he used to have the place swept for bugs at least once per month. And to be safe he would discuss bizness by talking under the smoke vent. He’s vulnerable but he’s also very wise.
Bob, don’t give Mario so much credit. Do you really think that he came out clean under the JG1 wiretaps? Don’t you think he made a deal. Don’t you think he had enough clout being the DTC chairman and being able to deliver so many votes for the Democrats and that’s why nothing happened to him. If you remember Bob, Mario basically lived in that place so you tell me how the bugs got in there. Food for thought.
Cheers!!!!!
Thanks for catching up to everyone else, Lennie. See the last 20 or so comments on yesterday’s blog.
As I said on yesterday’s blog, Mark needs to make public the documents where all of these individuals promised to payback the city if they are found guilty of ANY crimes and they also need to pledge personal assets showing that they can make good.
He told the council the same bull shit the first time around and didn’t collect a dime.
So taxpayers, what do you say???
Fool me once shame on me.
Fool me twice shame on you.
Let’s see if Mayor Nieves has grown any overnight.
If an employee is found to be guilty as charged do we (taxpaying public) get to recoup legal fees?
Howard according to Mark they will giveback the money. History tells us the city doesn’t go after it. Too much trouble.
Hey Lennie,
Maybe you could answer Howard better since you have first hand knowledge.
How much did you have to pay back the city for covering your legal defense???
Troll, city did not cover my legal fees. More than $100K out of my pocket. I was not a city employee.
Did you ever think Mario an informant. ? Like Al Sharpton. Only way I can see why there not both in jail .
Duh!!!!
Barry I heard that they Feds were willing to cut a deal the last time was if Joe was willing to give up two people.
His father and Mario.
Joe did the time.
Now I see why Mayor Ganim shortchanged the BBOE so that he could have money to pay the legal bills for himself and his cronies. The hell with the children they don’t need a decent education, we have to stay out of jail.
I mean,is anyone surprised??..nothing changes till Mario either gets indicted or moves on(one way or another) from his position in the DTC…Something else to think about,if Mario & Joe think nothing of spending $500,000 of our money to defend themselves and their friends,can you imagine how much more they are stealing??..Bridgeport,we’re screwed…
Only an absurd level of incompetence at the top leadership levels of the City Hall departments involved (really, all City Hall Departments) in this city’s never-ending, annual, multi-million$, legal-misstep/legal-problems/law-suits $-dump can explain this absurd “trait” (stumbling down legal flights of stairs in the dark…/stupidity aspect) of Bridgeport city government… But then, this would be in keeping with our decades-long decline and self-fulfilling prophecy of municipal failure enacted at the polls every 4 years…
Really: I am at the point that I would be willing to admit the inability of Bridgeport to govern itself and would be amenable to a wholesale takeover of Bridgeport by the state of Connecticut… The whole City Hall “Gang that couldn’t shoot straight” (along with the CC that has failed to provide competent, effective oversight) should just resign en masse, and allow the state to work with the people of the City in getting a fresh start for Bridgeport… The timing is right. The VIRUS has made a fresh start for the whole world a timely, indicated thing…
Jeff Kohut, BINGO!!!!! I’m in total agreement with you, Bridgeport is not able to manage it’s own City government and the way that Governor Lamont has dealt with COVID-19 in having Connecticut with the lowest rate in America shows that he has the skill and ability to take over Bridgeport.
I’m glad we’re in agreement on this huge Bridgeport issue, Ron. We both like to argue, so when we reach that rare altitude where we inclined to agree on things, it’s an indication that the issue is breaking free of the bonds of personal inclinations and getting into an area of common space…
I find that gratifying!
Now; I wonder how you would feel about the launching of a ” state takeover of Bridgeport” petition by those candidates running for Bridgeport office this year, who might be in agreement with us?
It’s obviously a time in our city, state, and national histories for the initiation of monumental, era-level changes. We can’t have that change in our city without a clean sweep and fresh start — free of the bonds of local/regional politics — hence the need for a state takeover… And our example could certainly lend energy, by example and the associated, state-wide/federal district political movement that will ensue — to the larger change movements at the state and national levels… It could play in nicely to the Presidential election this Fall…
The time is now because time waits for no one. We can’t have that change in our city without a clean sweep and fresh start, let’s start now.
If the Police Chief received an unfair advantage than what the hell about the Superintendent of School???
They announce that if you apply for the interim than you CANNOT apply for the permanent.
So he gets the interim and without any other announcements they make him the permanent. And he doesn’t even meet the minimum.
If that’s not an unfair advantage I don’t know 🤷♂️ what is!!!
And there is a ton of federal funds involved in the BOE!
Janette Herron says that she’s not worried because it’s “pretty common” practice to lawyer up when law enforcement scrutinizes government.
That is the dumbest quote in the world. What isn’t common practice is having law enforcement scrutinizing the government to begin with!!!
Bob, when did Janette Herron says that she’s not worried because it’s “pretty common” practice to lawyer up when law enforcement scrutinizes government?
At the end of the article in the CT Post.
The second dumbest comment is “I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned with”.
Words to live by.
Lennie.
Can you,from your personal experience, direct us to what Ordinance or State Statute entitles a City Employee, at any level, to receive funding at any time for the services of a legal defense provided by a Criminal Lawyer?
The City of Bridgeport Attorney office has continued three former lawyer employees who have reportedly retired and taken advantage of their pensions, but also are booking as contract legal consultants about $100,000 per year but no benefits. How many hours do they consult for a fee of $100,000. A forty hour week worked for 50 weeks a year produces a $50 per hour rate of pay. Is that actually what is happening? Are they working 2,000 hours per year, on what subjects for what amounts to $50 per hour, with no benefits while knowing that other outside counsel is receiving $300 to $450 or more on other City matters?
Where is that old OPEN, ACCOUNTABLE, TRANSPARENT and HONEST governance today when we need it? Who is part of the Bridgeport oversight team that can provide a good answer on this? Time will tell.
Just asking for a friend, did the $35, 000 illicit scrap metal sales underwrite any of Joe Ganim’s campaigns?
Jeff Kohut, you wrote, “It’s obviously a time in our city, state, and national histories for the initiation of monumental, era-level changes. We can’t have that change in our city without a clean sweep.” Jeff, below is a portion of an article about Bridgeport’s own PT Barnum and base on the climate in America the Barnum Festival Committee needs to look at the whole history of Barnum as a slave owner, a minstrel-show performer who, while in blackface and Barnum’s racism. In his book Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked-Tailed Elephant, P. T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison, author Michael Daly.
To further illustrate his racism, Barnum was also a minstrel-show performer who, while in blackface, sang “plantation melodies.” And he managed black performers who were forced to degrade themselves for white audiences.
Against this backdrop, Barnum both absorbed and helped to articulate many of the dominant racial attitudes of his era. As a young showman touring the South during the late 1830s, he had briefly owned slaves-a sin for which he later publicly apologized. More typically, he catered to the conventional prejudices and fascinations of his Northern audiences, producing a wide variety of “living curiosity” exhibitions that accentuated all varieties of difference between viewer and performer. These exhibitions did not focus exclusively on any one race, ethnicity, nationality, or physical attribute. Rather, the guiding principle was to create a spectrum of freakishness outside the boundaries of white middle-class normalcy.