Mayor Joe Ganim has proposed creation of a government watchdog unit, but how can it be truly independent when the head of the agency works at the pleasure of the mayor? CT Post reporter Brian Lockhart examines the issue.
What if the accountability czar needs to investigate the mayor or his allies?
Carol Carson head of Connecticut’s Office of State Ethics, said one necessity for a successful watchdog program is making it as independent as possible.
“If the mayor holds the key to my paycheck, it’s going to be a lot more difficult for me to investigate matters involving the mayor,” she said. “That’s just human nature.”
Carson works for a nine-person board. The governor, state House of Representatives and state Senate each appoint three members.
Full story here.
I have a question for Mr. Adams: Are you a partner in A RECENTLY OPENED OR SOON TO OPEN RESTAURANT IN BLACK ROCK? If SO I SUGGEST YOU RESIGN FROM CITY EMPLOYMENT NOW.
Andy–I believe he is an investor. I think you are resigned to dislike anything affiliated with this administration.
Grin,
Andy is a courageous Bridgeport citizen both in his early vocation as a fireman, and then as an arson investigator. Having seen the failure of too many members of the Town Committee apparatus as well as elected and appointed City officials through the years to comprehend what a “conflict of interest” is or can be, and how to deal with it in open fashion, he is on point as a watchdog.
And knowing how little response I get when reporting on subjects like stipend ordinance failure to be followed, funding for charitable organizations continuing, and simple matters of public spending (like using 20-year bonding funds to pay for current operating budget items) I understand his zeal and frustration. Where is the outrage in Bridgeport? Where is the road to repair? Time will tell.
Come on Grin, you are beginning to sound like Jeff Kohut. The Ganim Admin can do no wrong. Andy asked if Adams was a partner in a business. Your answer is no, he’s an investor. Well I guess that means he is a partner or owner depending on how much he invested.
Ripper, I will readily admit I am not a Ganim supporter. Back in his first term I helped clean up and set up his office. I was appointed to the Parks Commission. I was asked to vote to sell Beardsley Park and the state could give us millions of budget money based on the Park Board’s vote. The vote was tied at 4 and I had the deciding vote. Ganim promised me he would not sell or lease the golf course if I voted for the sale. I voted for the sale and broke the tie and lost two friends.
The next thing I know Ganim has the courses up for lease, I get offered a bribe by a mayoral aide which I report to the Feds. Ganim replaces all the commissioners whose terms had expired and replaces them with people who will lease the course. Well the course was leased for two years and the city did not receive one nickel from the lease.
Sorry for the long answer but yes I am anti-Ganim and when his administration screws up I will be there.
The Ganim administration has followed through with a concept floated during their campaign to create an “office of public integrity,” or as close as can be imagined for Bridgeport CT at this moment in history. The text of a proposed ordinance to be reviewed by the City Council deals with a potential Commission and Office of Government Accountability “to monitor and ensure that the public’s interest in open, transparent and accountable government is protected and advanced.” Attribution for the advancement of such a subject rests with Ed Adams, a retired FBI agent who was part of the investigative team that toppled Ganim in his first terms and who was supportive of his “second chance” campaign.
Within the past two weeks Forbes magazine published an interview with Bishop Frank Caggiano, leader of Catholics in the Diocese of Bridgeport for the past two years. In a wide-ranging discussion of the challenges in operation of a diocese in 2016, Bishop Frank is quoted, “We have to be open, transparent and financially accountable.” (Bishop Caggiano was appointed by Pope Francis and does not have to face elections or votes in a ballot box, it must be remembered.) He was interviewed by Susan Adams, a Forbes staff person, who has to my knowledge no relation to Bridgeport’s Ed Adams.
What stitches the two comments together in my mind is the use of the three words with which I am very familiar and have been sharing with CT Post and OIB readers for nearly a decade: Open, Accountable, and Transparent as critical values for institutions that wish to be acknowledged as serving people. Last year, while running unsuccessfully for City Council, we added the word Honest to the list, so the acronym changed from OAT to OATH.
Initially I raised these values as absent from the local diocese in the case of the harm to persons, to respect and trust in leadership and to resources continued to surround the Catholic Church in the Diocese due to the clergy abuse scandal. For instance, until Bishop Caggiano took charge, annual public financial status reports were suspended for over five years, a subject having nothing to do with one’s faith or theology. As I studied the situation in which the Church leaders found themselves, these three values seemed to provide a way out of the darkness and into the light.
I continued to see their application to City of Bridgeport financial and overall governance as I became more involved with BOB (Budget Oversight Bridgeport) early in Bill Finch’s first term. The lack of check and balance bodies empowered by the City Charter continues to be a problem. This includes the extreme lack of purpose of the City Council occasioned by the conflicts of interest of the Council President for more than eight years, the elimination of any real legislative independent support almost four years ago, and no ingrained fiscal expertise to represent City taxpayers. City Boards and Commissions have been groomed within the standing rules to do practically nothing on their own advisement about their subject “territory.” to get no training and hold no evaluations regarding quality of public service, and to be comfortable acting as “tail-wagging friends of any administration” rather than as watchdogs of the broader public interest.
Ganim2 has much work to accomplish in organizing and re-organizing the structures and practices that had operated for too long in contravention to the Charter, existing Ordinances, best practices of surrounding communities and common sense. Such a situation does not happen overnight, but steady evidence of attention to such matters rather than the use of words like OPEN, ACCOUNTABLE and TRANSPARENT without understanding their meaning. In such manner, Mayor Finch appeared before his handpicked Charter Reform Committee several years ago to use the word “accountable” frequently in his proposal to take over appointment power to the BOE. It was easy to indicate in many ways he was not “accountable” in then-current governance and the voting public protected their right to vote for BOE candidates.
Definitions matter. Examples of creating more access to public information, to public address to Council and staff, to use of technology and internet for presenting almost all regular public documents promptly. The Ethics Commission needs strengthening in practical fashion so their work is known and respected. Enforcement powers might be considered as well, but then we are talking about Charter changes, probably. Is it too early to set an agenda for that subject? Time will tell.
Now Grin, you have this individual who is the director or advisor to the mayor on all things Governmentally Responsible. In this capacity he may be involved in investigating other offices of the government. In his case he has a financial interest in a business that may need approval from various city departments. His investment will definitely be subject to ongoing inspections by the Health Dept. These departments reviewing the business in which he has a financial interest may also be subject to scrutiny by himself in his full-time city job.
That, Grin, is a potential conflict of interest AND that, my dear friend, is not a laughing matter.
I think some people have a heart-on for Adams. I admire and respect Andy. He’s a Semper Fi guy. He’s readily admitted his anti-Ganim prejudice.
This is a case of Screwtiny on The Bounty!!!
I think the biggest group of people with a heart-on for Ed are some of his former colleagues, agents for the FBI. None would speak publicly but privately none were happy with Adams’ antics.
Mr. Ed doesn’t feel it is necessary to speak up and disclose his financial interest in a business regulated by the city but he has no problem speaking out in support of an organized crime figure in Danbury after he left the FBI. I believe the term he used was a “stand-up” kind of guy because he refused to name others in the criminal activities.
Speaks to the character of our Director of Governmental Integrity.
Sounds like a turn the eye kind of guy.
Is Shelton mayor/businessman Mark Lauretti ethically conflicted in his dual roles?
Was NYC-based Bloomberg L.P. billionaire owner Mike Bloomberg conflicted in his roles of NYC mayor/Bloomberg L.P. owner? Would he be conflicted as such were he to pursue/serve in the office of POTUS?
Should all people with a business/property/financial interest in a place be proscribed from serving in an elected or appointed position in that place?
It is very difficult to safeguard, in a reasonable manner, against all conflicts of interest between political and business interests.
I fail to see why Mr. Adams can’t legitimately acquire and maintain a business interest in the city while also working for the city. There are far too many examples of civil servants legitimately owning/operating businesses in the context of their civil service for it to be said that Mr. Adams shouldn’t own a business in Bridgeport. Where do such situations become conflicts of interest/unethical?
There are some obvious situations, such as a real estate investor serving as head of a taxation-appeals board, a Police Chief operating a security company within the jurisdiction of his command, or a vice-POTUS being heavily invested in a defense company doing business with the United States (especially during a time of war). But I don’t see the conflict in a mayoral aide, as such, being invested in a dining establishment. Where is the ethical or financial risk to the city? Are all appropriate taxes being applied to the business and its owners? Is the business properly zoned and in compliance with all city codes? It wouldn’t seem it is the type of business, such as waste storage or waste handling, that would profit appreciably through manipulation of the political system/municipal codes.
And in regard to the proposed Office of Public Integrity; while such an institution is indicated and appropriate for a city such as Bridgeport, as such it will do little to further the well-being of the city or its residents. It will do little to grow our tax base or bring living-wage jobs to our city. (Shelton, for example, is notoriously corrupt, but prosperous.)
And Bridgeporters indulging in the type of tail-chasing that is political score-keeping by way of examining every political move and secretion of our elected and appointed officials, is truly an exercise in mindlessness.
In a city that just saw its tax base regress by 15% (over $1 billion), the main concern should be in directing our politicians/political process in the pursuit of the location of billions of dollars of high-value tax base and living-wage jobs to Bridgeport.
For concerned citizens of Bridgeport to fail to see and understand the phenomenon of the political/economic subjugation of Bridgeport to regional political-economic interests is pathetic. In this context, it is truly absurd for Bridgeporters to turn on themselves and their institutions as an exercise in improving the condition of their city.
For us to see the region maintaining its lifestyle at our expense but continuing to insist our failure to thrive is due to home-grown corruption speaks to our stupidity. We accommodate the sanitation, social service, workforce housing/labor and judiciary/incarceration services, and electric power needs of the region, while having the highest rates of taxation, poverty, and air pollution in the region, but we fail to make a connection between this situation and the low tax rates, pristine environments and high lifestyles enjoyed by our affluent neighbors. We think the daily traffic jams between Bridgeport and Stamford are because there aren’t enough trains on the New Haven Line and because there aren’t enough lanes on Routes 15, 25, 8, or I-95. We can see the new City Hall Administration sports a few minor blemishes, but we can’t see where there is obviously something wrong with the way Bridgeport is treated, in terms of regional wealth and development. (But we’re more than willing to believe Bridgeport is its own worst enemy, because our regional political/economic overseers say it’s so, and point out Bridgeport isn’t squeaky clean, so it must be so. But they fail to account for their own prosperity in the context of the stench of corruption wafting up from the suburban environs from which they hale, much less any corrupting effect their influence might have on Bridgeport.
As long as Bridgeporters think beating up on ourselves and our City Hall is going to solve our problems, we’re not going to nudge our city even one inch toward prosperity.
And as long as City Hall persists in the same, losing economic development game plan we has been pursuing for six decades with only negative results, Bridgeport is going to slip farther into the abyss, notwithstanding any new Office of Public Integrity.
Bridgeport needs to think big, bad and bold and realize it is a political/economic giant that has been pinned down and cowed by the surrounding political/economic Lilliputian municipalities that comprise the rest of Fairfield County.
Jeff, at least tell the truth. Bloomberg put his holdings in a trust to be looked after by someone else. There have been cases where politicians needed to sell off certain holdings to get the federal job they wanted. Stop making it look like the Ganim team is right every time.
I spoke to a lot of people I know in law enforcement, some still active and most retired. No one ever had someone they sent to prison show up after they were released as a friend or showed up for a cup of coffee. I have seen people I put in jail after they were released and none of them wanted to be friends. This friendship bears watching.
Andy: When you’re richer than some countries and own a company that can cause significant movement in the world economy, then realistically there’s no such thing as a “blind trust.”