City Council President Tom McCarthy told CT Post reporter Brian Lockhart the Ganim administration is “making personnel decisions that are highly concerning, and I fear that the city may be dealing with significant legal issues down the road.” Big Mac has experience in this area, he did the same thing on Mayor Bill Finch’s behalf when he was deputy director of Labor Relations: terminations of city employees who did not toe the administration line that led to incalculable legal payouts such as Civil Service Personnel Director Ralph Jacobs, Health Director Marian Evans and others. Tom White was conveniently terminated as well, whited out of the budget by McCarthy as legislative liaison to the City Council, he asserts, for speaking out. He has a federal lawsuit pending.
Many city employees ousted by Finch/McCarthy hired former Mayor Tom Bucci, a labor attorney specialist, to represent them. Bucci deposed McCarthy under oath regarding White’s lawsuit. Ironically, McCarthy hired Bucci to represent his interests to negotiate an exit package after Ganim’s election. Ganim, following a campaign pledge, said he wanted to eliminate the conflicts of city employees serving on the City Council.
McCarthy has discovered checks and balances religion now that he’s no longer on the city payroll. White shares his thoughts about McCarthy’s hypocrisy.
Most recently, the Connecticut Post reported that Health and Social Services Director, Kristin duBay Horton, had been laid off and hired an attorney to sort out the details of what the CT Post referred to as “confusing personnel issues in Ganim’s City Hall.”
This and other dismissals will likely be decided in court.
What caught my attention in this report of duBay Horton’s layoff, was a comment by City Council President Thomas McCarthy where he said “I see them making personnel decisions that are highly concerning, and I fear that the city may be dealing with significant legal issues down the road.”
McCarthy went on to say “I hope that in this quest to save money they don’t end up costing the city more money.”
Well, isn’t that special.
Back in 2012 McCarthy orchestrated my ‘layoff.’ My complaint in Federal court has demonstrated what a phony McCarthy is. Under oath in a deposition he claimed my ‘layoff’ was for economic reasons. When asked how many city employees were laid off due to the budget cuts he could not recall. Court records show that I was the only person to lose their job due to action by the city council.
McCarthy also hired a replacement for me for a position the city council funded in the city clerk’s office. This person reports to McCarthy as testified by the incumbent and assistant city clerk under oath in a deposition. Discovery for my case revealed that McCarthy orchestrated an illegal termination under the guise of an economic layoff.
Most of my case is about interpretation of case law. I was terminated because I made McCarthy and others on the city council uncomfortable with my stating concerns about possible under-reporting of stipend benefits and questionable use of their stipends as well as issues of conflict of interest. My position as their staff person whose job it was to advise them on non-legal matters required me to caution them, mostly through communications to McCarthy. There is much more detail to my case, revealing that I appealed to council members as an individual for them to do the right thing, beyond the role of my position.
So now McCarthy is concerned about the Ganim administration creating a situation where the “city may be dealing with significant legal issues down the road.” My case is before a judge in Federal District Court for a decision. Whatever that decision is, it will come with a cost to city taxpayers thanks to McCarthy.
He needed for his check to clear before he would know his balance.
THANK YOU, Tom White.
So the SOS (same old shit) continues to this very day. 3/21/2016
What Tom White calls hypocrisy, others call politics. He voluntarily stepped into that ring and cried upon mandatory expulsion. He remains a crybaby on the dole with legal council.
Unlike McCarthy, White is an agent of deficit spending thanks to his upcoming Federal Court ruling. He’s an expensive and tiresome burden on society.
Tom White’s history includes a role as a City Council person for four years as a Republican, employment in the private and public sector for 32 years, 13 years with People’s, three with M&F before the banking crisis before becoming Legislative Liaison (Ordinance language) for six years. He earned a BS in Business Admin from Sacred Heart University and an MBA from University of Bridgeport where he also taught as an adjunct in recent years.
To my knowledge he was open and fair-minded when I first encountered him working for the Council members. He asked questions you and others should have been making inquiries about at the time, but did not. The Council members did not have his back, further proof of their co-opted behavior while McCarthy was a City employee and Council President in the Finch years.
When did McCarthy find “conflict of interest” info? Was he cleaning out some notes from law school on the subject? Speaking of “expensive and tiresome burdens,” when McCarthy got in the Bucci client ‘conga line’ to deal with unfair City practices, a kind of departing shakedown, isn’t his $35,000 healthcare expense a public example of deficit spending since it comes in this year of City budget in the RED??
LE, when an unjust termination occurs, shouldn’t people have a right to cry foul? Why are you heaping abuse on White? “Crybaby on the dole” almost sounds like you are speaking someone else’s script today. Did you get this opinion courtesy of a private offering of folding green to represent an opinion other than your own? Do you have new friends who have antipathy for a labor lawyer with a lucrative practice because of the way the City Labor Relations office has worked for many years? Or does this represent a return to messages to your old aluminum foil bonnet from another universe? Time will tell.
There was so much duplicity the former administration was entrenched in, it had become their normal. If the former Mayor did not actively seek to leave Bridgeport citizens holding the financial bag for his childish vendettas, it could be argued any cost incurred to get rid of ALL TRACES of Finch would be money well spent.
Sometimes, what appears unjust is made legal by political ploy. JML, I specialize in statement-based posts. You specialize in questions. Let’s let the judge decide what kind of rabbit he/she will pull from his/her top hat.
*** Tom McCarthy is a yes man and has always been a yes man! Tommy Mac is all about Tommy Mac. ***
Personally, I find it refreshing McCarthy FINALLY is taking a stand on the different issues that are presented to him now. As we all know, during the Finch years Tom was just a puppet for Finch, doing what he was told. Now having said this, I believe his overall “influence” on the other council persons has lessened, since he was let go from his labor job, and knowing Tom doesn’t have that “pipeline” to Joe like he had with Finch, the playing field has leveled. This was pretty evident during the vote on Gaudett’s contract a few weeks ago, Tom was totally against it, and let his feelings be known, the other council persons voted for it regardless, this would have never happened under the Finch regime. Thoughts?
Harvey, you’re so right! I predicted this would happen.