Former City Council legislative liaison Tom White who has filed a complaint in federal court challenging the elimination of his job will appear Tuesday at 8 p.m. on the cable access show Bridgeport Now co-hosted by Jennifer Buchanan. The weekly live call-in show airs on Cablevision channel 88. The show is also streamed live at www.soundviewtv.org. The call-in number is 203-345-0103.
Discussion will include controversial City Council stipends, conflict of interest issues such as council members approving their own wages and benefits, use of FOI requests, as well as White’s court case.
White, represented by former Mayor Tom Bucci, a seasoned employment discrimination attorney, asserts the city violated his First Amendment rights as the victim of retaliation because he “acted as the conscience and moral compass for the City Council.” Bucci has a mighty record representing city employees in claims against the city.
The lawsuit also claims council members were “inappropriately diverting expense payments from their individual stipends to the general revenues of the city budget to fraudulently increase their individual expense accounts. On one occasion, in 2007, a member of the City Council instructed the plaintiff to charge conference-related expenses to department funds in the general fund, rather than his stipend which he had depleted.”
