Thomas MacMillan Photo
Appeals board Chair Michael Newton.
Aldermen Michael Smart (left) and Darnell Goldson.
New allegations of misbehavior — including nepotism and possible no-show work — surfaced at a stormy public hearing as a mayoral appointee defied a subpoena to give a public accounting of scandalous goings-on at the Board of Assessment Appeals. An alleged Facebook posting emerged as a possible smoking gun. And the board’s chair defended a tax appeal he filed himself on a property he bought to flip.
Missing in action at Tuesday night’s hearing was Jacqueline Harris. She resigned from the Board of Assessment Appeals on Aug. 19 amid charges that the body — legally charged to give taxpayers a second chance if the city has wronged them — has failed to meet in public, meet some of the most basic thresholds of competence, or otherwise carry out its duties according to law.
The Board of Aldermen’s Tax Abatement Committee, which held the hearing in City Hall’s aldermanic chambers, had issued a subpoena for Harris to appear and offer testimony. The group has held a series of hearings into a broader swath of charges of misconduct by city tax officials, drawing crowds of angry taxpayers. Tuesday night’s hearing lasted four and a half hours.
The committee also subpoenaed Harris’ fellow board member, committee Chair Michael Newton (pictured). Newton did show up Tuesday night and provided responses, testily at times, to cross-examination from aldermen. After his grilling, Newton announced he, too, has resigned from the board.
The mayor appoints the members of the appeals board.
Newton began his testimony on a combative note, lashing out at an alderman for allegedly not paying taxes. He was then subjected to extensive questioning about the Board of Assessment Appeals’ procedures.
Of particular interest to aldermen was new revelations of alleged conflicts of interest or compromised relationships: Harris turns out to be a rent-paying tenant of Newton. Harris’ son works as a paid clerical staffer to the Board of Assessment Appeals, with a questionable work record. And Newton filed a tax appeal himself last year, which his tenant/ fellow board member Harris voted on.
Those relationships raise ethical questions in light of a tax appeal filed this year by Newton himself.
Wooster Square Alderman Michael Smart, chair of the committee, said he will confer with committee counsel Michael Jefferson to determine how to handle the new allegations of impropriety and Harris’s defiance of the subpoena, despite a City Hall assurance that she would show up. Jefferson said Harris could be compelled by a judge to appear before the board, if necessary.
Tuesday’s meeting was the latest in a series of public hearings in which the Board of Assessment of Appeals and the tax assessor’s office have come under fire. The appeals board has failed to hold meetings in public or produce minutes of meetings or decisions, as required by law. This year, artists and small business people have filed complaints after receiving huge spikes in their tax bills, including across-the-board $5,000 assessments on personal property; those hikes were levied by the tax assessor based not on inspections, but alleged industry “standards.” Complaining taxpayers reported sometimes bizarre encounters with the appeals board, and in some cases said they were told their appeals were granted, only to receive subsequent letters from the tax office saying the opposite. In one case, the owner of a for-profit downtown coffee shop appealed being charged for failing to submit paperwork required of not-for-profit organizations — and was denied. (Click here to read Betsy Yagla’s New Haven Advocate story first reporting the appeals board shenanigans.)
“James, Yeah”
Tuesday night’s four-and-a-half-hour meeting included extensive testimony from taxpayers who continue to complain that they’ve been unfairly or mistakenly sent large tax bills. The committee then moved into the “workshop” section of the meeting, calling Harris and Newton to testify.
City Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden informed the board that Harris’ attorney had communicated to him that Harris would not be appearing. Bolden had previously criticized the issuance of a subpoena for Harris to appear and declared she was planning to attend anyway.
Michael Newton did show. Immediately upon sitting down, Newton announced that he pays $32,000 a year in taxes— unlike, he said, some people on the committee. He later revealed that he was referring to West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson, who he said doesn’t own any property in New Haven. Goldson said his house is under his wife’s name and he pays taxes with the mortgage every month.
Alderwoman Jackson-Brooks.
Newton’s opening comments drew a sharp rebuke from Hill Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks, prompting an apology.
“We’re not here to attack you,” Smart said. “This is not a witch hunt.”
Goldson confirmed with Newton that he gets paid a $50 stipend per “session.” Newton last year earned $1,850 in 37 sessions, Goldson said. Meanwhile, Harris earned $7,000 last year for her work on the Board of Assessment Appeals. “That’s a huge discrepancy. Why was there such a difference?” Goldson asked.
“I don’t know why there was such a large discrepancy,” Newton said. Harris did come in during the day often to do paperwork and filing, Newton said.
Goldson then zeroed in on questions about support staff to the appeals board. Newton said the board has two part-time clerical workers. He said he couldn’t remember their names. No problem, Goldson had their names ready. One of them, he reminded Newton, is “James H. Harris, the Third.”
“James, yeah,” Newton said.
“Is Mr. Harris related in any way to Ms. Jackie Harris?” Goldson asked.
“I believe — I believe so, yes,” Newton said. “I think — I think he’s a stepson?”
“A son?” Goldson said.
“A son, I mean, her son,” Newton said.
Goldson asked if Newton was trained on ethics when he began serving on the board. Newton said he was.
“So is it permissible for the board to hire a relative — a direct relative — as an employee?” Goldson asked.
“You know, I understand where you’re going with this but it’s … it was really a matter of we needed — we needed people to really [do] data entry,” Newton said. The person who had been doing it wasn’t able to this year, he said. “We just really needed to get him in there to do that entry.”
Moments later, Goldson drew Newton’s attention to an address listed on a spreadsheet of appeals board actions. “There’s a notation here for a property that you own at 84 Fountain St. that you asked for an appeals on.”
“Right,” Newton said. (Newton said he owns five properties in New Haven.)
“Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re a citizen you have a right to ask for an appeal,” Goldson said. But certainly you didn’t rule on the request, he said to Newton.
“Right, and that property was sold way before the process,” Newton said.
“Right, but you asked for the appeal, is that correct?”
“Absolutely,” Newton said. The appeal was heard but it was presented by the new owner, he said, stammering a little. “That property closed in, I believe, March.”
“And the hearing was in April,” Goldson said. “So you filed an appeal for the new owners?”
“We didn’t know who the new owners were going to be,” Newton said.
“Is it also true that Ms. Harris is a tenant of yours?” Goldson asked.
“Yes, she is,” Newton said. She moved into one of his houses two years ago, he said.
“But she was also, in partner with you, hiring staff that’s related to her,” Goldson said. “That’s not appropriate, is it?”
“It wasn’t … it wasn’t like it was, it was hidden. It’s not really like we hire anyone, it … it … I understand where you’re going, but-”
“This gentleman made over $8,000 last year as a staff member,” Goldson interrupted. He was supposed to be doing data entry, but aldermen can’t seem to get the data they need, he said.
Newton later said he and Harris signed off on her son’s time cards. The son no longer works for the board and has moved to North Carolina, Newton said. To which Goldson announced that he had internet evidence that James Harris moved south in the middle of the time in which he was supposedly working for the appeals board. He said the man’s Facebook status updates from early spring indicated that he had moved to a town in the south. Newton said that wasn’t the case.
Goldson later returned to the matter of the house Newton sold after filing a tax appeal on it. “Did you have some sort of deal with the buyers on whether or not the price would change based on the assessment?”
“No,” Newton said
“Amusing” Appeals
Aldermen continued cross-examining Newton about board procedures and the board’s relationship with city tax Assessor Bill O’Brien.
Newton answered all questions, launching at times into a defense of his work as chair of the board and a defense of the assessor’s office. “There’s a lot of different issues that it’s easy to attack people on with these assessments, and it’s not an easy job,” he said.
At one point, Newton called it “amusing” how incomplete and inaccurate taxpayers applications to the board can be. That drew another sharp rebuke, this time from Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro: “I find that very disrespectful to everyone who’s come in front of this committee to testify.”
Newton didn’t back down. He said that a taxpayer who testified earlier made flippant remarks about the appeals board. “There’s a two-way street here. I just want you to know that we spent many, many hours working on this and weekends on this,” he said. Sometimes taxpayers don’t make it to multiple proposed meeting times, he said.
Newton also lashed out at the press, saying that phone calls from reporters have made Harris “very uncomfortable” and that may be why she didn’t show to Tuesday’s meeting.
Newton was asked why he didn’t respond to repeated requests from the committee to appear and testify, until he was subpoenaed. He said he has been away all summer.
“They Don’t Get It”
After over an hour of testimony, Newton was dismissed. He hurried out of the aldermanic chamber. At the top of the steps in the City Hall atrium, he paused with an unlit cigarette cupped in his hand.
“I really have done a lot for these people,” he said aggrievedly. He paced back and forth. “They don’t get it.”
He said he hadn’t done anything wrong in filing an appeal for the house he had owned at 84 Fountain St. He bought it at the end of last summer, “as a flip.” It was “way overvaluated,” he said. He sold it before the hearing process and recused himself, Newton said.
As for hiring Harris’ son, that was a matter of necessity, Newton said, unbuttoning his top button and loosening his tie. “We try to get as much done as we can. We had to find people to do filing. We didn’t have anybody.”
“I’m tired of really getting a hard time,” Newton said. “I’ve already handed in my resignation. I have no need or desire to deal with this.”
After the meeting, Goldson said the relationships — both familial and financial — between appeals board members and staff raise a number of ethical questions. In addition to the ethics of hiring one’s son, can a tenant objectively rule on a tax appeal on a property recently owned by her landlord, someone to whom she has a financial obligation?
Alderman Smart said the committee will be conferring with attorney Jefferson on those questions and determining a course of action, which might involve the city Ethics Commission.
The committee needs to conduct a thorough investigation of the appeals board and determine if any laws have been violated, Jefferson (pictured) said.
Attorney Michael Jefferson.
Aldermanic Attorney?
After grilling Newton, aldermen turned their attention to city attorney Bolden. They wanted to know why it had taken so long to subpoena Newton and Harris.
“It seemed like there was feet-dragging,” Smart said. “It’s been a whole shell game.”
After raised-voice accusations and denials of obstructionism between Bolden and Smart, Bolden stormed out of the meeting. He returned at the end of the meeting to laugh and shake hands with Smart.
Hill Alderwoman Jackson-Brooks took the opportunity to bring up the idea of the Board of Aldermen having its own lawyer, so that it’s not looking for counsel from a mayoral staffer. “I think that we ought to have some autonomy, particularly when it gets to this kind of situation,” she said. “We’ve got to have someone that can give us a straight answer. I don’t know that anyone’s looking out for our interest.”
Goldson seconded the idea.
Can somebody clearly tell me what all this is really about?