Paul Bass Photo
Robinson-Thorpe, Festa & Foskey-Cyrus Sunday evening.
Declaring that “we don’t want to be dictated to,” a new coalition announced that it has formed to combat what it called union control of New Haven’s Board of Alders.
Six alders met at the home of Beaver Hills Alder Claudette Robinson-Thorpe Sunday evening to make the announcement. They said they plan to hold the first of three neighborhood public meetings at Springs of Life-Giving Water Church at 31 Sperry St. at 4 p.m. on Jan. 25 to get constituents’ input on the direction of local government.
The alders said they were reacting to the influence of one union in particular, UNITE HERE, whose Yale-based Locals 34 and 35 helped elect a majority of the Board of Alders in 2011 and 2013.
Robinson-Thorpe was a member of that union-backed coalition. Now, she declared, she’s not. Another UNITE HERE-recruited alder, Newhallville’s Brenda Foskey-Cyrus, said the same.
They argued that the UNITE HERE-backed board majority had created a new machine that dictates how people should vote and limits discussion and independence, just like the old Democratic Party machine that it replaced.
“I had left one master for another. The voting bloc went from the administration to the union-backed machine. The dictatorship I had in my first term began to show itself ugly in this new board. Nothing was or is not being done on the board without the unions’ oversight,” Robinson-Thorpe declared. (Click here to read a statement Robinson-Thorpe prepared.)
“We don’t need to be dictated to.”
Joining her and Foskey-Cyrus Sunday evening were West Rock Alder Carlton Staggers and first-term Alders Michael Stratton of Prospect Hill/Newhallville, Richard Spears of Bishop Woods, and Anna Festa of East Rock. Later, Downtown Alderman Doug Hausladen said he, too, is part of the group. They held out the promise that Board of Alders will have more “democracy” and transparency in the new two-year term.
They singled out board President Jorge Perez, Democratic Town Chair Jackie James, and UNITE HERE staffer Gwen Mills (who’s also Democratic Town Committee treasurer) as the people enforcing discipline on issues and limiting independence.
Those three, in turn, argued in interviews with the Independent that the board operates transparently, and that they seek to bring alders to consensus to get things accomplished.
The move by Robinson-Thorpe and her colleagues — reprising in some ways a short-lived effort called “Take Back New Haven” by Stratton, Hausladen, and Festa in last year’s election campaign — reflects the ongoing debate in New Haven over the role of organized labor in local politics, specifically the role of Yale’s politically influential unions. Supporters say the group has succeeded in bringing lots of new community-minded people, especially women of color, into the political process and rejuvenated the Board of Alders as a progressive, independent branch of government. Critics, like the new breakaway group (and many posting in this comment thread), call the UNITE HERE-backed majority a new self-serving political machine.
Leadership Quest
The breakaway group recently supported Robinson-Thorpe’s bid for a board leadership position: president pro tem. (The person in the position fills in if the board president is away.) The board’s majority, in a caucus, chose West River’s Tyisha Walker instead. A formal vote for the position will take place at this coming Tuesday evening’s board meeting; Robinson-Thorpe said she plans to continue with her candidacy, even though she lacks the votes to win, in order to take a stand.
Perez and James suggested that Robinson-Thorpe has decided to organize the breakaway group out of disappointment that she didn’t get the leadership position, rather than because of broader problems with how the board runs. They said that they in no way promoted Walker over Robinson-Thorpe, but rather that Walker simply convinced more colleagues to supporter her.
“This is all about the fact that Tyisha appears to have the votes to be president pro tem,” Perez said. “I’m sorry to see [Robinson-Thorpe] is stooping to the level of making accusations.”
“She’s disgruntled,” James said. “It’s high school. It’s very immature.”
For her part, Robinson-Thorpe called the president pro tem vote the culmination of years of concerns she had developed over the unions’ role in the board.
She said leaders had previously discouraged her from seeking leadership positions because she didn’t have enough experience. Then this past year she showed her independence — and now someone with less experience than she has is getting the pro tem position. Robinson-Thorpe is beginning her third term in office, Walker, her second.
As chair of the board’s Black and Hispanic Caucus, Robinson-Thorpe was part of the leadership team that set strategy and communicated with colleagues. Each leader had five alders to call to discuss plans and issues before the board; she said an independent alderman, Jusin Elicker, was on her list, and she was told not to call him or keep him in the loop. (Perez and James denied that.) She said the UNITE HERE-backed majority regularly left the eight or so alders outside the coalition in the dark about pending matters. (Perez and James denied that, too.)
Robinson-Thorpe and Foskey-Cyrus cited the June 2013 vote to sell two downtown streets to Yale for $3 million as a turning point in their view of the board majority.
Robinson-Thorpe said she wanted to vote against the deal. Board leaders supported the deal, saying it gave the city much-needed cash and institutionalized long-term financial commitments from Yale. Critics called it a short-term giveaway of a valuable downtown asset.
“I called Gwen [Mills] and said, ‘I can’t do this,’” Robinson-Thorpe recalled Sunday. “I was directed that, ‘You’re in a coalition. You have to vote with the coalition. You agreed to do this.” Robinson-Thorpe said she ended up going along and voting yes, only to learn later that her constituents opposed the deal.
Mills denied every making that comment to Robinson-Thorpe. She and Perez noted that a number of UNITE HERE-backed alders, including Newhallville’s Delphine Clyburn and Foskey-Cyrus, voted no on the Yale deal; thus, labor didn’t hold a single, unified position. “She should have voted against it. Nobody held a gun to their head,” Perez said.
Robinson-Thorpe said she was told she had a responsibility as a board leader to go along with the consensus of the leadership. “They want leadership to be cohesive.”
Party leaders are supposed to find out where people stand on an issue, then try to forge consensus to get matters passed, James argued. “That’s what leadership is all about — to get people [together] and get things accomplished. What adults do, they go into a room and talk about their issues.”
Machine Politics? Or Coalition Politics?
Carlton Staggers.
Foskey-Cyrus said the turning point for her came in the early stages of the 2013 mayoral campaign, when labor-backed alders met at the union hall on Chapel Street in Fair Haven to discuss backing a candidate. When a number of members wanted to back Democrat Kermit Carolina, rather than the candidate favored by leadership (at the time Jack Keyes, who ended up not running; later, Toni Harp), the meeting ended without a vote, she said. And she was told, she said, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
“Right then I realized this is a joke. We’re not a family. They’re dictators,” Foskey-Cyrus said. Foskey-Cyrus said she ended up backing Harp after Carolina allegedly threatened to support candidates opposing alders who didn’t support his candidacy.
Alder Staggers said he, too, ended up regretting voting yes on the Yale street deal. He claimed that one of the board coalition leaders — he wouldn’t name who — threatened him that he wouldn’t be able to “get anything done” in his ward if he didn’t support Harp for mayor. (He remained neutral in the mayor’s race.) Again, Perez, Mills and James denied making the comments to Staggers or Foskey-Cyrus, or stifling debate.
To UNITE HERE’s Mills, unions, like other organized groups in town, have a constructive role to play in politics and government.
“Unions in New Haven are well-organized, which isn’t the case in a lot of the country. I think it’s a good thing,” she said Sunday. “It’s an exciting and important time in the city. There’s new leadership [in City Hall, in the schools, at Yale]. There are a lot of people — including unions — who want to focus on unemployment and violence. There’s a lot of work to be done. There are roles” for many groups to play. “We should work together when there are shared priorities. Disagreement doesn’t mean dictating.”
Alder Stratton offered a different take on unions’ role.
“The unions, like every other machine, give people a position. They don’t give people a voice,” he said at the Sunday gathering at Robinson-Thorpe’s home. “It’s a historical problem in New Haven. We have this powerful body, the Board of Aldermen, that has been under the thumb of a machine. We need another place to go when people disagree with the power structure.”
The new caucus doesn’t have a name yet. Robinson-Thorpe said it wants “the people” to decide on a name.
Previous stories examining the new labor majority’s first term in office:
• Perez: We Kept Our Word
• For Wonkish Rookies, City Hall Wasn’t Hollywood
• “Labor” Agenda Takes Shape In 1st Year
• Outside City Hall, A New Way Of Doing Business
• Rookies Learn: All Politics Is Hyperlocal