Christopher Peak Photo
Tom Burns: Taking his complaint to the higher-ups.
Representatives from the national American Federation of Teachers headquarters are investigating a complaint that New Haven’s recent election might have been tainted by a newsletter column and a ballot storage snafu.
Tom Burns, the union’s former vice-president, filed a formal complaint earlier this year that seeks to overturn the results of the December election.
In that race, Dave Cicarella, the 13-year incumbent, narrowly won reelection in a three-way race.
On Tuesday afternoon, Burns said that national representatives had decided to look into his complaint. He said they plan to hold a hearing next week.
In his complaint, Burns had said that post office had flubbed the election by misplacing ballots in the wrong post-office box and by not accepting late ballots. He also said that Cicarella had unfairly publicized his views on the benefits of collaborating with the new superintendent by writing an op-ed on the front page of the union newsletter.
Cicarella had previously said that the complaint was a “distraction.” He said that the elections firm had informed them that it stored sealed ballots at an employee’s home office after the post office mix-up, and he said the union newsletter had featured front-page editorials for more than a decade, including four about collaboration specifically.
“That is as vanilla as it can be. It’s a topic — collaboration — that I’ve talked about in several different Advance articles over the years. It’s been a big-ticket item since 2009,” Cicarella said. “There’s not one person that would read that and say it’s a campaign article.”
Cicarella said that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) reviews “literally hundreds” of these appeals. “It doesn’t mean that they’re going to order the election to be re-run,” he said. “There’s very few that they don’t investigate.”
In a statement, AFT said that, when handling election appeals, it tries to act as a neutral mediator.
“While not pervasive, when local elections are challenged and a national investigation is requested, the role of AFT is to be a neutral broker to ensure impartiality and resolve issues in a fair and expeditious manner,” Elena Temple, a senior communications associate for AFT, wrote in an email.
Burns said that he’s also taken his complaint to the federal Office of Labor-Management Standards. He said that agency is currently conducting an investigation of its own. An agency spokesperson said they cannot comment on any specific investigation, including about whether it exists.