Markeshia Ricks Photo
Daisy Gonzalez with a supporter the night the alders voted to unseat her.
New Haven’s separation-of-powers drama has landed in state court, where the Board of Alders has filed suit against the Board of Education.
The alders are asking a Superior Court judge for an injunction preventing the ed board from continuing to seat Daisy Gonzalez as a member.
The alders on Dec. 21 voted to rescind their previous approval of Gonzalez’s appointment to the ed board. They acted after it emerged that the new ed board taking office in January — which for the first time includes two elected members — would have eight members, when the new city charter calls for having only seven.
The ed board voted instead to consider 2016 a “transition” year during which it would go from eight to seven members as part of a charter change that reconstituted its makeup. Gonzalez has been attending meetings and voting. She was voted secretary of the board at Monday’s meeting.
The alders hired high-profile criminal defense attorney Norm Pattis, who has previously sued the city over its eviction of Occupy New Haven protesters, to file the lawsuit.
“This is a classic power struggle,” Pattis told the Independent Friday. “Who are the primary lawmakers in New Haven? The Board of Education? Or the Board of Alders?” He argued that the charter answers the latter.
The alders are paying Pattis $250 an hour — “a deep discount from my customary rate,” he said with a chuckle.
The Board of Education has already decided to spend up to $20,000 to have the firm Pullman and Comley represent it in this case.
Mayor Toni Harp said Friday afternoon that she had not read the lawsuit and had no comment on its content, but was “disappointed” by the alders’ move to sue.
Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker and Majority Leader Alphonse Paolillo, Jr., issued this statement Friday evening: “The Board of Alders is taking this action to enforce the properly exercised, legally binding, and cost neutral legislative remedy it carried out in December. We are doing so on behalf of our constituents because the Board of Education persists in defying the Charter, the law of the City and the will of the voters.”
Previously, in explaining their decision to defy the alders’ vote, the Board of Education and the Harp administration produced a legal opinion from city Corporation Counsel John Rose stating that the alders lack the authority to rescind Gonzalez’s appointment or to direct the ed board on seating arrangements. The Board of Ed is a legal creature of the state, not the city, Rose argued, so the alders have little say in how it operates. In a formal opinion, Rose wrote: “Even if the Board of Alders does revoke or repeal its order approving the mayor’s appointment (reappointment actually) of Daisy Y. Gonzalez to serve a four year term on the Board of Education, the alders are powerless to remove her. Nor do the alders have any power to limit her term to one year or to cause that term to come to an end of Dec. 31, 2015.”
“The only control that the board of alders has is how much money you give, and to some extent, how many people can be on the board,” he said. “You cannot remove Daisy Gonzalez from the Board of Education.”
Underlying this power struggle over legal powers is another power struggle — over control of the Board of Education. Right now the board is split evenly between supporters and critics of the current schools superintendent. Gonzalez is one of the supporters; without her, the critics would dominate the board.
Pattis’s filing seeks a “declaratory ruling stating that Ms. Gonzalez unlawfully occupies a position on the Board of Education”; as well as injunctions barring her from the board and barring the board from recognizing her as a member.