$125 Dispute Delays Paca’s Public Money

Mayoral challenger Marcus Paca appears to have qualified to receive public campaign cash — once a dispute involving the beleaguered Registrar of Voters office can be cleared up.

Paca submitted records to the Democracy Fund — the city agency that runs New Haven’s public-financing system — showing he collected contributions of at least $10 apiece from around 350 New Haven voters, according to Aly Heimer, who runs the agency. Paca, who is challenging incumbent Toni Harp for the Democratic mayoral nomination, needs only 200 such contributions to qualify for the system and an initial $19,000 grant.

But first Heimer must confirm that at least 200 people in the list are current New Haven voters. And to do that, she needs to work with the Registrar of Voters office.

Which, as anyone doing election business in New Haven over the past year has discovered, is no longer a simple matter (as these sample previous stories reflect).

Paca submitted the lists of names last Tuesday. By law, Heimer had to confirm those names within five working days, or by the end of business Monday.

Didn’t happen.

Heimer said she went to the Registrar of Voters office at 200 Orange St. beginning last Wednesday asking for a copy of the citywide voter registration list. The staff there told her she’d have to pay $125 for the list.

She balked. The Democracy Fund has never had to do that before. It’s a city agency that, by law, must confirm the names on the list. The Fund’s budget does not include money to pay for the lists, which are in an electronic Excel files small enough to email, she said. She pressed the point in repeated visits. (Electronic files are more up to date than occasionally-printed paper files.)

“The Fund has strict rules on what the money can be spent on, and this isn’t one of [the approved uses] because we are supposed to have full access to voter files,” Heimer said.

It turns out that Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans, who runs the office, was away last week. (So was the Republican registrar, who had a death in the family, according to staff.)

The deputy Democratic registrar, Liz DeMatteo, informed Heimer that under office rules, only political candidates can get voting lists for free.

Heimer said she watched a Fair Haven Democratic ward committee co-chair come up and get a free list while they had that conversation. DeMatteo then informed her that ward co-chairs can obtain the lists, too.

DeMatteo told Heimer that she couldn’t make an exception to her understanding of the policy without the OK of her boss, Evans. She said she’d tried to reach Evans.

Each day Heimer returned. No luck. DeMatteo said she couldn’t reach Evans. (The Independent couldn’t reach her, either, for this story.) Heimer was told Evans would be back this week.

Come Monday, no sign of Evans. And DeMatteo held firm.

DeMatteo confirmed that account to the Independent Monday afternoon. ​“The policy in this office is to pay for a registration list. I can’t break the policy without authorization,” she said. She said she had tried to reach Evans, and failed.

Ken Krayeske, Heimer’s predecessor as Democracy Fund director, remembers the policy differently. He ran the fund the last time it was used, in the 2013 mayoral election.

“In 2013, there was no problem,” Krayeske said.

In any case, the Monday deadline passed without the required certification of Paca’s contribution list and the subsequent release of the first $19,000 grant.

Heimer spent the afternoon in the office of City Clerk Michael Smart, who was helping her try to contact state officials for help, and speaking with Harp administration officials. At the end of the day, the mayor’s office offered to pay the $125 itself on Tuesday so Heimer could get the list — and proceed with certifying Harp’s opponent’s list so he could receive his money.

Update Tuesday 2:39 p.m.: Evans returned to the office, and Heimer got the list for free.

Under the public financing system — the only such municipal system in Connecticut — a mayoral candidate gets the first $19,000 grant upon reaching that initial threshold of 200 local contributions of $10 or more (plus a total of at least $5,000 in contributions). After that, the candidate receives a 2‑to‑1 match on the first $30 of every subsequent donation up to a total of $125,000. (In other words, the candidate receives a $60 match for a $30 donation as well as for a $100 donation; a $20 match for a $10 donation.)

In return, the candidate agrees to limit individual contributions to $370 rather than the usually allowed $1,000; to limit spending to $368,000 in the primary election and another $368,000 in the general election (and personal spending on the company to $19,000 in each case); and to forswear contributions from ​“business entities” and political action committees.

New Haven’s Democracy Fund distributed a total of $111,250 to three mayoral candidates in 2013, the last time any campaigns participated.

The system is voluntary. Harp has decided not to participate in the Democracy Fund in this year’s campaign. She said that’s because she believes the system needs to be tweaked. (Read about that here.)

Advocates tout the fund as a way to limit the influence of big special-interest money in elections and to enable more candidates to field competitive campaigns.

Paca’s campaign also filed a campaign finance report Monday, on deadline, with the City Clerk’s office. It shows his campaign has raised a total of $14,883 to date, with a balance of $3,527 left on hand, as of June 30. The harp filed its report, too; it showed the campaign having raised $85,365, of which $49,405 came in in the most recent charter. The campaign reported having $13,432 on hand.

Debate Promised

So far, Paca has had less success getting Mayor Harp to engage in public debate with him. The two have shown up at a series of Democratic ward committee meetings across town to introduce their candidacies. Organizers of the events have disallowed people from asking questions — even when, as at one such Hill forum this past Saturday at Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, Paca said he was told a Q&A segment had been on the schedule.

“All five candidates are invited to speak for 5 minutes each. We will then take questions from the floor,” Ward 6 Co-Chair Erick Russell wrote to Paca in a prior email Paca shared with the Independent.

Asked what happened, Russell emailed this explanation Monday night to the Independent: “[I]t was decided that we would reserve time following the forum for the audience to ask questions of the candidates. This decision was made after concern was raised during the forum that the structure of the question and answer session would result in a debate, which was not the intention of the forum. In an effort to avoid debate between candidates, and to ensure that the audience had an opportunity to ask questions, I asked that all of the candidates remain available to answer questions after the forum concluded. To my knowledge, all of the candidates present at the forum made themselves available after the forum ended. This decision aimed to maintain the integrity of the forum and fairness to both the candidates and the audience.”

Meanwhile, a listener to WNHH radio’s ​“Mayor Monday” program asked Harp about that Saturday forum.

“With one order, not a recommendation or suggestion or a public poll, announced plans for public questioning of the candidates was squashed and the people lost the opportunity and the right to publicly and directly question the candidates,” the listener wrote in a question emailed to the show. ​“That kind of transparency is not what the people expect from a political party or their government.”

In response, Harp cited a lawsuit Paca filed against the city in response to her decision to fire him in April 2016 as her administration’s labor relations director.

The following exchange ensued on the radio program:

Mayor Harp: Mr. Paca is suing the city. He has a case against the city. Both he and his wife. One of the things that I don’t want to do inadvertently is to say something that would have a negative impact on our case. And so when that is done, it’s got to be done in a way that doesn’t hurt the taxpayers of the city of New Haven.

WNHH: Does the mean you’re never going to debate him?

Honestly, if we have questions, and I believe at the town committee, we will have questions. But not at every single ward committee. It will have to be done in a way that will not impact the court case.

How do you then decide when you talk and you don’t talk?

Our campaigns are working with the Democratic Town Committee to figure that out.

If he makes the ballot, will there be a debate?

If he makes the ballot, then I’m sure we will have at least one or two debates. Right now, it’s among Democrats. As I said before, he is suing the city.

Paca later labeled ​“ridiculous” Harp’s stated reason for not answering questions at a joint forum.

“If someone asks that question about the lawsuit, [she can] just say, ​‘It’s pending litigation,’” Paca argued, noting that her administration has numerous lawsuits filed against it. ​“She’s used to saying, ​‘It’s pending litigation. I can’t talk about it.’” He said he’s happy to discuss the lawsuit in public ​“because I think it sheds important light on the type of unlawful decisions made by this mayor.”

Paca also questioned the role of Democratic Town Committee Vice-Chair Jackie James in standing up at Saturday’s event to announce that no questions would be taken after all. He called it a conflict of interest for a DTC official to play that kind of role while simultaneously serving on the paid staff of the mayor’s reelection campaign, which James does. (James did not return a call for comment.)

Roth Leads Alder $$$ Pack

Monday afternoon was also the deadline for Board of Alders candidates to file their latest financial disclosure reports.

Abby Roth, a Democrat who’s seeking to win back her former seat representing the Audubon/east Rock/Downtown seventh ward, has raised $8,335 for her campaign as June 30, according to disclosure forms due Monday. Her opponent, incumbent and fellow Democrat Alberta Witherspoon, did not yet have significant contributions to report.

The next-closed fundraisers for Board of Alders seats (of which there are 30) were Democratic incumbent Sal DeCola of Morris Cove’s Ward 19 ($2,390), Ward 1 (Yale district) independent Hacibey Catalbasoglu ($1,145 raised to date), and Democrat Kimberly Edwards of Newhallville/Prospect Hill’s Ward 19 ($1,105). Edwards’ opponent, Sarah Ofosu. had previously reported raising $1,100.