Jorge Perez and Carl Goldfield, leaders of two opposing sides of New Haven’s political wars, agreed on something Friday: Both called for city Budget Director Frank Altieri to file an ethics disclosure form that other city officials must file. Incredibly, Altieri’s boss, Mayor John DeStefano, is standing by the arrangement with the argument that it’s OK because it’s technically legal — a stand that hearkens to his early days in office and could prove increasingly embarrassing for his gubernatorial campaign.
Altieri is the only top city official who doesn’t file a form detailing potential conflicts of interest. Yet he has the job, next to the mayor’s, with perhaps the most potential for conflicts, because he oversees city investments, outside contracts, and the entire city budget. The Independent first reported Altieri’s ethics situation in a story Monday. (Click here to read it.)
It’s significant that both Perez and Goldfield are calling for Altieri to file the form, because they stand on opposite sides of a major power struggle in the city. Alderman Goldfield is running to become Board of Aldermen president in January; he hopes to unseat Perez, the current board president. Goldfield has generally supported the policies of the DeStefano administration. Perez has emerged as leader of a group of aldermen in opposition. (See “Goldfield: I Have the Votes“ and “Showdown at the Polls.”
Both Perez and Goldfield made it clear that they were speaking on principle, not taking a shot at Altieri personally.
“I think everybody” should file these forms, Perez said. “I don’t think anybody’s above the law. To me it’s not about Frank. Frank has contributed in a tremendous way to the success of the city. In life there are things you do because the law tells you to do it, and there are things you do because it’s the right thing to do. I’ve always found him to be an honorable person.
“Public disclosure is very important. If you don’t want to participate in it, don’t be a public official or in executive management. Philosophically, what the residents of New Haven had in mind when we passed the charter was for department heads to” abide by city residency and ethics rules.
“Anyone who’s in a position of financial responsibility like that for the city, in fact or in substance, should make disclosure,” Goldfield agreed. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know that [Altieri] would have trouble disclosing.”
Altieri gets to avoid filing the ethics form because of a special arrangement he worked out with Mayor DeStefano. The arrangement allows Altieri to bypass rules that hold for other high-ranking public officials. Although he’s held the powerful budget director post for 12 years, Altieri is not technically an “employee.” His position doesn’t even show up in the city budget he oversees. He works on a year-by-year “consulting” contract. That means he can double-dip into taxpayer coffers, drawing a pension as a retired education employee as well as a contractor’s “fee” for directing the budget office. The arrangement lets him live in Madison, not New Haven. And it allows him to avoid filing the ethics disclosure form that other city officials file to let the public know of any potential conflicts of interest in office, including financial investments and relatives in government employment.
Both Goldfield and Perez said the Board of Aldermen should consider closing the loophole —” or the “gap” in the law, as Goldfield put it —” allowing a powerful city official to avoid ethics disclosure.
Perez said he is in the process of preparing a larger set of ethics reforms to propose for the city. He’s modeling them on state ethics reforms that, for instance, limit public officials and government employees from receiving gifts of more than $50 from lobbyists or government contractors. Other reforms under consideration would require city contractors to disclose contributions to public officials and the names of relatives hired by government agencies.
Perez also is considering a revolving-door law that would prevent city officials from moving directly into jobs with private companies with whom the city does business. That’s been happening in New Haven; most recently, Craig Russell of the Livable City Initiative left City Hall to take a job with a company doing public school construction work.
The ethics reform package is in the research stage, Perez said. “Nobody’s going to see anything for a month. I think it has to do with everything going on not just nationally, but in the state. But also the fact that the public is demanding more accountability. This is not geared at any one individual.”
A Hang-Up
Reached by phone Friday, Altieri was asked if he plans to file the ethics form. He paused. He said nothing. He stayed on the phone for a few moments. Then he hung up.
City Human Resources Director Tina Burgett said that as of Friday she hadn’t received a disclosure form from Altieri. “I don’t recollect” anyone raising the issue in the past about whether Altieri should file one even though the law technically gives him a pass, Burgett said. “That would really be in the province of those who are negotiating the contract” with Altieri.
People like Mayor DeStefano, presumably. DeStefano, apprised of the situation earlier in the week, said, “It’s something I should take a look at.”
He did take a look at it, a mayoral spokesman, Rob Smuts, said Friday. And unlike Jorge Perez and Carl Goldfield, Mayor DeStefano sees no problem with the arrangement.
Why? Because it’s technically legal.
“He just wanted to make sure we’re following the law, and we are,” Smuts said. “That’s what he looked into, and that’s what he’s concerned about.”
Since he took office in 1994, DeStefano has been willing to take the heat for Altieri’s unethical arrangement, apparently because of what Altieri offers in return. Altieri is credited for keeping taxes down, for leveraging more than $1 billion in state money to rebuild schools, for cutting government energy costs. He also can be an aggressive fund-raiser for the mayor’s campaigns among contractors with whom the city does business.
But a series of City Hall ethics scandals caught the attention of the FBI and nearly drove DeStefano from office in 1998. The issue there wasn’t criminal wrongdoing, but widespread unethical behavior by top city officials. DeStefano eventually got rid of all those officials except Altieri.
Now DeStefano’s running for governor. And cleaning up government is a central issue in that campaign — not just what’s technically legal, but what’s ethically sound.
Hoping to shift the public’s attention from the fact that she served as lieutenant governor during 10 years of the corrupt Rowland-Rell administration, Republican Gov. Jodi Rell, the woman DeStefano hopes to unseat, has embraced a wide range of ethics and clean-elections reforms. DeStefano already finds himself in a box because of the campaign cash he’s been collecting from city contractors and city employees; his campaign has shown little sign of seizing the clean-money initiative back from Rell. On top of that, Altieri’s unethical working arrangement, which avoids ethics disclosure requirements and which costs state taxpayers because of his double-dipping into education pension coffers, could provide fodder for Rell to portray DeStefano as overseer of an unethical city government.
By saying now through a spokesman that he is concerned only with following the letter of the law in ethics policy, DeStefano is practically writing a campaign commercial for the governor to use against him. Not to mention returning to a place he inhabited in 1998.
Full disclosure: In his capacity as a private attorney, Alderman Goldfield did the legal work to incorporate The Online Journalism Project, which funds this web site.