Harp Vows To Pull Deposits From Wells Fargo

Mayor Toni Harp promised to withdraw city deposits from Wells Fargo in response to an activist petition drive, but said the process will be gradual.

Harp made the promise on her latest appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Mayor Monday” program.

She was responding to a caller, Melinda Tuhus, who has helped organize the petition drive in response to the bank’s financial support for a 1,172-mile pipeline carrying crude oil from North Dakota to southern Illinois. The pipeline runs near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. It has been the subject of protests in New Haven and throughout the nation.

“Wells Fargo stands for Dishonesty (creating two million costly fake accounts for unsuspecting customers),” the petition reads. ​“Disingenuousness (providing $467,000,000 to the dangerous and polluting Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL) — which threatens Native Americans’ drinking water, violates land that is rightfully theirs, and accelerates climate change — despite claiming a ​“commitment to a clean energy future…; and Discrimination (against low-income Americans and specifically against African American and Latino mortgage holders). WF also has a history of investing in private prisons, which in turn exploit prisoners for profit.

“Wells Fargo is not local; it takes its profits out of New Haven instead of reinvesting significantly in our community. Please choose a local bank.”

“I’ve seen the petition” and met with city Controller Daryl Jones to discuss how to respond, Harp told Tuhus on the program.

She said the city will ​“planfully remove dollars” from operating accounts with Wells Fargo. She said the city can’t do it all at once. Among the reasons: It’s hard to find alternatives. It needs a large enough bank to handle the volume of daily transactions the city does, she said.

Asked about misdeeds by other banks — Bank of America, for instance, has been responsible for blight at ​“zombie” houses dragging down New Haven neighborhoods — Harp responded: ​“We’re going to see if there’s a big enough bank that is less” of a problematic actor than Wells Fargo.

Wells Fargo recently agreed to pay a $185 million settlement for massive fraud, opening fee-generating sham accounts and issuing unrequested credit cards for unsuspecting customers.

The city averages around $10 million of deposits on any given day at Wells Fargo, Controller Jones said later Monday. It has two operating accounts there, one for general fund dollars, another for capital budget dollars.

The audit process prevents the city from simply removing all its money at once from the bank, he said, along with the limits on other banks’ ability to handle the work. Liberty Bank ​“can’t handle that kind of volume,” he said. Larger institutions, like Chase and People’s, can.

The city also must take into account fees that are charged at other banks, Jones said. He added that the charter requires city government to have at least some deposits at all local banks.

That said, the city has already removed some money from Wells Fargo in response to the petition, and will continue to, according to Jones. ​“It’s going to take some time,” he said.

The New Haven Stands with Standing Rock group is planning to hold a rally outside City Hall planned for 4:30 p.m. Thursday to press the divestment demand. (Click here to read about a local rabbi’s journey to Standing Rock.)

The Green

Harp also responded on ​“Mayor Monday” to a note emailed in from Daniel Weinberger of Westville. The note read:

Dear Mayor Harp,

I walked through the Green last night at about 7:00 PM. I was shocked by the condition of the space, with large groups of homeless people setting up camp, furniture and trash strewn everywhere, and a smell of urine in the air. I had just finished talking up how great New Haven is to some out of town guests before we walked through, and frankly it is an embarrassment.

As a faculty member at Yale, I spend a lot of time convincing potential students, researchers, and faculty members to move to New Haven to study or work. I am a passionate defender of and advocate for the city, but the condition of the Green and surrounding area is an embarrassment to us all and makes it hard to convince potential residents or recent transplants that this is a place that they want to be.

I understand accommodations need to be made for the homeless, but surely there is a sensible public policy solution that can ensure compassionate support for the homeless population while also restoring the Green to the showpiece for the city that it ought to be.

Thanks you for your consideration of this issue.

Harp said her administration has been working on the problem for months. For a while it had a successful program called Project Green Thumb, under which cops ticketed people causing problems on the Green and then the court assigned them to help beautify public spaces. Harp said a court magistrate had enthusiastically worked on the plan, but a replacement has since let it wither. She said her administration will revisit that.

She has also been speaking with people at the St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church at Olive and Chapel streets about the possibility of opening a day program for homeless people and addicts who congregate on the Green, similar to the morning Sunrise Cafe that has offered shelter from the cold in the winter along with breakfast.

The city has been working more broadly on problems related to opioid addicts coming from different parts of the state to clinics in New Haven and then hanging out downtown, Harp said, and looking at how rules at homeless shelters might be leading more homeless people to choose to camp outdoors in town.

This episode of ​“Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.

Click on or download the above audio to listen to the full episode of WNHH radio’s ​“Mayor Monday,” which included a discussion of magnet schools and the progress of women in professional fields.

Or click on this video to watch the episode from the Facebook Live feed.