Jury's out on whether court cases will hurt DeStefano

06/11/2006

By: William Kaempffer and Andy Bromage , Register Staff

NEW HAVEN — Some potential political baggage of Mayor John DeStefano Jr. was opened wide in federal court recently when the seven-term mayor took the stand to defend the city against a $5.1 million jury award handed to a city cop.

The lawsuit was filed by city police Officer Arpad Tolnay, who won the award in a case that raised allegations of political pandering and retaliation by DeStefano and his former police chief, Melvin Wearing. The city is seeking to scuttle the award.

DeStefano didn't want to testify, and his lawyer argued that the subpoena compelling him to do so was just a ploy to publicly embarrass him in his gubernatorial campaign.

The Tolnay lawsuit is one of several civil rights and civil service cases to dog DeStefano's administration during its 12-year tenure and, some political observers say, expose controversial hiring and promotional practices within the police and fire departments.

DeStefano is seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. On the statewide political stage, where everything is a potential campaign issue, it remains to be seen whether his administration's trials — and in some cases tribulations — in the courtroom could be a liability in the race.

One thing seems certain: DeStefano's opponents' political operatives have been digging and are well aware of the cases, political sources say. But how, if at all, the matter will surface as an election issue is the subject of disagreement.

DeStefano and Stamford Mayor Dannel P. Malloy are nine weeks away from the Democratic primary that will decide who faces Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in November, and so far, the Democrats have kept things largely civil.

Ken Dautrich, a University of Connecticut professor of public policy, suggests there are political land mines buried in both Democrats' cities and said "mutual assured destruction" will keep the mudslinging at bay.

"It is not in either of their interests to drag this stuff out of the closet," Dautrich said. "They have a formidable foe, and whoever wins will have an uphill battle. If they start slinging mud, they will do each other in."

However, New Haven Alderman Jorge Perez, D-5, who has locked horns with the New Haven mayor, said the DeStefano administration's courtroom woes are cause for worry "whether he is running for governor or not."

"It is a concern for anyone that cares about good management or the letter of the law," said Perez, a former president of the city's 30-member Board of Aldermen who was replaced after three terms by DeStefano-backed Carl Goldfield.

"Our inability to follow our own rules sometimes, or to address the problems that we knew of, have been very expensive for the city, and I think it's a legitimate criticism."

Six state and federal court cases that name as defendants either DeStefano, top members of his cabinet or both illustrate the scope of the situation:

Late last month, a Superior Court judge ruled the city illegally circumvented its own civil service regulations and "evaded the clear mandate" of the charter by conducting pass-fail exams when hiring police officers and firefighters. He was the same judge who in 2001 called the process "blatant lawlessness" in a previous lawsuit. The city continued using the process until this year, asserting that the 2001 decision was not binding.

In 2005, a federal jury awarded Tolnay $5.1 million in a civil rights lawsuit on claims that the police chief retaliated against him after he spoke against political meddling following the arrests of two Fair Haven ministers who were DeStefano supporters. The charges against them were dropped before their first court date.

In 2005, the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling that the city's use of a civil service promotional rule was illegal. In a 2001 ruling, a Superior Court judge called the city's liberal interpretation of the civil service "Rule of Three," designed to give discretion in promotions, illegal and "absurd." The city continued the practice, since the opinion wasn't binding, until 2004 when a judge in second lawsuit came to the same conclusion, calling the city's stance "patently absurd." Two white police officers who claimed they were illegally passed over for promotion won a $850,000 jury award and the city later settled.

In 2005, a Superior Court jury awarded $500,000 to two black firefighters who claimed the city manipulated civil service rules at the expense of minorities.

In 2004, about 20 predominantly white firefighters sued DeStefano and others when two promotional tests were thrown out after the DeStefano administration expressed concerns that too few minorities would advance. That case is pending.

In 2003, city architect Wendell Harp sued DeStefano, the city and the Board of Education after claiming the city dropped him as the architect for the Prince-Welch Elementary School project two weeks after his wife, state Sen. Toni Harp, D-New Haven, endorsed DeStefano's opponent in the Democratic primary for mayor. That year, the Board of Education fired Harp's firm from the project, with then-board member John Prokop saying he didn't think it "could really produce and deliver on time for the benefit of the school district at this juncture." The lawsuit is pending.

New Haven is not unique in its civil service and legal controversies.

Malloy took heat after his nephew was appointed to the Stamford Fire and Rescue, raising claims of favoritism and cronyism, and the mayor is named in a federal lawsuit over a zoning dispute.

The Bridgeport Fire Department has battled decades of racial and legal battles and Hartford has had its share of legal wrangling.

Nick Balletto, the former Democratic Party chairman in New Haven, said civil service problems are simply "the nature of the beast" in Connecticut government.

"Right, wrong or indifferent, that is the type of system that was designed," Balletto said. "I believe Dan Malloy has had the same type of problems in Stamford. The governor had the same type of problems."

New Haven Corporation Counsel Thomas W. Ude Jr., the mayor's legal adviser, said lawsuits are inevitable in urban centers, especially when leaders navigate treacherous waters in which civil service guidelines and civil rights concerns are inevitable and inextricably intertwined.

However, DeStefano's detractors say the pending lawsuits and blistering judicial opinions against the city depict a clear pattern of an administration that is willing to flout the law to further the mayor's political agenda and deal with the consequences later, curry favor with political allies and retaliate against its foes.

"The picture presented to me is that of a mayor tied to train tracks with trains coming at him in various directions and all of his lawyers, advisers and consultants standing on the side seeming blithely allowing it to happen," said New Haven-based attorney Karen Lee Torre, who has filed a number of lawsuits against the city. Torre subpoenaed DeStefano to testify in the Tolnay case.

DeStefano brushed off Torre's words, calling them "a blatant effort to put my name in the newspaper." Asked whether the lawsuits present a liability to his gubernatorial campaign, DeStefano said, "There's no reason to believe it would."

"People can charge whatever they want to in court, it doesn't make it true," DeStefano said. "You can't stop someone from suing you. The city gets sued every day."

Attorney Hugh Keefe, who was brought in to represent DeStefano and other city officials in the Tolnay case, unsuccessfully fought to have the subpoena quashed. He accused Torre's office of being a subpoena factory and said calling DeStefano to the stand was simply a tactic to embarrass and "bulldoze" the city into paying the verdict.

"I thought it was harassment and I still do," Keefe said.

Attorney John R. Williams, who represents Wendell Harp, didn't know if claims of political retaliation would haunt the mayor and suspected that the "pay to play" mentality was standard procedure in urban centers.

"You don't do business in the city unless you do favors for people in power, and in this administration, it's doing favors that are political," he said.

Several political experts interviewed agreed that the land mines buried beneath New Haven's political landscape during DeStefano's 12-year tenure aren't likely to blow up into serious campaign issues.

"They (DeStefano and Malloy) can match one another dirt for dirt and dig for dig," said Scott McClean, chairman of Quinnipiac University's political science department. "They are both city mayors and stuff like this happens in big cities. ... Unless it is a gigantic scandal, this is the usual stuff that happens."

A campaign spokesman for Malloy, who squeaked by DeStefano by just four votes May 20 to clinch the Democratic Party's endorsement, stayed mum on the debate.

The winner of the Democratic primary will face Rell, who in the latest Quinnipiac poll was seen as trouncing either Democrat by margins better than 3-to-1, even though her chief of staff was embroiled in a campaign contributions scandal.