By Angela Carter and William Kaempffer
Published: Tuesday, May 8, 2007 3:00 AM EDT
NEW HAVEN — Corporation Counsel Thomas Ude Jr., who has had a stormy year in public service, is resigning to take a new position with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City.A spokeswoman for Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said Monday that Ude’s last day is June 15.
He will become a senior staff attorney for Lambda, a national organization dedicated to high-impact litigation and public education on the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV.
"It has been an honor to have had the opportunity to work with the mayor," his administration and the Board of Aldermen, Ude said in a statement. "I ... look forward to being more directly involved in front-line advocacy on issues I care deeply about."
Ude joined the corporation counsel’s office in March 1997 and DeStefano appointed him department head in May 2001. DeStefano congratulated Ude saying he has provided "10 years of solid service to the residents of New Haven."
Tensions flared between Ude and several aldermen in 2005, when his office and the budget office violated the city charter by incurring a $61,000 overrun on a legal services from an outside law firm.
Subsequently, city lawyers missed deadlines in a federal case and the jury awarded $885,000 to two police sergeants who claimed they were passed over for promotions to lieutenant.
Hildebrandt International of New Jersey was hired to study the corporation counsel’s office and recommended that the city "search for a successor" but the mayor’s then-chief of staff directed the consultants to remove the finding from the report.
The firm also found that the corporation counsel’s office had an adequate number of lawyers and good systems to track their assignments. "I think he did a good job under difficult circumstances," said Aldermanic President Carl Goldfield, D-29. "That office is barraged with legal work."
Ude has had victories over the years that protected the city from unfavorable judgments worth millions. In a personal injury case against the city in the late 1990s, the state Supreme Court recognized for the first time that municipalities can have immunity in personal liability suits.
He won discrimination claims filed by two police officers, one on the grounds of race, and the other on the basis of a disability. The state Supreme Court also ruled in the city’s favor that collection fees related to delinquent taxes can be recouped from taxpayers.
"I faced Tom in court many times and he was a determined adversary," said Norman A. Pattis, a prominent civil rights attorney in the area. "In recent years, however, the city seemed to be determined to give away vast sums of money and that occurred on Tom’s watch."
A series of state judges have upbraided the city for promotional and hiring practices in the Fire and Police departments that violate the city charter. Some of those practices predate Ude, but continued under his leadership.
Karen Torre, a New Haven lawyer who has won a series of injunctions and millions of dollars in verdicts against the city, has long criticized Ude’s office as providing legal cover for the mayor’s bending of civil service laws for political purposes. "To view Tom Ude’s departure as signaling an end to this administration’s lawbreaking would be unrealistic," she said. "The legs may change but the head remains the same. I wish Tom well with a new employer that will allow him to be a lawyer, not a political operative."
Last month, the city confirmed it settled for $775,000 a lawsuit with three white police officers who claimed they were passed over for promotion because of their race. 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.
About 20 mostly white firefighters sued the city in 2004 when two promotional tests were thrown out over the administration’s concerns that too few minorities would advance. That case was dismissed but the dismissal is being appealed. Ude and Human Resources Director Tina Burgette remain under fire for changing the method of how fire recruits’ tests would be scored in the current hiring round.
But Public Information Officer Jessical Mayorga said the string of controversies did not play a role in Ude’s departure.