The Making of a Model Website and Blog in My Hometown

I've been on a sort of work-leave the last two weeks. My town, North Haven, Connecticut (pop. 24,000), has been a mess for a long time, but few people have cared enough to pay attention, and those who criticize the administration are personally attacked and delegitimized. It was my town's mess, and my inability to do anything locally, that led me to do work for Common Cause Connecticut, and then devote myself full-time to municipal ethics by coming to work for City Ethics.

Sadly, it takes a big scandal to grab people's attention, as much as we like to think there are other ways. Well, one happened a couple of weeks ago: the director of finance, who acted as town manager, another department head who was the chair of the Republican Town Committee, and an assistant department head, who is married to the party town committee chair, were arrested on counts of embezzlement, larceny, forgery, conspiracy, and hindering prosecution.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.

I had just taken over a moribund information website, with the goal of putting our town budget up online for the first time. I moved into high gear, with the goal of achieving complete local government transparency (the town website, although extensive, does not even contain the town ordinances and charter, no mention of the town meeting or board of ethics, no current meeting schedule or even announcements of town meetings, no current budget information, etc.).

I started going department to department, to get copies of minutes and to arrange for the future delivery to me of minutes, agendas, notices of special meetings and time and place changes, etc. Things started out well, but I quickly ran into a wall. It appears that the First Selectman (essentially the mayor, but without a council to provide oversight) is formulating a directive regarding minutes, agendas, notices, and the like, and that the goal of it will be to look good without making materials available on-line (they realize now that anything they do put on-line I can link to and summarize or comment on). Instead, it appears that they will have materials sent to the library, and that the clerk will call me with notices and changes. But agendas would go to the library and likely be filed after the meeting has been held (the notice requirement for agendas is only 24 hours).

Enough on FOI. That'll get worked out. What's important for City Ethics participants is that I hope to make northhaveninfo.org a model for what one or more people can do to bring transparency to local government, and to, via a related and free blog, open a town discussion on the problems of town government and how to fix them. Those interested in this sort of thing can watch what happens. I have a 'What's New' section on the homepage, so it's easy to see what's being added day to day. And it might also be interesting to watch how more and more people start making comments on the blog. Some of these people are starting to go to meetings, as well. It's a great way to increase citizen participation, and to allow people's voices to be heard in a town that has been closed for so long and in so many sneaky ways (e.g., holding Board of Selectmen meetings during the day, having public comments after adjournment so that the public TV won't cover them, holding Town Meetings in August).

In the meantime, the party that controls the town (it happens to be the Republicans) is starting to make personal attacks on me and on the Democratic candidate for First Selectman (she announced this week for a November election), falsely accusing us and calling us irresponsible and only interested in partisan ends. The usual.

I'm adapting the model ethics code in City Ethics' Model Code Project (which I wrote) to North Haven, and will present it this week. The town attorney, whose partner (recently retired Town Attorney) is a major power in town, was just sent to a program on municipal ethics, and he is coming up with changes to our town's weak code (the process is under the First Selectman's control). Needless to say, I have not been consulted, despite my known expertise.

The big issue right now is hiring a forensic auditor to get to the bottom of what happened. The Republicans opposed it, argued it was too expensive and wouldn't give us any more information than an annual auditor would (the alleged embezzlement goes back to at least 2000), and then when there was enormous opposition, including a large editorial in the daily newspaper (New Haven Register), they decided that a forensic audit by the new annual auditor would do the trick. Of course, that report would come out after the election. A separate forensic audit report would come out before the election. See my blog piece on this for more info.

That's the news here in North Haven. Any good stories where you are?

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics