Mayor Hires GOP Chair: SEEC Complaint Involving Peter Steele For Campaigning From Mayor's Office Still Under Investigation

"Oh. What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."  - Sir Walter Scott

In her campaign for Mayor last fall Erin Stewart was critical of Tim O'Brien  for rewarding political friends while in office. As Ms. Stewart said last year, she wanted to "take the city back from political cronyism."

In her first announced appointments Stewart tapped staffers from her youthful campaign team and appointed John Healey, an aide to Republican House Minority Leader Larry Cafero, to be a $90,000+ a year chief of staff. So far so good. New Britain mayors, coming into office just one week after elections, are entitled to assemble an office with people they know  -- even if the hires are political friends.

Two months after the election, however, Erin Stewart's promise to root out cronyism is just that -- a campaign promise not meant to be kept. More important,  her recent and unannounced hire raises new concerns about the use of  government resources for partisan political activity. Republican Town Committee Chair Peter Steele, a perennial GOP candidate, comes in -- "returns" is a better word -- as an aide at $45,000 annually. For Steele this is a pay hike and political reward.  He was a $25,000 a year aide to  Mayor Tim Stewart during his time in office.

GOP Town Chair Peter Steele
(NBRTC)

Here is where candidate Stewart's anti-cronyism pitch falls apart.  In that previous stint in the Mayor's office, Steele may have blatantly used  city resources to do political campaigning on the public's dime in the Mayor's office..

In a complaint filed early last year to the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) by O'Brien Aide Rosemary Klotz, Klotz asserted that when O'Brien came into office city information technology employees discovered "at least 200 files on city computers that indicate former Mayor Stewart and his staff, including Steele, used the machines to conduct campaign business."  After the complaint was filed SEEC investigators subsequently visited City Hall and collected evidence in the still unresolved case.

The New Britain Herald in a March 26, 2013 story by Lisa Backus, reported:

"Klotz's complaint alleges that the files, which range from campaign fundraising lists to lists on which residents would allow campaign signs on their lawns, were created and maintained on city computers, by Stewart and city staff members Peter Steele, Joe Shilinga and Lisa Carver, on city time."
The dates of when the files were created range from 2003 as Stewart was running a mayoral re-election campaign to 2011 when Stewart ran in a special election to fill a vacancy in the state Senate 6th District. The documents, obtained by the Herald, include drafts and final versions of campaign mailings, scripts for electoral "robo-calls," and "primed" voter lists indicating voter preference."

As of now that SEEC investigation about  using the Mayor's office for partisan Republican work is active and awaits a judgment from the commission.

The hiring of  GOP Chair Steele in and of itself isn't surprising. What is disturbing is that an unresolved case  alleging campaign work in the Mayor's office by former Mayor Stewart and Peter Steele still hangs in the air.

To be true to her high-mindedness against "political cronyism" it's time for Mayor Stewart to publicly announce the hiring of GOP Chair Peter Steele and provide the specifics on what his job functions are at $45,000 a year.

For all the campaign talk of cronyism in the O'Brien administration, every position in the last term had a clear function and every hire was tasked to be working in service to the city, not a political party.

At the very least the public has a right to know what Peter Steele does and when he does it on the City Hall clock.

ALEC: Buying Influence and Tilting Laws Against Solar Energy

Let the Sun Shine In

Why would the ALEC network of state-level lobbyists want to make solar energy cost-prohibitive for homeowners and businesses?

By Isaiah J. Poole

Now the Koch brothers are coming after my solar panels.

I had solar panels installed on the roof of our Washington, D.C. home this year. My household took advantage of a generous tax incentive from the District government and a creative leasing deal offered by the solar panel seller.

Brookhaven National Laboratory/Flickr

Our electric bills fell by at least a third. When people make this choice, the regional electric company grows less pressured to spend money to expand generating capacity and the installation business creates good local jobs. Customers who use solar energy also reduce carbon emissions.

What’s not to love?

According to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative network better known as ALEC, our solar panels make us “free riders.” What?

Yes, according to ALEC, an organization that specializes in getting the right-wing agenda written into state laws, people like me who invest in energy-efficiency and shrinking our carbon footprints ought to be penalized.

Why does ALEC want us punished? Since it’s bankrolled by, among others, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, it’s hard not to surmise that they’re worried about a threat to fossil fuels businesses. Koch Industries’ operations include refineries, oil and natural gas pipelines, and petrochemicals

That’s no conspiracy theory. Recently the British newspaper The Guardian wrote aboutthe assault on solar panels as part of a broader exposé on ALEC.

John Eick, the legislative analyst for ALEC’s energy, environment and agriculture program, confirmed to The Guardian that the organization would support making solar panel users pay extra for the electricity they generate. That’s already about to happen in Arizona, where homeowners who use solar panels will pay an average of about $5 extra a month for the privilege, starting in January.

The solar power industry called the new rule a victory only because power companies in the state were demanding assessments of as much as $100 a month — more than high enough to deter families from considering switching to solar.

Making solar energy cost-prohibitive for homeowners and businesses is part of a larger ALEC objective, affirmed at its recent annual meeting, to continue its effort to eliminate state renewable energy mandates.

According to meeting minutes, ALEC has already succeeded in getting legislation introduced in 15 states to “reform, freeze, or repeal their state’s renewable mandate.” ALEC lobbyists are pushing policies through states that will speed up climate change and increase pollution. They’re threatening the renewable energy industry, which is already creating new jobs and saving money for homeowners and businesses.

Without the current policy paralysis in Washington and a lack of bold, creative thinking about how to build a new, green economy at the national level, they wouldn’t be making so much headway.

My organization, Institute for America’s Future — together with the Center for American Progress and the BlueGreen Alliance — recently published a report that shows what’s at stake with ALEC’s destructive agenda.

Our “green industrial revolution” report recommends tying together a series of regional solutions that take advantage of the unique assets of each part of the country, such as the abundance of sun in the West and the wind off the Atlantic coast, into a cohesive whole.

These regional strategies would be supported by smart federal policies, such as establishing a price for carbon emissions and a national clean energy standard, creating certainty and stability in the alternative energy tax credit market, and providing strong support for advanced energy manufacturing.

This is the way to unleash the kind of innovation and job creation our economy — and our rapidly warming planet — desperately needs.

My solar panels are the envy of my block and I wish more of my neighbors will be able to make the same choice I did. But they won’t if fossil-fuel dinosaurs like the Koch brothers and right-wing organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council keep casting their dark clouds on efforts to build a clean energy future.

It’s time for them to step aside and let the sun shine in.

Isaiah J. Poole is the editor of OurFuture.org, the website of the Campaign for America’s Future. OurFuture.org
Distributed via OtherWords. OtherWords.org

DEMOS Report: A Higher Wage Is Possible

From www.demos.org

There is enormous public support for increasing the minimum wage in recognition of deep recessions and income equality. DEMOS' new report shares how it can be done:

November 19, 2013

|

Catherine Ruetschlin,

Amy Traub

American workers are working harder for less, with productivity rising but living standards stagnant or declining.¹At the same time, stock market wealth and incomes for the highest-paid Americans have risen.² Against this backdrop, the pay practices of the nation’s largest private employer have come under increased scrutiny. Walmart, with 1.3 million U.S. employees and $17 billion in annual profits, sets standards for all other retailers and across the supply chain of one of the nation’s fastest growing industries.³ Walmart’s practices impact the public sector and taxpayers as well when employees earn too little to meet their needs and require public assistance.⁴ Finally, Walmart is a leader in promoting an employment model in which workers earn too little to generate the consumer demand that supports hiring and would lead to economic recovery. In the last year, Walmart employees themselves have been increasingly vocal in protesting their low pay. Since the last holiday season, Walmart employees in stores throughout the country have repeatedly spoken out in pursuit of a modest wage goal: the equivalent of $25,000 a year in wages for a full-time employee.
KEY POINTS

• Walmart workers and a growing number of community supporters are taking a stand this holiday season, calling for wage increases and sufficient hours on the job to earn the modest income of $25,000 a year. This brief explores one way to pay for raises.

• Walmart spent $7.6 billion last year to buy back shares of its own stock. The buybacks did nothing to boost Walmart’s productivity or bottom line. If these funds were redirected to Walmart’s low-wage workers, they would each see a raise of $5.83 an hour.

• Curtailing share buybacks would not damage the company’s competitiveness or raise prices for consumers.

• If Walmart redirected its current spending to invest in its workforce, the benefits would extend to all stake-holders in the company—customers, stockholders, taxpayers, employees and their families—and the economy as a whole.

LINK TO FULL STORY AND REPORT

A Higher Wage Is Possible

11-22-63

It's a week and a November 22nd when every Baby Boomer is going to tell you where they were and I am no exception.

At age 13, I was in Mrs Sonigan's 7th grade speech class when the class abruptly ended at Pickering Junior High near Wyoma Square in Lynn, Massachusetts. This was just one year removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis when, at age 12, I thought it was over for me and everyone else by way of nuclear annihilation.  But then Kennedy, not listening to General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay,  and Khrushchev, resisting his own hawks in the Kremlin,  cut the deal to allow me to get to junior high.

I don't know whether the news from Dallas came over the principal's office intercom or from Mrs Sonigan herself on that Friday. But school got out early for the weekend. There was a bus ride home full of nervous guessing by some classmates and then a long, sad three days of black and white television.

President and Mrs. Kennedy descend the stairs from Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, TX, 22 November 1963.  

(Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The murder of the 46-year-old 35th President in Dealey Plaza profoundly changed the course of U.S. History in ways we'll never know.  Some historians and observers says Vietnam and much of the turbulence of the 1960s may have been averted had Kennedy lived. On the other hand, there is some doubt that Kennedy could have gotten all that was attained in the aftermath and mood created after his death. President Johnson's  legislative genius is greatly responsible for the civil rights acts and a War against Poverty (Head Start, Meals on Wheels) that came out of the Kennedy and Johnson years.

The war in Vietnam that haunted JFK's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara  and the subsequent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy (on the night of my senior prom) killed the "high hopes" Kennedy brought.

Being Irish and Catholic and living in Massachusetts we took it  like a death in the family. In truth, however, the mourning  was ecumenical and universal.  "This is a sad day for all people," President Johnson drawled getting off the plane with Kennedy's body. Before 24/7 cable, McLuhan's electronic "global village" connected all in grief and shock to watch the events unfold on TV.

The other and more uplifting thing to remember about 11-22-63 is that a ton of people in local and national offices, including me, came into or got interested in politics and public service because of Kennedy's "Ask not" call to serve.

That is still the lasting part of JFK's 1,000 days in office -- days long ago but not forgotten this week.

Other Words: Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

A commentary from former Norwalk Mayor Bill Collins and Emily Schartz Greco on the GOP's move to feed the wealthy and starve the poor.....

Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

From www.otherwords.org

Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

Demand for SNAP benefits won't retreat until the economic recovery stops benefitting only the richest Americans

By Emily Schwartz Greco and William A. Collins

Would you believe that the nation’s cabinet has approved an executive order defining food as a legal right? No, not our nation.

India has taken this bold step. Malnourishment afflicts 42 percent of Indian children, and part of their government’s response to this entrenched problem is defining efforts to end hunger as more than a welfare challenge.

USDAgov/Flickr

Here in the United States, we’ve got a hunger problem too. Yes, it’s not on India’s scale, but nearly 50 million Americans — 16 percent of us — live in what experts call “food-insecure” households. The number of hungry Americans has held steady since 2008, when the Great Recession began.

UNICEF rates child welfare among 29 of the world’s richest countries.We’re in 26^th place — ahead of Romania, yet behind Greece, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Clearly, we should do more to help the most vulnerable among us, right? Well, Congress doesn’t agree. So now the world’s largest economy will let more people go hungry while our lawmakers squabble over how deeply to cut food stamp spending.

Food stamp benefits for poor families have already taken a hit. Even though hunger never declined from its peak during our alleged economic recovery, a small benefit increase in the 2009 stimulus package expired on Halloween. The end of this $5 billion safety net extension will trim $36 per month for a family of four enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food stamp program, known as SNAP .

The Republican argument for cutting food stamps is based on the program’s growth. The government spent around $80 billion on SNAP benefits in the past year, more than twice levels seen before the Great Recession. That increase followed the boost in the value of the food stamps people could qualify for and the expansion of the number of people poor enough to qualify.

Simply put, we’re spending more on food stamps because widespread economic problems increased the number of empty larders in America. It’s possible that higher benefits compelled more people to apply, but that’s beside the point.

Had the economic recovery been widespread, we might be spending less on SNAP. Instead, the richest 1 percent inhaled all economic growth and then some. In 2010 and 2011, the 1 percent snatched 121 percent of the recovery’s bounty. This mind-boggling statistic means that the bottom 99 percent experienced a net decline in income.

Demand for food stamps won’t retreat until the economic recovery reaches the rest of us. And food stamps are a powerful economic stimulus because every dollar in increased SNAP benefits generates about $1.70 in economic activity.

So what’s Congress going to do? Pare back benefits even more. The House has passed two different versions of a Farm Bill, the SNAP program’s legislative home. One left food stamps out altogether and the other slashed SNAP spending by $4 billion each year.

The Senate’s version would cut SNAP outlays by $400 million per year. Either of these reductions would come on top of the $5 billion decline in support for this meager lifeline that helps one in seven Americans with less than $1.50 for every meal.

Can the private sector do something? Well, sure.

Workers employed by many of our largest corporations, such as Walmart and McDonald’s, are compensated so badly that millions of them qualify for government anti-poverty programs. If they’d just pay a living wage, fewer Americans would turn to stamps, Medicaid, and other safety-net options.

If seeing your tax dollars subsidize giant corporations that refuse to pay their own workers enough to get food on the table strikes you as unfair, this business trend may cheer you up: Companies selling their wares to the poor are lowering their sales forecasts due to the SNAP cuts. Including Walmart.

Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut. OtherWords.org

Republican Push Poll Called "Desperate" and "Misleading" By New Britain DTC

The Stewart for Mayor campaign, devoid of substantive ideas and relying on out of town interests such as Waterbury-based absentee landlord group, is headed for the gutter and negative campaigning, according the New Britain DTC as the campaign enters its final two weekends.

In this week's post at www.newbritaindemocrat.org reports are surfacing about push poll tactics on the part of the new Team Stewart:

Democratic Town Chairman John McNamara said today the Stewart for Mayor campaign has been conducting  an anonymous telephone poll to mislead voters and falsely link Democratic Mayor Tim O'Brien  to property tax hikes."Members of the Democratic Town Committee and other residents have informed our campaign that they were on the receiving end of a push poll conducted directly from Stewart for Mayor headquarters," said McNamara.  "Anonymous callers in the Stewart campaign are asking residents if they 'support Mayor O'Brien's tax increase' and who their preference is for mayor."
The DTC statement continued:
"The Republican push poll is another attempt by the Stewart campaign to distort the record on taxes and engage in negative campaigning as Election Day approaches. The Stewart campaign has been happy to peddle their water department lie and buddy up with outside corporate groups. Now they're disguising a call  as a supposedly unbiased survey. It  comes right out of the GOP's bag of dirty tricks to attack an opponent with misleading information.  It shows desperation and no respect for voters who deserve to know what campaign and political party is contacting them.
The Republican nominee and her cohorts keep complaining that everyone's taxes have gone up without providing any facts. Theirs is a campaign of innuendo and distortion because they have nothing to offer on issues that matter to voters.
It is a matter of record that 77% of single family homeowners are paying less in property taxes this year because of reassessments. The percentage exceeds 90" for two and three family residence. 

McNamara called on the Stewart campaign to cease the push poll and conduct their campaign activities with full disclosure. "Voters deserve better than to be on the receiving end of bogus political surveying by the Republican mayoral campaign."

The Big Lie On Taxes From Team Stewart and NB Republicans

Statements coming out of the mouths of Republicans in New Britain these days on property taxes are about as false and misleading as it gets. The phony refrains on taxes are a stretch even for the partisan sniping that is the New Britain Republican Party's stock in trade.

It's one thing to oppose first-term Mayor Tim O'Brien on fiscal priorities, but the GOP mayoral nominee and her cohorts are fabricating property tax increases where they do not exist.

"These tax hikes, spending hikes, and borrowing hikes will never end as long as this current mayor is in office," Erin Stewart told the New Britain Herald in a September 5th story not long after she supported spending hikes and borrowing hikes as a member of the Board of Education. Maybe she was for those new and much-needed school books before she was against them.

Republican Council candidate Carmelo Rodriguez, Jr., in the September 8th Herald, said Democrats on the Common Council "have lost credibility with the people because they say they did not raise taxes. But, the numbers reflect something different."

Mr. Rodriguez may begin to question his own credibility once he actually talks to most of his neighbors or bothers to look up the numbers that are a matter of public record.

Unfortunately, the new Team Stewart is sounding a lot like the old Team Stewart with a heavy dose of of tax-cut demagoguery and an aversion to the truth.

The campaign gambit is to falsely pin all the blame on O'Brien who took office in November 2011 facing structural deficits and an out of balance municipal budget.  It took O'Brien several months just to sort out a fiscal mess caused by his predecessor. 

Meanwhile, the new Team Stewart is laying 100 percent of the responsibility for  regressive, state-mandated auto taxes on the incumbent.  Funny how the state and not the local administration was blamed when a previous mayor named Tim occupied the corner office at City Hall.  And I thought elephants had good memories.

Current assessment data for New Britain documents just how false the Republican claims are on property taxes "going up"  in the aftermath of state-mandated revaluation.

The Assessor's Office and the revaluation firm retained by the city last year based assessments on the sales market values from October 2011 to October 2012 for the new values.  The burst of the housing bubble here and everywhere over the last five years can be seen in the numbers.

Across-the-board drops in assessments meant there was less value to tax and consequently tax bills decreased for every  property owner that declined in value by more than 17%.

Of more than 9,000 single-family homes in New Britain, there was an average decrease of $134; 6,972 homeowners (77%) are paying less on a mill rate of 44.12; 2,076 pay slightly more or about the same because their home values did not drop as much as others.

For two and three-family houses the property tax decreases are even more dramatic. Of 2,711 two-family residences 2,479 (91%) experienced lower tax bills; 232 did not. The average change is a decrease in taxes of $546.  Of  1,582 three-family dwellings 1,577 (99.6%) got lower tax bills and  15 paid more. On average three-family owners are paying $1,129 less.

The new property assessments confirm that  tax bills for single family, one-, two- and three-family residences decreased significantly.  Only the few properties with values decreasing less than 17 percent paid about the same or received small increases.

Politicians of all political stripes will face challenges in maintaining essential city services and being fiscally responsible over the next two years.  That's because the current property tax system as a means of paying for schools and city services is unsustainable.

Don't look for Team Stewart to acknowledge this reality. The intent is to dissemble and mislead on property taxes from now to November 5th.

SEE related February 6, 2013  post on Housing Bubble and Property Assessments