City’s list of key positions to fill grows
Bridgeport now lacks permanent directors of health, personnel, police, public facilities
BRIDGEPORT — Heading into the new year and budget season, Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration has crucial executive positions — the heads of the police force and the public facilities, health and personnel departments — with “acting” in front of their titles.
The City Council says it wants the mayor to show more urgency in filling those key jobs with permanent hires.
“Members have expressed their concerns ( and) I personally have never been favorable about acting positions,” said Councilwoman Aidee Nieves, who said she planned to discuss the matter with Ganim and his chief administrative officer, Janene Hawkins. “It’s a better look for a community to have people in permanent positions and permanent roles.”
Public facilities, police chief, civil service chief and health director leadership jobs are vacant. City Council members said they are worried that not having permanent department heads hurts those agencies and is a “bad look” for the city. Some of those jobs — particularly the police chief and health director — have been embroiled in controversy, which observers say could make it harder to attract qualified candidates to come work
“Members have expressed their concerns ( and) I personally have never been favorable about acting positions.”
Councilwoman Aidee Nieves
in Bridgeport.
Councilman Scott Burns is co- chairman of the budget committee, which frequently meets with departments heads during the year and will have lengthier discussions with them in the spring while crafting a 2021- 22 budget.
Burns said having so many people temporarily in charge makes Bridgeport government look unprofessional and can hinder efforts to reform agencies to better serve taxpayers.
“If someone has a sense of permanence, they can move ahead with some long term plans, or at least present them to the council,” Burns said. “What confidence do they have they should sink their heels into their work and make plans?”
Hawkins in a brief interview said, “We’re working on it.”
But neither she nor Ganim’s spokeswoman, Rowena White, provided details.
“They are all urgent and all a priority for the city,” White said of the four jobs in question.
Public facilities has been without a permanent director the longest — a year. Ganim put John Ricci, who had decades of experience on the municipal payroll, in charge in 2016. Ricci’s sometimes controversial tenure — the agency was the target of an FBI investigation and he was accused by two female employees of sexual harassment — ended with his resignation in December 2019.
Since Ricci’s departure, Deputy Director Craig Nadrizny has been running the massive department, which oversees street and sidewalk maintenance, the upkeep of city buildings, garbage and recycling and the parks and beaches.
Early in 2020, the Ganim administration had been accepting applications, including from onetime public works chief Jorge Garcia, but Nadrizny has remained in charge.
Then late last summer, Ganim abruptly lost both his police chief, long- time friend Armando Perez, and David Dunn, who since 2009 had been the acting head of personnel/ Civil Service. The two were arrested Sept. 10 for conspiring to help Perez cheat on the 2018 exam that helped him become top cop later that year and lie to the FBI about it.
Perez had been acting chief under Ganim for nearly three years. He and
Dunn resigned, plead guilty to the charges and await sentencing.
Assistant Police Chief Rebeca Garcia is that department’s acting head, with Labor Relations Director Eric Amado stepping in temporarily for Dunn.
Most recently, Lisa Morrissey, whom Ganim hired from Danbury’s health department last May to oversee the same department in Bridgeport, suddenly resigned for a job in New Milford.
Ganim has put Tammy Papa, who runs youth services, and Deputy Housing Code Director Audrey Gaines temporarily in charge of the health department as the city seeks a consultant to help with response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Both Nieves and Burns argued that Ganim should first find a permanent personnel director before seeking new health, public facilities and police heads, since the personnel office plays a key role in the hiring process and suffered a damaged reputation following Dunn’s arrest.
“The civil service director has to be hired first — a permanent one — before we should move forward to hire anyone else,” Nieves said. “Unless we get that, there will be questions about any other director hired. We don’t want that.”
But will qualified candidates want to work in Bridgeport? Burns said he is worried all of the controversies — the FBI’s probe into public facilities, Perez’s arrest, Morrissey’s resignation — could make it harder for Bridgeport to convince qualified candidates to apply.
“Strong organizations attract strong talent,” Burns said.
Before running Norwalk’s health department for more than two decades until his retirement in 2017, Timothy Callahan was in charge of Bridgeport’s. Callahan in an interview for this story said the circumstances of Morrissey’s departure after only eight months could scare away potential successors.
Morrissey has not commented on why she left the position.
“I’m from Bridgeport. I worked in the health department, then left and came back as the director,” Callahan recalled. “I came in with my eyes open. ... There’s a lot of politics in hiring and then there’s, often times, interference when you're trying to get the job done.”
“It gets old,” Callahan said. Still, he argued, an urban setting like Bridgeport would be a great opportunity for a future health department chief interested in “getting things straightened up and really turning it around.”
“It would be very personally rewarding and career- wise really something you can put on your resume,” Callahan said. “The question is, is there a will to turn things around?”
John DeCarlo heads the University of New Haven’s master’s program in criminal justice. A former Branford police chief, he said in an interview that despite Perez’s arrest and several other controversies involving Bridgeport’s police force — including incidents of excessive force, racism, internal strife between officers, and depleted manpower — the city should be able to attract good candidates for chief.
“The fact is, if the mayor is serious about making change, he will look for a change agent,” DeCarlo said. “And I guarantee you there are people out there who are ready, willing and able to come in and make that department one of the best in the country.”
But, like Callahan, DeCarlo added, “You have to have the political will to make that change happen. And for that political will to exist, you have to have a problem that needs to be changed and a mayor who wants to change.”