Ex-official sues over pension cut after cheating scandal

BRIDGEPORT — Former city personnel director David Dunn has filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s attorney general for seeking to cut his pension after Dunn was charged with helping Armando “A.J” Perez cheat his way into becoming the city’s police chief.

The lawsuit comes four months after a Superior Court judge ruled Dunn must forfeit more than $40,000 a year of his pension for his federal conviction for aiding Perez. Dunn on Wednesday asked a U.S. District judge to overrule that decision.

“The court’s decision by reducing the plaintiff’s vested right to a full retirement pension by 50 percent violated the Eight Amendment to the United States Constitution’s prohibition against excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishments,” the lawsuit states.

Dunn’s lawyer in the lawsuit, Thomas Bucci, declined comment on the suit.

A 2008 state law requires the attorney general to sue seeking to revoke or reduce pensions of public employees who are convicted of crimes related to their office. Perez’s civil trial is scheduled for later this month.

“Dunn abused his position and betrayed the public trust, and the judge’s decision in this matter was fair and appropriate. We will continue to defend and enforce this statute as the law requires,” said Attorney General William Tong.

Dunn, who worked for the city for nearly 30 years before his arrest by the FBI in September 2020, was eligible for a yearly pension from the city of $81,969.84.

In 2022, Dunn was sentenced in U.S. District Court to four months and Perez was sentenced to a year and a day after each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and making a false statement to the FBI.

The law seeking to revoke a pension has been applied few times, including in 2012 when, former Oxford tax collector Karen

Guillet, who was convicted of embezzling more than $600,000 from the town, had her pension revoked. In 2019, a judge revoked the pension of former Hartford mayor Eddie Perez who was convicted of corruption charges.

In his ruling in October to cut Dunn’s pension, Superior Court Judge Charles Reed noted, “The defendant had an unblemished record of service with the city until 2018, when, as acting personnel director, he conspired inexplicably to rig the procedure that he was responsible for overseeing. The defendant’s crime was serious, leading to a felony conviction and was perpetrated from the top echelon of city government.”

However, Reed did agree to hear arguments that his ruling had been excessive. Both sides are awaiting his final decision.

Dunn’s lawyer in the state case, Barry Knott, declined comment.

In the meantime, the federal lawsuit states Dunn’s punishment was excessive.

“The 50 percent reduction in the plaintiff ’s pension is a substantially larger forfeiture by over 200 percent, than any other revocation and/or reduction imposed in a judicial proceeding brought under the provisions of Connecticut General Statutes § 1- 110a,” the suit states. “The Superior Court found that the plaintiff’s pension provides 78 percent of his total income and is his principal financial asset. His sixmonth role in this affair represents only 1.7 percent of his career with the city.”

During the trial, under questioning by Assistant Attorney General Gregory O’Connell, Dunn admitted supplying Perez with the questions to the examination in advance and adapting the scoring for the process to benefit Perez. But he said he was unaware that Perez had two other officers take the exam for him.

And he was evasive on whether he lied to the FBI about telling one of the panelists scoring the chief selection process that Mayor Joe Ganim wanted Perez to be one of the finalists for the job.