New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Mayors’ vacation buybacks draw ire
Some fuming that Rossi, O’Brien got thousands while city’s finances are in turmoil
WEST HAVEN — There is mounting pressure for Mayor Nancy Rossi and former Mayor Ed O’Brien each to reimburse the city for two weeks of vacation buybacks.
One Democrat on the City Council is seeking an ethics probe. Others are claiming that although Rossi ran on a platform of transparency, she is not following through because she has not answered detailed questions about the buybacks made at public meetings.
Rossi, a Democrat, said Friday the criticisms are politically motivated.
O’Brien, also a Democrat, has announced he’s running for mayor again, and popular City Clerk Debbie Collins is expected to run for the seat, as well, as she has formed an exploratory committee.
“I think this entire situation smells of politics and, honestly, if these folks would put as much effort in to their publicly elected positions, West Haven would be much better off,” Rossi said in an email. “The politics in this city are reaching a new alltime low with this type of nonsense. I think these politicians have done enough damage to West Haven and don’t like the fact that I let them know it. West Haven is going to get cleaned up whether they like it or not.”
Rossi said O’Brien was paid for 98 hours of vacation totaling $3,681.37 and personal days totaling $1,004.01, and she was paid for 70 hours, which totaled $3,346.70. Both Rossi and O’Brien have said they were paid with a green light from both the city’s human resources director and respective city attorneys.
O’Brien said that as he was leaving office, he was told by human resources that it was a “benefit.” A lawyer in the previous city attorney’s office also approved it, he said.
“Year four I did that, not year one, two or three. I took it because I lost the election,” O’Brien said this week. “If it is determined I was not entitled to it, I certainly will pay back to the city, as I hope all other past elected officials will.”
Asked whether she had any plans to pay the money back, Rossi said, “If I thought for one minute that I received a benefit that was not appropriate, I would return the money immediately. This is a benefit that is available to all city employees including the Mayor.”
At the center of the debate is an interpretation of a City Council resolution that states elected officials shall not have a salary increase while in office, and are entitled to the same benefits as union employees in terms of longevity, insurance, car allowance, retirement and workers’ compensation.
Vacation buybacks are not mentioned specifically, which leaves that open to interpretation, according to City Attorney Lee Tiernan.
In Rossi’s case, Tiernan gave the opinion that she was entitled to the benefit based on precedent — in effect, O’Brien getting a vacation buyback.
But Tiernan said in a March 25 memo to City Council Chairman Ron Quagliani that although Rossi was entitled to it her first year in office, he put her on notice in December 2018 that the practice would end.
She did nothing wrong, he said, as the precedent had been set by the previous mayor.
Tiernan stated in the memo to Quagliani regarding the resolution that the “vacation” benefit is silent concerning vacation pay regarding elected officials, and he cited a Connecticut statute saying the “absence of a written policy concerning vacation pay can result in the state finding that you, the employer, created an employee vacation benefit.”
Tiernan said in the memo that he ended the vacation buyback practice as of December 2018 and alerted Rossi to that.
He also said in the memo, “I cannot find any evidence either mayor knowingly violated any rule, law, ordinance or practice concerning this matter.”
But 3rd District council member Aaron Charney, a Democrat, who also is a lawyer, said he isn’t buying Tiernan’s story.
“I think the attorney’s opinion ending the practice is a backhanded way of saying Mayor Rossi should never have done this in the first place,” Charney said. “She should have to pay every cent back. We expect our leaders to lead by example.”
But Tiernan said that it may, in fact, be illegal not to pay officials for unused vacation time under state statute.
“While I regret we are going to a less accountable system as it relates to the Mayor, I see no choice at present,” Tiernan wrote.
Trying to legally recover “vacation pay” from the previous and current mayors would become expensive in lawyer fees, Tiernan wrote.
Tiernan wrote that while the City Council has not officially altered the employee benefits for non-union employees resolution since Nov. 26, 2007, concerning vacation pay or benefits, the council developed a keen interest in the subject in 2017 and “It was clear to the Commissioner of Human Resources and Personnel and the Director of Finance that the Council wanted greater accountability.”
The questions have been swirling for months around years of vacation buybacks, compensatory pay practices overall and perks such as lifetime benefits being handed out in employee deals.
City Councilwoman Tracy Morrissey has led the charge for information past and present, asking for records on buybacks, compensatory hours and other employee info since January at the beginning of every City Council meeting, and said she hasn’t received any complete answers from Tiernan or the administration. Morrissey has said that for years city employees have used payment for compensatory time as their “slush fund.”
“Since January, I’ve been mentioning it at every meeting because I didn’t want them to fluff it off,” she said, noting she still doesn’t have answers of the scope requested.
Morrissey is so persistent it has caught the attention of residents who have followed suit during public comment, asking for answers on buybacks, compensatory pay and other deals said to have evolved through years of politicking.
Rossi has acknowledged publicly that she took two weeks of vacation buyback.
Morrissey’s stance is that the City Council resolution regarding elected officials is clear, because vacation buybacks aren’t specifically mentioned while the five other allowable items are. She also said that since the mayor’s base salary is
$87,014 per year, the buybacks change that salary and violate the rule that the mayor can’t receive a raise while in office.
“It’ s very clear in the resolution and in Lee Tiernan’s response stating he put a stop to the vacation buybacks for elected officials,” Morrissey said. “I am troubled that Mayor Nancy Rossi and former Mayor Ed O’Brien find it acceptable to take taxpayers’ dollars in vacation buybacks, which they are clearly not entitled to. It is wrong and this money must be reimbursed to the taxpayers.”
Frustrated by a lack of information being made available and the vacation buyback issue hanging there without answers, At-Large City Council Democrat Dave Forsyth at a March 25 council meeting requested an ethics probe to determine whether the vacation buyback practice was legal.
“I want to get down to the answer once and for all, and if it’s in violation, then both past and present should pay it back to the city,” he said. “Here the mayor is asking the people of Allingtown for money through raising their taxes and taking vacation buybacks.”
Forsyth said following past practices “is not putting the city first.”
“We are elected as city officials to always do what’s best and put the city first,” he said.
Rossi, who said she was a member of the city’s Ethics Board for years, said an ethics accusation is “a very serious issue, has very specific rules for submitting a complaint, and does carry consequences for a false complaint and untruthful information.”
She said using the platform “for political revenge is both unethical and illegal.” She said Forsyth and Morrissey’s concerns are politically motivated.
“Vacation buyback is nothing new and there is a legal opinion supporting the policy and benefit,” she said. “There is a funded vacation buyback line item in the city budget.”
The only reason some council members are asking for O’Brien to pay back the money as well, Rossi said, is “because I repeatedly asked during public input why I was being singled out.”
In a March email from Tiernan to Morrissey, who had once again requested detailed vacation buyback information on the mayor, Tiernan wrote of the vacation buybacks: “I have stopped the practice which began with the previous mayor.”
He also provided to her in the email a list of appointed officials — not to be confused with the elected officials addressed in the resolution — who received vacation buyback pay, including:
- Longtime human resource and personnel director Beth Sabo, who received four weeks of vacation buyback in 2018.
- Sharon Recchia, of the city clerk’s office, who received two weeks in 2018.
- Louis Esposito, who served as mayor’s chief staff and director of public works, received two weeks at the end of 2018.
- Kristen Teshoney, who works in the mayor’s office, received one week in at the end of 2018 after her first anniversary date.
- Cindy McGrath, who works in the city clerk’s office, one day of vacation buyback at the end of 2018.
At a public hearing on the mayor’s proposed city and education budget this week, the vacation buyback was brought up by one of Collins’ campaign managers, Rick Fontana.
He called the buyback, “hypocritical, unethical and selfish,” in a year when other employees were taking furlough days to “help out.”
Fontana said it was wrong for the mayor to take a buyback her first year in office and contrary to what she said at election isn’t “different” from the other politicians.
Rossi has often said she is among the lowest-paid mayors in the state and even though the city provides her with a car, she mainly uses her own car — except for some longer trips to Hartford because of liability matters — and that she buys her own gas and doesn’t use a city credit card to buy lunches. Rossi also doesn’t get benefits through the city, she has said.
Some of her critics, including Morrissey, have noted in talking about the vacation buyback issue that Rossi knows the City Council resolution well because it was her in her City Council days who requested a legal opinion from then-city attorney Peter Barrett on whether former Mayor John Picard violated the resolution by being paid $6,000 from the city to take college classes.
Picard received the funds in 2011 and 2012 as partial reimbursement for college courses he took in a master’s degree program.
Picard and other City Hall employees said the accidental payment was “an oversight.” Picard said at the time that he didn’t realize the rules had been changed.
Barrett determined that, based on the resolution, Picard must return the money.