Ex-town clerk sues over deleted email allegations

EAST HAVEN — Former Town Clerk Stacy Gravino is taking legal action against three current town officials over what she says are allegations that she destroyed thousands of emails during her time in office.

Gravino, who served as East Haven's town clerk for more than a decade, is suing current Town Clerk Lisa Balter, Economic Development Director Michelle Benivegna and Administrative Assistant Tina Hedley for false light and defamation, seeking $15,000 in damages. The lawsuit, filed last week at Superior Court in New Haven, stems from a 2022 incident in which Gravino was alleged to have committed computer crimes while employed by the town.

In March 2022, Balter, the newly-elected town clerk, filed a complaint with the East Haven Police Department, alleging that the email account of her predecessor, the Republican incumbent Gravino, had “no records of any e-mails sent or received in approximately the last two (2) years,” a police report states.

Two months earlier, as she transitioned into her new role as the town clerk, Balter was given access to Gravino's email account by Administrative Assistant Tina Hedley to “observe any unanswered e-mails and to advise email senders of the new Town Clerk e-mail,” the report states. After being granted access, Balter said that both she and Hedley observed that Gravino's account had no emails in the “sent” or “inbox” folders for about two years prior to Dec. 15, 2021, according to the report. Gravino's last day as a town employee was Dec. 30, 2021, Balter told police, per the report.

“Balter was concerned of the loss of e-mails because there could have been sensitive e-mails that were no longer accessible,” police Detective Jonathan Trinh wrote in the report.

Hedley later told the detective that she, too, observed a “large portion of e-mails were not present in Gravino's e-mail folders” when she gave Balter access to the account.

Upon discovering the absence of emails, Balter and Hedley enlisted the help of Timothy Murray, a technician with Nextgen Public Safety Solutions, who later contacted police and said that he also observed no messages in any of Gravino's folders, the report states. Murray stated that he was able to recover “several thousand” emails from Gravino's account — which had remained on the town's email server — and return the messages to their corresponding folders, according to the report.

During a follow-up investigation at Town Hall, Hedley provided Trinh with access to Gravino's town email account, and the detective said he observed an absence of all emails in the “deleted” folder from May 2017 to April 2020, an absence of all emails in the “sent” folder from September 2018 to December 2021, and an absence of all emails in the “inbox” folder from August

2020 to December 2021, the report states.

“Hedley stated she recalled seeing numerous recovered emails the day Murray assisted in recovering any deleted e-mails, but she could not remember (on) which computer this occurred or why there is still the current absence of of e-mails from a timespan of two (2) years,” Trinh wrote.

In April 2022, Trinh contacted Murray, the Nextgen computer technician, asking if he would be willing to give an official witness statement regarding what he observed when he was asked to recover emails on Gravino's account, the report states. But Murray declined to give a statement and told police he did not want to be involved in the investigation, according to the report.

That same day, the report states, Gravino told Trinh over the phone that “she did delete emails from her work e-mail prior to the conclusion of her employment with the Town of East Haven.” Gravino initially agreed to speak with Trinh in person, but then later contacted the detective saying she was no longer interested in discussing the matter, and that she would be contacting her attorney for guidance, according to the report.

During their investigation, East Haven police conferred with Assistant State's Attorney Melissa Holmes, who said the case contained “elements of computer crime” but added that she felt that “this matter would be more appropriately handled by the town through civil proceedings rather than pursuing criminal charges,” the report states. The police investigation subsequently was closed.

Now, Gravino is suing Balter and Hedley for “recklessly” and falsely accusing her of deleting emails in an attempt to “devalue” her public support and “wreak havoc with her reputation” to diminish her chances of being reelected town clerk in the future. Gravino's lawsuit also contends that Hedley and/or Benivegna, then the town's director of human resources, leaked the “existence” of the police report detailing Gravino's alleged computer crimes to the East Haven Patch, a local online publication, which subsequently reported the story.

Gravino, an East Haven resident, had won six consecutive elections to the clerk position before she was defeated by Balter in 2021. She now works as the Stonington town clerk.

The accusations leveled against her were “antithetical to the values of honesty, integrity, and transparency that the plaintiff had long exhibited and fostered in her unblemished reputation and career as a public servant in the Town of East Haven,” the lawsuit states.

Patricia Cofrancesco, Gravino's attorney, said Tuesday that her client, whom she had not been representing at the time of the investigation, only deleted spam and junk messages from her town email account.

“From what I'm understanding, the stuff that was deleted, it was all spam and junk (messages),” Cofrancesco said. “The stuff that she was alleged to have deleted was actually on the town server, and those were the documents that were directly related to her position as the town clerk. So nothing untoward happened at all.”

All three co-defendants will be represented by different attorneys, and the parties must respond to the complaint by March 21, judicial records show.

“My matter has been assigned to the law firm of Milano and Wanat, and I look forward to working with them to prove that I acted in the best interest of the Town of East Haven,” Balter said over the phone Tuesday.

Hedley said via email that her case had been assigned to the New Haven-based law firm Ryan & Ryan. She echoed a similar sentiment to her colleagues: “I did my job and that will be proven.”

An attorney for Benivegna has not yet been determined, but she wrote in an email on Tuesday that, “Documents should not be deleted. Period.”

Whether any purportedly missing emails have since been recovered from Gravino's account is unclear. When asked if East Haven had taken any steps to pursue charges or impose penalties against Gravino in connection with her alleged activity, Town Attorney Michael Luzzi said he had no comment.