Board of Alders once again oversteps its boundaries

The New Haven Board of Alders has once again overstepped its boundaries when it refused to approve the appointment of Sean Matteson for chief administrative officer. The role of the alders is to provide “advice and consent”, to advise the mayor on her nominations and ultimately give or withhold its consent. Alders should only withhold their consent when they have determined that a candidate is unfit. From their own comments, apparently fitness was not the issue, but instead appeared to be some personal vendetta or sinister power grab by UNITE and their suburban union bosses.

So, what are the reasons cited by alders for opposing the nomination?

“I did have some personal things with Mr. Matteson. When my ward had come to the table on our own and was sitting at the table with Achievement First to make sure we get a community benefit agreement from Achievement First, that they would give back to our neighborhood, Mr. Matteson has said to DeStefano not to support us.”

Nowhere in the record is there any public opposition to the agreement from Mattison or Mayor John DeStefano.

Another alder said, “I was here when he was chief of staff and political or not, the city did not thrive. As a result, the current mayor inherited a huge, huge amount of financial problems. Topmost on that list is something that he himself mentioned: the firemen and the police overtime…if we’re resting our hopes on his helping us resolve that long-term issue … I’m not willing to give him a second chance to resolve that particular issue.”

Now this comment is amazingly absurd coming from a group of people who are re-elected every two years and have yet gotten a grip on police and fire overtime. Since Matteson left, alders have passed four budgets and have made zero effort to rein in overtime from those two very powerful constituencies.

Another comment from the alders was, “We can keep him in the position of acting … indefinitely. We should not be rushing to make this decision without comparing him to other applicants.” And this one by yet another alder, “Haste makes waste, there should not be a rush for this position to be filled. I’m quite sure there are plenty of other people qualified for this position.”

First, why even have the power to not consent if at the end of the day the appointee stays in the office as long as the mayor wants him to, and while doing so doesn’t have to fulfill other charter obligations, like living in the city. How does keeping him in an acting role indefinitely benefit the city? Second, this whole idea that a group of 30 alders should be reviewing resumes is way out of bounds and unworkable.

Matteson, with his previous city hall as well as his management experience, was a good choice by the mayor for chief administrative officer. By bringing in a seasoned professional with experience working with a fairly successful previous mayor, for me it signaled a positive change in Harp’s administration. Many more changes need to take place. But they will not if the alders continue to make nonsensical decisions which when viewed from the outside appear to be designed to hurt the current mayor to settle old political scores.