Danbury gets new top attorney
Dan Casagrande to succeed Robert Yamin as corporation counsel for city
DANBURY — Dan Casagrande, the new corporation counsel for Danbury, is no stranger to City Hall.
Over the past two decades, Casagrande has represented the city as its outside assistant counsel on matters related to land use.
Casagrande and his law firm, Cramer & Anderson, will succeed Robert Yamin, the outgoing counsel. Yamin has served as the city’s top attorney for 22 years, since his appointment in 2001 by former longtime mayor Mark Boughton. “Attorney Casagrande has served as outside assistant corporation counsel for the city of Danbury for the last 30 years. His skills, along with the entire Cramer & Anderson firm, will enable us to proactively address and prepare for all legal matters facing our city,” Mayor Roberto Alves said in a letter notifying the City Council of the appointment.
Casagrande obtained his law degree from Fordham University in 1979, graduating cum laude, according to his biography on the Cramer & Anderson website. He has served as outside counsel for the city since 1990 and has served as town attorney for New Milford and New Fairfield as well as special counsel for several municipalities, including Waterbury, Ridgefield and Cheshire.
Yamin called Casagrande’s appointment “a wonderful choice.”
“That would have been my choice,” Yamin said, explaining that he has retained Casagrande as outside legal counsel for the city throughout his tenure.
“He has always done a remarkable job of representing the city, which is why I kept him on through three mayors,” Yamin said.
It is up to Alves to determine whether to retain other staff in the city’s legal department, including Deputy Corporation Counsel Laszlo Pinter, Yamin said. But he said he hopes Alves retains staff members such as Pinter.
“It would be an obvious disaster for the city, to lose their experience and their expertise,” Yamin said. “Everybody who works with them agrees they’re a phenomenal group.”
In addition to his longtime role in City Hall, Yamin is a partner at the Danbury-based
law firm of Yamin & Yamin. He is a graduate of Western Connecticut State University and Harvard Law School. Yamin was reappointed by then-Mayor Dean Esposito in 2021. Yamin has held the title since 2001, when appointed by Boughton.
“In terms of staff, we are in the process of evaluating the city's needs, and those conversations are ongoing,” Francesca Capodilupo, government affairs and communications adviser for the mayor's office, said in an email to Hearst Connecticut Media.
Capodilupo explained that Casagrande's firm Cramer & Anderson “as a whole will be corporation counsel. Attorney Casagrande will be the point person, and attorneys within the firm will be utilized as needed, based on their specialized knowledge or expertise in certain areas.”
The law firm will bill the city hourly, similar to current practices, Capodilupo said.
Before his latest appointment, Casagrande was tapped last month by Alves to be a member of the then-incoming mayor's transition team.
City Council member Paul Rotello described Casagrande as highly knowledgeable, particularly when it comes to zoning and land use issues.
Rotello served on the city's Zoning Commission before his tenure on the council. He said Casagrande “provided me the best overview about being on the Zoning Commission, which is highly regulated.”
“We bring in Dan for land use on a regular basis,” Rotello said.
As he prepares to depart his longtime office in City Hall, Yamin said, “It's been the honor of my life, as a professional, to serve in that very very important position as the corporation counsel.”
Among his accomplishments, he listed his work spearheading the negotiations that led to the city's purchase of the former Cartus Corp. property on Apple Ridge Road in 2022 that is the future home of the Danbury Career Academy. The new high school program will be “a historic game-changer” for the city, he said.
“Buying a building that's already there, a Cadillac building, is going to save us $130 to $140 million,” Yamin said, noting the high cost of constructing a school from scratch. “Buying this school on 30 acres to create the opportunity for a campus, for an educational campus that can serve us generations was a home run. It was really a blessing that it fell into our lap.”
The attorney also listed the settlement of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed against the city related to its now-closed landfill two decades ago for “pennies on the dollar” as another major accomplishment during his tenure.
“His skills, along with the entire Cramer & Anderson firm, will enable us to proactively address and prepare for all legal matters facing our city.” Mayor Roberto Alves