ANSONIA – Mayor Frank Tyszka’s administration is following a budget process that raises questions about transparency.
At issue – the city’s Board of Apportionment and Taxation (or tax board) has been holding budget meetings without a quorum or keeping minutes.
When asked about the practice, Nancy Spagnolo, Mayor Frank Tyszka’s chief of staff, said the gatherings are not traditional public meetings, but are internal staff meetings.
The meetings “are not budget meetings of any board or commission. They are internal staff meetings held during business hours to discuss departmental costs,” Spagnolo said in an email to The Valley Indy.
Internal staff meetings are not subject to state open government laws.
The Connecticut Freedom of Information Act recognizes municipal staffers need to be able to conduct the day-to-day business of a city.
It’s also routine, in the budget formulation process across Connecticut, for staffers from places like the finance department to meet with other departments and the mayor’s office to talk about spending and revenue.
That’s how budget proposals are drafted.
“You have to discuss it internally before you can take it out to the public,” Spagnolo said. “This is part of budget preparation. It’s absolutely not unreasonable to expect department staff to meet with finance staff and discuss the upcoming year, programs, hiring, things like that, that are going to impact a budget, and where changes can be made, and where changes would have the most or least impact.”
However . . .
The City of Ansonia advertised the meetings as tax board budget meetings. The meetings were open to the public.
They were not billed as internal staff meetings, which are not publicly noticed in advance, nor is the public welcomed to attend. See the image below.
The public notice for the six March meetings was titled “Board of Apportionment & Taxation Budget Workshops Meetings 2026-2027.”
“The following is the schedule for budget meetings with the Board of Apportionment & Taxation,” the notice read.
The notice was posted to the city’s website six times on the city’s calendar – where public meeting notices go.
Spagnolo said the notice was a mistake. A clarification would be issued, she said.
“That is an error in administration and secretarial functions, not an error in FOIA and notice,” Spagnolo said.
The meeting notice also gave the public the time, date and location of each meeting, and which department would be in attendance. For example, the recreation department was scheduled to meet with the tax board 1 p.m. March 23.
The tax board’s chairman, who attended the meetings, said the purpose was to listen to budget presentations from various departments.
The finance and tax boards in Seymour and Derby do the same thing every year – but they do it at public meetings.
The image below shows finance board ‘workshops’ that happened in March in Seymour, where department heads made their pitches for funding in public. An agenda was published for each meeting and minutes were filed. The article continues after the image.
There are no minutes available from the daytime tax board meetings that have already taken place in Ansonia. There’s no official record of who attended or what they talked about.
The explanation for that given by the town clerk’s office and the chairman of the tax board differed slightly from Spagnolo’s explanation.
The Valley Indy asked the town clerk’s office for meeting minutes March 25 but was told no agendas or minutes exist because the meetings were “workshops.”
Tax board chairman Edward Norman elaborated in an interview with The Valley Indy. He said the workshops are not traditional public meetings because the city is being careful to limit participation to three members of the tax board.
If a fourth tax board member showed up, the meeting would be illegal, because the fourth member would mean a quorum of the tax board was in attendance.
“I’ve sent people out of the meeting when that fourth person showed up,” Norman said. “So I’m looking for clarification that I should be able to have the full board there, for the workshops. We’re not taking any votes, we’re just gathering information.”
Norman said the meetings are open to the public. He said members of the Board of Aldermen have been attending, but not enough to constitute a quorum of that board.
So the meetings were advertised as routine public meetings. The public was welcomed to attend. Routine annual budget matters were discussed.
Why not treat them as routine public meetings?
“The board of apportionment and the Board of Aldermen are open to the public. My workshops, my public hearings, are open to the public,” Norman said.
Your Right To Know Even If You Can’t Go
The Ansonia City Charter spells out the tax board’s powers. Its authors stressed the importance of having quorums to do the public’s business.
In fact, the document empowers the mayor to issue a warrant and arrest absent tax board members in order to force them to a meeting that lacks a quorum. The image below is from the Ansonia charter.
The state’s Freedom of Information Act requires governments to post agendas so that people know in advance the topics to be discussed at a meeting.
It compels the government to then keep a permanent record of what was said.
The laws protect the public’s right to know, and makes it possible for residents who don’t attend budget meetings a way to follow what’s happening.
Simple meeting minutes also act as a fact-check resource for future municipal leaders.
Permission To Be Murky
Purposefully circumventing state open government rules by not having a quorum was frowned upon for decades by the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission.
Not anymore.
Local governments have room to avoid transparency thanks to a 2021 Connecticut Supreme Court decision. That court case overturned a decision from the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, whose members had ruled that the City of Meriden had violated the FOI Act.
The decision put heavy emphasis on how state law defines a meeting. And that definition includes having a quorum.
No quorum? Then it’s not a meeting – but you can still meet.
“If less than a quorum of board members are gathered, it does not meet the definition of a meeting under freedom of information based on the precedent set in that court case,” said Russell Blair, the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission’s director of communication and education.
Tyszka, a Democrat, was the leader of a Democratic ticket in November 2025 that threw out the Republican control of the mayor’s office and the Board of Aldermen.
The tax board members were appointed by Tyszka with Aldermen approval.
Tony Mammone is the chairman of the Ansonia Town Republican Committee.
He said Tyszka is breaking his campaign promise of fiscal transparency.
“How can you limit the audience and the members who are ultimately going to approve that budget from those meetings? You talk about transparency, where is the transparency in that?” Mammone said.
He said that under Mayor David Cassetti, budget workshop meetings were held online and minutes were maintained.
The Ansonia GOP also lodged transparency complaints against the Tyszka administration on Facebook.
Spagnolo, when asked about the critical Facebook post, said the public has the chance to weigh in on the budget during public hearings.
“Upon receiving the mayor’s proposed budget, the Board of Apportionment and Taxation holds public hearings and then reviews the budget to make recommendations,” Spagnolo said.
Is Avoiding Quorums Transparent?
The Valley Indy interviewed three open government experts for this story.
None said Ansonia’s actions violated state laws.
However, each said the city should not be calling itself transparent. An issue — what if all municipalities in Connecticut decide to take their budget meetings “workshops” offline with no official record?
Justin Silverman is the executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, an organization which advocates for government transparency and public access to government.
Silverman said it’s a poor look for government officials to look for ways to avoid sharing information with the public.
“Even if the law does allow them to have these meetings and work outside the requirements of FOIA, that doesn’t mean they should be,” Silverman said in an interview. “These officials have an obligation to be as transparent as possible, and that’s a matter of principle that they should recognize and respect, rather than looking for ways to evade public scrutiny.”
He said government officials shouldn’t ignore the public’s right to know when going about the city’s business.
“I get the desire of public officials at times to want to get business done very quickly and efficiently, but that can’t come at the cost of transparency,” Silverman said.
Silverman said avoiding meeting minutes is bad public policy.
“It really makes it difficult to even determine whether they are doing as they say, and acting within the law, because you don’t know who’s at these meetings, because minutes haven’t been taken,” Silverman said.
Michele Jacklin is on the board of directors of the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government. She is also the co-president of the Connecticut Council of Freedom of Information.
In general, she said she opposed the practice of public officials purposefully avoiding quorums. She said it’s not in the spirit of the FOI Act. It also sets the stage for malfeasance, should the practice continue, Jacklin said.
“Let’s be honest. Often cities and towns will engage in every deceptive practice they can. Not every town. Not every city. But often, to avoid complying with the FOI Act. They just like to do that,” Jacklin said.
She said Ansonia could alleviate transparency concerns by recording the meetings and posting the recordings to the web.
Katherine Revello is an investigative reporter who covers open government issues extensively at Connecticut Inside Investigator. Last year her accountability journalism was honored by the New England First Amendment Coalition.
She noted that towns and cities do not normally provide advance notice of internal staff meetings. She also said avoiding quorums is poor public policy, even if the intentions are good.
“Holding meetings without a quorum could lead to meetings being held completely in secret,” she said in an email. “The quorum requirement exists for a reason: it triggers requirements that meeting times and locations, as well discussion items and votes, be recorded. If there’s no record of a meeting, the public has no way of keeping track of what their government officials are doing unless they’re in the room with them.”
Same Old, Same Old?
The fact is the budget process in Ansonia has been difficult to track for years, across multiple mayoral administrations.
Example:
- In January 2024, Ansonia Public Schools posted a proposed budget summary on the district website.
- The document was taken down after The Valley Indy asked about it. School district officials said it had been posted by accident.
- The Cassetti administration later issued statements saying the mayor’s budget fully funded education. However, the January budget summary posted by accident showed the school district had actually requested more money than the city allocated.
The Cassetti administration also did not follow the Ansonia City Charter when preparing budgets. They often didn’t meet budget deadlines outlined in the charter, to the point an Alderman joked about being arrested by the “charter police.”
John Marini, the corporation counsel under Cassetti, eventually issued an opinion saying the Aldermen could overrule the city’s charter at will. Marini didn’t return calls for comment for this article.
In 2011, when James Della Volpe was mayor, members of the Ansonia tax board barred the public, including three reporters, from an unplanned budget “workshop.”
The members of the tax board split into two small groups in order to not have a quorum so they could talk about matters of public concern in private.
Della Volpe later apologized.