Ansonia Opts To Break The Rules For Budget Prep

ANSONIA – For the ninth year in a row Ansonia Aldermen voted to follow a budget schedule that violates the city charter, except for one Republican who said he would not break the oath of office he pledged just three months ago.

“I understand that most of my colleagues do not share my concern about this,” Alderman Steven Adamowski said during a Feb. 13 meeting of the Ansonia Board of Aldermen. ​“Suffice it to say that for myself, I don’t like being in a position where I take an oath of office to support the charter and ordinances in December and end up violating it several months later.”

Background

The Ansonia City Charter is the blueprint for city government, laying out the structure of local government and explaining how things should be done. It dictates everything from term lengths to the mayor’s power.

In 2014, voters approved several changes to the charter that gave the mayor a formal role in the budget process and gave the Board of Aldermen the power to approve final budgets instead of the city’s tax board.

The approved changes also included a detailed budget schedule, authored by Ansonia Corporation Counsel John Marini.

The charter requires the mayor to give a budget to the Ansonia Board of Apportionment and Taxation by the second Monday in February.

The Aldermen are supposed to adopt a budget by April 30.

This year, the mayor isn’t scheduled to make his budget public until April 25. The Aldermen are scheduled to adopt a budget by May 30.

Members of Mayor David Cassetti’s administration said they do not follow the charter because the budget deadlines in it are too early and leave too much guesswork.

The Debate

Specifically, the city doesn’t have a clear idea of the amount of money the state will give to Ansonia to bolster the budget. The state budget usually isn’t adopted until the spring. That makes the budget a guessing game in February, Cassetti administration officials said.

Kurt Miller, the city’s chief financial officer, made the argument again at the Feb. 13 Aldermen meeting.

“While I understand the desire to follow the charter to the letter, I feel strongly that doing so is a disservice to the residents of Ansonia,” Miller said, a reference to the fact Ansonia doesn’t know how much money the state will give. ​“I advise against putting out a budget prematurely.”

Ansonia Democrats have complained for years that the shorter budget cycle in Ansonia gives the public less time to review the budget and share educated opinions. A series of meetings are scheduled for May and a budget is pushed through, they argue. 

The Republicans said that doing it their way has stabilized taxes and placed the city on solid financial ground. The public still has the chance to review and comment on the budget for four weeks, they have said.

Democratic Town Committee Chairman Dave Hannon noted that 169 municipalities in Connecticut have to work with state budget schedules, not just Ansonia.

“They’re waiting, apparently, on the state providing concrete budget numbers,” he said. ​“But that is true for every municipality and they still create a budget according to the process outlined in their charters. So I don’t know what the issue is here.”

Is There A Penalty For Rule Breaking?

Marini has advised the Aldermen they are within their right to ignore the budget timeline, even though the charter provides the framework for city government.

He has advised the Aldermen they are within their right to ignore the budget timeline he created.

“If they believe that those timelines need to be modified, as a legislative body, they absolutely can modify that,” Marini said.

At the Feb. 13 meeting, Alderman Joseph Cassetti downplayed the role of the city charter in Ansonia’s budget process.

“I don’t think there are any charter police that are going to arrest us for being in violation of it,” Alderman Cassetti said.

Actually, the city charter does have a section explaining how to handle officials who won’t follow the rules: it’s called ​“potential removal from office.”

Section 151 of the charter talks about the grounds for removing municipal officers from office. It mentions things like corruption, mismanagement, mental incapacity, receiving gifts from contractors and – ​“the willful violation of any requirement of the Charter or ordinances.”

Nestor Davidson, a law professor at Fordham University said he doubts whether budget timeline violations would rise to the level of removal from office. 

Davidson also said it’s not uncommon for local lawmakers to choose not to follow some parts of a charter.

And Marini said the charter has the Aldermen policing themselves. The Aldermen are effectively the judges when a charter rule is broken, he said.

Your Right To Know?

In years past, Miller and the Cassetti administration would not release the mayor’s budget to the public until the mayor presented it to the tax board in April.

The administration also declined to release documents on the day of the meeting. 

It was made public only after the meeting started.

In Connecticut, documents are presumed to belong to the public unless the government can point to exceptions listed in the state’s Freedom of Information Act. 

Miller pointed to a provision in the FOI Act that allows ​“draft” documents to be kept secret. Miller said changes were being made to the budget up until the mayor presented it.

The state’s FOI Act says drafts can be kept secret if ​“the public interest in withholding such documents clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

The law bars the government from withholding documents for frivolous reasons. The Ansonia budget’s public disclosure is tied each year to when the mayor presents it to the tax board, and that date changes.

The ​‘draft’ exception gives local government lots of leverage.

Marini said the city is within its right under state law to keep the mayor’s budget private while it is being worked on. However, the individual budget requests from the city departments to the mayor are attainable, or at least can be asked for.

“You are assuming there is a document called ​“Mayor’s Budget” just sitting around in draft form. In most instances it is not pulled together until the time of publication. You are free to request the various documents being relied on to create the budget, at any time.”

Matthew Kauffman was a reporter for more than 30 years with The Hartford Courant, where in 2007 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting. He is now a board member of the non-profit Connecticut Foundation for Open Government, which advocates for government transparency.

He said Ansonia’s ​‘draft’ stance probably complies with the law, but doesn’t seem like good governing. 

“The law on preliminary drafts is complicated. But whether or not the mayor can legally delay releasing his proposed budget until the moment it’s presented to the tax board, it’s just good governing for officials to be as open as possible with the public, especially when it comes to how taxpayer dollars are spent,” Kauffman said. ​“Ansonia would do well to adopt the policies of its neighbors, giving citizens a greater voice in their government — and complying with the town charter every official is duty-bound to follow.”

Ripple Effect

In practice, the individual budget documents are not available to the public in Ansonia if the department heads also declare them drafts and tie them to the mayor’s public presentation.

This year the Ansonia Board of Education can be used as an example.

Prior to Mayor Cassetti’s administration, members of the school board used to start talking about their proposed budget in public as early as January. 

That’s how it is in Derby, where the school board – after several public meetings – recently voted to adopt a budget that asks the city for a $1.2 million increase in funding. That request is being considered at public meetings of the city’s tax board.

In Seymour, the school board has had a series of public meetings starting in January about its spending plan. The proposed school budget is now being reviewed, in public, by the Seymour Board of Finance.

In both Derby and Seymour, the process applies to all the other departments asking for money, too.

In Ansonia, it appears that school district officials are talking about a budget – but the public hasn’t been privy to those discussions yet.

A one-page school budget document was on the Ansonia Public Schools website on Jan. 17 as part of a school board meeting packet. 

It showed the school district was considering asking the city for a $2.2 million funding increase.

However, neither the school superintendent nor the school board chairman would talk about the document.

The public hyperlink to the document stopped working shortly after The Valley Indy made phone calls about it.

Ansonia Schools Superintendent Joseph DiBacco returned a call for comment on Feb. 26.

He said the budget document was posted by accident, and described it as a draft document.

“It was super premature and, to be honest, embarrassing that it went out like that,” DiBacco said. ​“I didn’t get to talk to the board about things. It shouldn’t have happened like that.”

He referred further budget questions to Miller, saying the school district follows the deadlines set by the Cassetti administration.

Adamowski, Overruled

In the Feb. 13 Aldermen meeting, Alderman Tony Mammone took note of Adamowski’s concerns about the Aldermen violating their oaths of office. 

Mammone suggested that the city could reestablish a charter revision commission and ask the public to approve rewriting the charter deadlines to match the city’s schedule.

But Mammone then motioned to accept Miller’s schedule. Adamowski voted against the motion on the basis that it contained no commitment to charter revision. 

Mammone was asked if he wanted to revise his motion, but he declined. He said he had faith in city officials to consider revision without a motion.

Mammone’s motion passed, over Adamowski’s lone vote against.

Alderman Joseph Jaumann then made a second motion to advise the city to consider charter revision in the next several months. This motion passed unanimously.

In a phone call with the Valley Indy, Marini said Mayor Cassetti will propose members for the Charter Revision Commission to the Aldermen at their next regular meeting, on March 12.

The city had previously signaled its intent to revise the charter’s timeline in 2022, but that revision never happened.

Miller’s proposed schedule has been accepted by the Aldermen and can be viewed here. It is as follows:

• Thursday, April 25, 2024 (6:30 p.m.) — Mayor presents his budget via Zoom to a joint special meeting of the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Apportionment and Taxation.

• Wednesday, May 1, 2024 (6:30 p.m.) — Board of Apportionment and Taxation and the Board of Aldermen Finance Subcommittee will hold a special budget workshop in the Alderman Chambers at City Hall.

• Monday, May 6, 2024 (6:30 p.m.) — Board of Apportionment and Taxation will hold a Public Hearing on the proposed FY 2024 budget in the Aldermen Chambers at City Hall. After the meeting, the Board of Apportionment and Taxation will hold their regular monthly meeting which will include a budget workshop will be held with the Board of Aldermen Finance Subcommittee.

• Wednesday, May 8, 2024 (6:30 p.m.) — Board of Apportionment and Taxation and the Board of Aldermen Finance Subcommittee will hold a special budget workshop in the Aldermen Chambers at City Hall. Also at this meeting, the Board of Apportionment and Taxation will vote to forward the proposed FY 2025 budget on to the full Board of Aldermen.

• Tuesday, May 28, 2024 (6:30 p.m.) — Board of Aldermen will hold a Public Hearing on the proposed FY 2025 budget in the Aldermen Chambers at City Hall. After the meeting, a budget workshop will be held.

• Wednesday, May 29, 2024 (6:30 p.m.) — Board of Aldermen will hold a special budget workshop in the Aldermen Chambers at City Hall.

• Thursday, May 30, 2024 (6:30 p.m.) — Board of Aldermen will hold a special meeting via Zoom to vote on adoption of the FY 2025 City of Ansonia budget.