HatCityBLOG FLASHBACK: City Clerk VIOLATES state law AGAIN (part 1)

In honor of the Common Council passing the language to the charter revision changes, which will be voted upon this November, I thought it would be informative to take a look at the latest round of gross incompetence and disregard for state law by the WORSE City Clerk in the history of Danbury...the lovely Jean Natale.

Originally posted May 6 2009

Oh man, this possible MAJOR screw-up from City Hall is so wide spread, that I don't know where to begin; therefore, I'll have to break this up scandal into multiple posts:

In order to understand this latest round of incompetence, I'll have to present you a little research on the LAW in regards to the revisions to the city charter:

From the Connecticut State Statue Sec. 7-191..take note of the section in bold...

(a) Charters, charter amendments and home rule ordinance amendments: Hearings; draft and final report; public notice; referendum; effective date; filing of copies with Secretary of the State; file maintained by State Library. (a) The commission shall hold at least two public hearings on the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments; one prior to the beginning of any substantive work on such charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments, and one after the draft report to the appointing authority has been completed, but not submitted, after which hearings the commission may amend such report. The commission may hold such other public hearings as it deems necessary.

(b) The commission shall submit its draft report, including the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments, to the clerk of the municipality, who shall transmit such report to the appointing authority. The appointing authority shall hold at least one public hearing on the draft report and shall hold its last hearing not later than forty-five days after the submission of the draft report to such clerk. Not later than fifteen days after its last hearing, the appointing authority shall make recommendations to the commission for such changes in the draft report as it deems desirable.

(c) If the appointing authority makes no recommendations for changes in the draft report to the commission within such fifteen days, the report of the commission shall be final and the appointing authority shall act on such report. If the appointing authority makes recommendations for changes in the draft report to the commission, the commission shall confer with the appointing authority concerning any such recommendations and may amend any provisions of the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments, in accordance with such recommendations, or the commission may reject such recommendations. In either case the commission shall make its final report to the appointing authority not later than thirty days after receiving such recommendations.

(d) Not later than fifteen days after receiving the final report, the appointing authority, by a majority vote of its entire membership, shall either approve the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments or reject the same or separate provisions thereof. Not later than forty-five days after a vote of the appointing authority to reject such matter, a petition for a referendum thereon, signed by not less than ten per cent of the electors of such municipality, as determined by the last-completed registry list thereof, and filed and certified in accordance with the provisions of section 7-188, may be presented to the appointing authority. Not later than thirty days after approval by the appointing authority or the certification of such a petition (1) the proposed charter shall be published in full at least once in a newspaper having a general circulation in the municipality, or (2) the portion of the charter or home rule ordinance being amended shall be published at least once in a newspaper having a general circulation in the municipality with a notice that a complete copy of the charter or home rule ordinance and amendment is available in the town clerk's office and that a copy shall be mailed to any person who requests a copy. The town clerk shall mail or otherwise provide such copy to any person who requests a copy.

(e) The appointing authority shall, by a majority vote of its entire membership, determine whether the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments shall be submitted to the electors for approval or rejection at a regular election or at a special election warned and held for that purpose, which shall be held not later than fifteen months after either the approval by the appointing authority or the certification of a petition for a referendum.

(f) The proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments shall be prepared for the ballot by the appointing authority and may be submitted in the form of one or several questions; and, if approved by a majority of the electors of the municipality voting thereon at a regular election or if approved by a majority which number equals at least fifteen per cent of the electors of the municipality as determined by the last-completed active registry list of such municipality at a special election, such proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments shall become effective thirty days after such approval unless an effective date or dates are specified therein, in which event the date or dates specified shall prevail.

(g) Not later than thirty days after the approval by the electors of any proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments, the town or city clerk shall file, with the Secretary of the State, (1) three certified copies thereof, with the effective date or dates indicated thereon, and (2) in the case of the approval of charter or home rule ordinance amendments, three certified copies of the complete charter or ordinance incorporating such amendments. The Secretary of the State shall distribute two copies, whether tangible or intangible in form, to the State Library, where a file of such charters, charter amendments and home rule ordinance amendments shall be kept for public inspection.

Did you read the portion in BOLD? Good, lets move along.

Okay, here's a photograph of the charter which was published in this Sunday's News-Times (May 3 2009).



Notice something strange? Here, lets go back to THE STATE LAW:

...the portion of the charter or home rule ordinance being amended shall be published at least once in a newspaper having a general circulation in the municipality...

In order words, THE ONLY PORTION OF THE CHARTER THAT NEEDED TO BE PUBLISHED ARE THE PORTIONS THAT ARE BEING AMENDED. If you only take the portion of the charter that's up for changes, the size of the legal notice would be considerably smaller than the two page ad that was published Sunday.

And who's in charge of making sure this gets published? You guessed it....



Wait, wait...it gets better.

The cost of the unnecessary two ad page legal notice is said to be a WHOPPING 5,000 dollars...TAXPAYERS dollars!

Way to go Jeanie!

And which department has to foot the bill for Jean Natale's latest screw-up? If I were a betting man, I would say this comes out of the Common Council budget but we'll have to see...in any regards, in the end, WE THE TAXPAYERS are footing this bill!

And people, look, I'm just scratching the surface on this screw-up. There is MUCH MUCH more to come. Trust me, the rabbit hole goes REAL DEEP on this one.

Remember, come November, think before you vote!