With a lawsuit against it dismissed in court last week, Bloomfield Mayor Anthony Harrington’s administration on Tuesday proclaimed victory over former Deputy Mayor Rickford Kirton, one of its most outspoken critics.
Judge Trial Referee Sheila Huddleston announced she was throwing out the lawsuit by Kirton and others who claimed the town council last spring wrongly snuck $4 million into the municipal budget and then misled voters into approving it at referendum.
The decision was a significant win for the town leadership, which has been under political fire from a band of detractors accusing it of being secretive and ignoring the will of voters.
“While we respect each individual’s right to seek judicial review of the actions of any government actor, this meritless lawsuit, fueled solely by partisan politics, placed an unnecessary financial burden upon the residents of Bloomfield,” Town Manager Alvin Schwapp and Town Attorney Andrew Crumbie said in a jointly issued statement on Bloomfield’s Facebook page.
Kirton said Tuesday that he intends to appeal Huddleston’s decision. At town hall on Tuesday morning, Schwapp told The Courant he had no comment beyond the official statement.
The plaintiffs wanted Huddleston to invalidate the referendum and direct the council to arrange a new vote on a budget without the $4 million at question.
Town leaders maintained they’d done nothing wrong, and Huddleston concluded the plaintiffs failed to show that taxpayers would have voted “no” if they’d known about the $4 million dispute.
“There is no evidence that the outcome of the referendum would have been different if the ($4 million) fund transfer had not been included in the referendum question,” Huddleston wrote in a decision published Dec. 29.
“The referendum vote fell more than 300 votes short of the number required to reject the adopted budget. There is no evidence that any elector would have changed his or her vote, or that any elector who did not vote would have been motivated to vote against the budget, if the referendum question had omitted the reference to the fund transfer,” she wrote.
Kirton, former Mayor Schulman and Lucy Hurston, a deacon at the Bloomfield Congregational Church, jointly sued the town and the town council soon after voters approved the budget referendum in May.
They argued that the council under then-Mayor Danielle Wong violated the charter when it had voters decide on a $117.6 million spending plan. Instead, the figure should have been only $113.6 million, a figure councilors initially approved before transferring $4 million from the reserve fund to an economic development fund in the budget, they argued. Kirton, Schulman and Hurston contended that the charter requires a separate referendum for an expense so large.
But Huddleston disagreed, saying the charter governs spending money but doesn’t apply to merely appropriating it. The $4 million transfer didn’t spend anything, and thus wasn’t improper, she ruled.
Bloomfield officials posted a lengthy statement to the town’s website.
“This decision reaffirms the integrity of Bloomfield’s democracy and its financial processes. Our residents were given accurate information, meaningful opportunities to engage, and a lawful referendum. The court’s ruling confirms that the will of the voters was respected and properly carried out,” Mayor Anthony Harrington wrote.
The town’s statement said the matter was costly to taxpayers.
“Defending this lawsuit required the use of over $100k of unbudgeted taxpayer funds that could otherwise have supported critical town services and community priorities,” it said. “We are thankful the Court has weighed in to provide a clear resolution to this issue.”
Kirton said the plaintiffs saw it differently.
“We respectfully disagree with the town’s characterization of the court’s decision and intend to appeal,” he said in a written statement.
Republican Councilor Shamar Mahon, a long-standing political adversary to the Democratic administration, slammed the town’s statement in a Facebook post.
“This reads more like an opinion piece than an objective statement from a municipal government. To vocalize the belief that the lawsuit was partisan politics instead of concerned citizens speaking up, is very disheartening. The town should take this down and repost it with more professional verbiage,” Mahon wrote.
But over the past several months, opinion on Bloomfield-related Facebook pages has been mixed. While some residents praised it as a way to bring scrutiny to the budget, other posters said it was hurting residents because it had grown too costly for the town to defend.
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