Our Town

A candidate forum is being held tonight in the Town Hall Meeting Room. The forum, which begins at 6 p.m., will feature candidates for the 149th and 151st state assembly districts. All four candidates – Republicans Livvy Floren and Fred Camillo and Democrats Howard Richman and Claude Johnson – have been invited to participate in what was originally intended as a debate to take the place of a League of Women Voters debate that was cancelled due to the weather and not rescheduled.

However, the Republican candidates have declined to participate. This is unfortunate as the voters deserve every opportunity to become informed about the candidates’ positions on the serious issues that face our state. What started out as a Democratic initiative to promote a cooperative effort between the two parties in providing Greenwich voters with the opportunity to hear the candidates debate the issues has become a purely Democratic effort due to lack of Republican participation.

That the event has now become a partisan candidate forum sponsored by local Democrats does not negate its service to the voters. Howard Richman, Democratic candidate for the 149th assembly district, and Claude Johnson, Democratic candidate for the 151st assembly district will give voters an opportunity to ask questions in an open forum. Voters will have the opportunity to hear about the candidates’ proposed legislative initiatives. Voters will also have an opportunity to express their views and share their concerns in discussion with the candidates.

Greenwich voters, regardless of party, should take advantage of this opportunity to get to know the Democratic candidates. This can lead to a more informed choice.

In my first Greenwich Time column (October 3), I wrote about the importance of voter choice in a democracy and the fact that this year Greenwich voters have a choice of candidates for the state legislature in all but one of our state legislative districts. This choice is not a given. The Democratic candidates, running against seemingly insurmountable odds, must never be taken for granted.

My column didn’t deal with the other side of the equation – the need for an informed electorate. In order to make meaningful choices, the voters must have the opportunity to get to know something about the candidates and what they stand for. One important vehicle for informing the electorate is the live debate, with a portion of the questions coming from the audience. This is the best way for voters to hear from the candidates first hand. It allows voters to exercise judgment that is not based on campaign rhetoric.

Such debates have traditionally been sponsored by the League of Women Voters, an organization known for its voter service, with considerable expertise in running debates. Unfortunately, the debate sponsored by the Greenwich League scheduled for September 30 was cancelled due to a storm threat that turned the Town Hall Meeting Room, where the debate was to be held, into the town’s Emergency Operations Center.

The debate would have been between Republican Livvy Floren and Democrat Howard Richman, both candidates for the 149th state assembly district, and between Republican Fred Camillo and Democrat Claude Johnson, candidates for the 151st assembly district. Citing difficulties in finding a suitable venue and coordinating schedules, the League decided not to reschedule the debate. This decision is unfortunate as it deprives the voters of an important opportunity to become more informed. One wonders if a greater effort could have been made to find a suitable time and place over the course of the then three and a half weeks before the election. Be that as it may, the League debate will not take place.

Given this reality, local Democrats took the initiative in trying to coordinate with local Republicans in organizing an alternative debate, using the same format and rules as would have been used by the League. The Greenwich Time also offered to sponsor a debate in an effort to ensure an opportunity for voters to hear from the candidates on substantive issues.

But Republicans scoffed at the idea.

Granted that there have been other debates between the candidates for the state assembly in the course of this campaign season in other venues, and other candidate forums, and that a GCTV televised debate will be broadcast repeatedly on Channel 79 in the remaining days leading up to the election, the League debate has always been the big debate that draws the greatest audience and that allows the audience to interact with the candidates in a live forum on a wide range of issues.

And granted also that no other organization – especially not a political town committee, or committees – will ever be able to duplicate the League debate, it is disappointing to see such Republican resistance to the very idea of trying to schedule a debate.

It appears as the arrogance of power. How else to interpret a statement like: “If the shoe was on the other foot, they would laugh at us.”

This quote is attributed to Fred Camillo in reference to the Democratic effort to organize a debate. According to newspaper accounts, Fred doubts that the Democrats would be eager to debate if they were the incumbents. In other words, we the Republican incumbents are laughing at you Democrats for trying to schedule another debate. Why should we bother to cooperate with you, or debate with you who are not incumbents.

The Republicans can afford to be smug. No Democrat has been elected to the state assembly from Greenwich for nearly 100 years, not since 1912.

Likewise, Republican Town Committee Chairman, Jim Campbell, can put down the whole effort with the snide comment that the Democrats are only interested in a debate because their candidates are “not well known.”

Well, yes. That’s the point. The candidates are not well known. Does this mean the voters should be deprived of an opportunity to get to know them better?

Unfortunately, this whole debate over the debate has deteriorated into unhelpful partisan sniping, and will likely culminate with a Democratic event scheduled for Wednesday evening, October 13, in the Town Hall Meeting Room. Although the scheduling conflicts with a Stamford 149th district candidate forum, Democrats plan to go ahead with this event, intended as a debate, to which the Republican assembly candidates have been invited.

It is doubtful any Republican candidates will be present in what has become a purely partisan venue, or that any additional debate will ever take place. But for voters interested in learning more about the Democratic candidates, Claude Johnson and Howard Richman, it should be an event well worth attending.

In all my blog postings I strive for accuracy. But if I make a mistake, I will do my best to correct it. And if an apology is in order, it will be forthcoming. I am told by Planning and Zoning Commissioner Frank Farricker that in my Sunday blog posting – Possible Law Suit Over Bank Denial : Confusion Over Legal Protections for Town Officers - I have made an assumption that is not true.

In that posting, I wrote:

In the aftermath of the Planning and Zoning Commission’s stunning 3-2 vote to deny  Chase’s application to put a bank in Cos Cob where the Bella Nona restaurant is now located, Commission members, faced with a possible law suit, convened in executive session for a briefing from the town’s law department. The idea that Commission members – and by implication all town officers – are personally liable for legal fees and for any award should the town lose a suit came from a Commission member who was present during that executive session and provided certain information to the press.

The Commission member referred to was Frank Farricker, who did provide information to the press regarding the potential for personal liability when town officers and their boards or commissions are sued. However, in my blog posting I made the assumption that Frank provided this information subsequent to the executive session, in which case he would have been violating the confidentiality of the executive session. I made this assumption based on the news reports about the possible law suit. In a phone conversation late this afternoon, Frank assures me that he made his statements to the press before the executive session took place and that he has never spoken to the press about what went on during the executive session.

I therefore stand corrected, and offer an apology to Frank.

Over the past week, inaccurate information reported in the media began to approach the status of “fact.” It was accepted that volunteers who serve on our town boards and commissions are somehow personally liable and not protected by the town when their decisions lead to law suits, although this is not true.

A statement in Bob Horton’s most recent column, for example, reinforces the inaccuracy, as do recent letters to the editor. Horton writes: The town should have a clearly stated policy of defending all decisions reached by its boards and commissions. The alternative is chaos. But this assertion ignores the fact that the town does defend the decisions reached by its boards and commissions, and also defends individual board and commission members if they are sued separately. The town has always assumed the costs in law suits involving decisions by town boards and commissions as well the costs of defending individual members. Moreover, this is not just a matter of policy. The town is required to do so by state statute. All this assumes, of course, that board and commission members act in good faith, and not in a reckless or capricious manner.

And this caveat may be an important clue in understanding how the erroneous idea gained currency in the first place.

In the aftermath of the Planning and Zoning Commission’s stunning 3-2 vote to deny  Chase’s application to put a bank in Cos Cob where the Bella Nona restaurant is now located, Commission members, faced with a possible law suit, convened in executive session for a briefing from the town’s law department. The idea that Commission members – and by implication all town officers – are personally liable for legal fees and for any award should the town lose a suit came from a Commission member who was present during that executive session and provided certain information to the press.

There is no doubt that something was said in executive session that led Commission members to believe they may be personally liable for their board’s decision on the Chase application. And this, in itself, is revealing. It provides a clue as to what may have been discussed in executive session. Reading between the lines, one might infer that the town is in a weak position to defend the Chase decision and that the personal liability of Commission members would come into play if the court determined their vote was not based on legitimate zoning concerns, but rather constituted discrimination against banks, something that is not legal.

Of course this is all pure speculation on my part. I have no inside information. But the very fact that I have any information at all upon which to base my speculation is disturbing, since the purpose of executive sessions is to keep sensitive information confidential when disclosure would be harmful.

Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) serves the public in important ways by ensuring that meetings at all levels of government are always open to the public, that all votes are taken in public session, that the public has access to government records and that notices of meetings, agendas and minutes are posted properly and in timely fashion.

However, FOIA allows a public agency to close portions of a meeting, i.e. to go into executive session, but only for very specific reasons.These permissible reasons are limited to: discussion of a specific employee, unless the employee requests the discussion be held in public; strategy and negotiations regarding pending claims and litigation; security matters; real estate acquisition if openness might increase the price; and any matter that would result in the disclosure of a public record exempted from the disclosure requirements for public records.

To make public “strategy and negotiations regarding pending claims and litigation” could seriously undermine the town’s position. Let’s hope that in this particular case, the only harm done is confusion regarding the extent to which the town provides legal protection for members of its volunteer boards and commissions.

Starting on October 3, I will be writing a weekly Sunday column for the Greenwich Time, with a focus on Greenwich issues. My blog, Our Town, will, for the most part, tie in with this new column. I will no longer be posting articles in the format I have been doing since starting this blog last November. My postings will be shorter, less polished and, hopefully, more frequent. I envision blog postings that will be short comments on the local news of the day, or else include information relevant to the content of my column that is not incorporated into what actually appears in the print version. Reader’s comments will help shape future columns. My first column will be on voter choice and the races for the state legislature in Greenwich – why we shouldn’t take the Democratic candidates for granted.

So here goes with my new blog format – my thoughts on today’s news in the Greenwich Time —-

Headline – Board may face suit over rejection of bank branch. Big surprise. “The town will have a law suit on its hands” is what I said to my husband the moment I started reading Frank MacEachern’s article on Wednesday, September 15. MacEachern referred to the Planning and Zoning Commission’s 3-2 decision denying the proposal to build a Chase Bank at 371 East Putnam Avenue in Cos Cob as a “stunning move.”  Indeed, it was more like a shocking move. Much as we all seem dismayed about the proliferation of banks in our town – and I wrote about this extensively in my blog posting “What to do about the banks” – the idea that a bank will generate more traffic than a restaurant is hard to grasp. Or that concerns about eliminating a barrier between Bella Nona and Dunkin Donuts couldn’t have been addressed in a mutually agreeable way in the course of nearly three years? It seems unconscionable to string a property owner along for 31 months without regard to costs incurred and personal hardship and then deny the owner a reasonable use of property on flimsy grounds. Whether or not we want a bank at that location is not the issue. The issue is one of due process.

Headline – Sex offender ban fails. For the third time the RTM has postponed a vote on a proposed ban of registered sex offenders at schools, parks, playgrounds and beaches. It is time to table this bad idea indefinitely. The RTM’s health and human services committee is right that this will not provide any additional protection for children, but will be an additional burden for the police. It is also a clear violation of civil liberties.

Editorial – Voters must demand more. This is right on. As it is voters know very little about what McMahon’s positions are on most issues. It is unacceptable that a candidate for the U.S. Senate refuses to discuss her specific positions on such important issues as Medicare and Social Security.

If the 2010 November election is destined to be bad news for the nation’s Democrats, there was no such indication at yesterday afternoon’s (Sunday September 12) Annual Greenwich Democratic Picnic where the mood was decidedly upbeat. The event, held in the Garden Education Center at the Montgomery Pinetum in Cos Cob, was well attended. Although the weather was dreary, the political outlook was bright.A sense of excitement permeated the room. With the November election just 51 days away, Greenwich Democrats were anticipating Democratic victories as they listened to the candidates speak. The emcee, Democratic Town Committee Chair Frank Farricker, presided over an energized crowd.

Congressman Jim Himes spoke, proud to stand on his voting record and on the accomplishments of the Obama Administration, particularly in the areas of  health care reform and the economic stimulus package. So much has been accomplished in just 21 months, he said, particularly given the mess inherited from 8 years of the Bush Administration. This was a sentiment echoed by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy, who plans to turn the state around after nearly 2 decades of decline under Republican governors. Cynthia Blumenthal, speaking in place of her husband, Senate candidate Dick Blumenthal who had to be at other events yesterday afternoon, praised the entire Connecticut Democratic ticket as one of the best she’s seen.

It is indeed an excellent ticket and most likely a winning one that will buck the nation’s projected trend. The national forecast for Democrats this November is bleak. But unlike many of the states in our nation, Connecticut seems still to be a blue state. FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver’s Political Calculus, a blog that is produced by statistician Nate Silver in conjunction with The New York Times, gives Democrats only a 33% chance of retaining control of the House of Representatives. In other words, there is a 2/3 chance that the Republicans will retake control after this November’s election. But the picture for Connecticut is very different.

Statistician Nate Silver, age 32, was named by Time magazine in April 2009 as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. He gained ascendency during the November 2008 presidential election when his statistical model accurately predicted the results in 49 of the 50 states.He has just teamed up with The New York Times, working with the Times’ graphic and interactive journalists, as well as with a team of political editors, correspondents and polling experts, to develop the forecasts on the FiveThirtyEight blog.

While Silver’s forecast for the nation in November’s election is most unfavorable to Democrats, his predictions for Connecticut favor the Democratic candidates. He gives Democrat Dan Malloy an 81% chance of victory over Republican Tom Foley in the gubernatorial race. And he forecasts a win for all 5 incumbent Connecticut Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives. This includes Greenwich resident Jim Himes, our Congressman from Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District, for whom Silver predicts a victory with 52% of the vote and an overall 81.8% chance for a Democratic victory in this race.

While so many people are wringing their hands out of concern for Dick Blumenthal’s Senate campaign which seems to be invisible – his campaign or lack thereof is talked about everywhere – Silver’s model has Blumenthal winning nonetheless with 53.8% of the vote and with a 93.1% chance of winning as compared to a 6.9% chance of winning for his opponent, Linda McMahon. This is very good news.

Richard Blumenthal is a good man, a long time elected official with a sterling record of public service that spans a lifetime. Linda McMahon has no record of public service whatsoever, has never held elected office and has a  record in private business that raises many serious questions. That Blumenthal’s campaign seems invisible relative to hers stems largely from the fortune that she is spending on her campaign, almost all coming from her World Wrestling Entertainment earnings, an enormously successful business with questionable practices.  She has so far spent $23 million and plans to spend $50 million of her own money on this campaign. Blumenthal has only an infinitesimal fraction of that amount available to his campaign.

If Silver’s forecast is correct and Dick Blumenthal wins the race for U.S. Senate, in spite of being enormously outspent by his opponent, that will be a victory not just for Dick Blumenthal, but for the whole election process. It will show that elective offices are not up for sale to be had by those who have the most money to spend on their own campaigns. It will show that discriminating voters can see through such attempts to buy an election.

But nothing can be taken for granted. Much can happen in 51 days. Democrats left the picnic with their work cut out got them.

While it looks good for Democratic victories at the top of the ticket in Connecticut, Silver has no predictions for those running for the Connecticut state legislature. But if he did, using his predictive model, the forecast would undoubtedly be very grim for the Greenwich candidates.

There hasn’t been a Democrat from Greenwich elected to the state house for 98 years, not since 1912. And the last Democrat from Greenwich elected to the state senate was Allen Barton, elected 80 years ago in 1930, the grandfather of the current Democratic state senate candidate, Nancy Barton. Although Barton and Democratic state house candidates, Claude Johnson and Howard Richman, are good candidates, their chances of winning are next to nothing. Still, they are upbeat about their campaigns, and we owe them our enormous gratitude for running and believing in themselves and  giving Greenwich voters a choice. They give us a a very valuable gift, at considerable expense to themselves.

They are already winners regardless of the election’s outcome.

A battle for America’s heart and soul is being waged over Ground Zero. And too many spineless politicians are backing away from the fight, as has the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that should be on the front lines in defending the First Amendment from any assault.

So much is at stake in this war against all that we, as Americans, should hold sacred. A commitment to human rights, civil liberties and the separation of church and state is our backbone and our strength. Religious freedom is at the core of who we are. This is what we must defend at all costs.

Make no mistake about it. The suggestion that the mosque proposed for lower Manhattan be moved to another location out of sensitivity for the feelings of  relatives of the 9/11 victims is but a disguise for the bigotry and Islamophobia that lurk beneath opposition to this mosque. It is a poor disguise. And the bigots are exploiting the memory of nearly 3000 innocent people from many different backgrounds, including Muslims, who died in the 9/11 terrorist attack. There is no one group, or organization, that can, or should, authoritatively speak to this issue on behalf of the dead and their relatives.

My first inkling of the battle we now face came two months ago in a June 21 email from a Greenwich friend. A photo shopped picture that depicted a Manhattan skyline consisting entirely of minarets and domed mosques came across the screen. This was the dominant image in the You Tube video contained in the email. The video – Of Mosques and Men: Reflections on the Ground Zero Mosque - painted an ugly picture not only of  Islam, but of all Muslims.

The narrator, standing at Park Place in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Ground Zero, leads the viewer to believe that the proposal to construct a mosque at this location is part of a Muslim plot to take over America and establish Shari’a Law, ultimately a plot to take over the entire world. According to this narrative, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center cleared the way for implementation of this takeover. The mosque at Park Place is intended to stand as a monument to an Islamic victory on American soil and a desecration of Ground Zero.

This shameless display of bigotry was fear mongering at its worst. I was appalled.

As noted in my August 4 blog posting, the June 21 email containing this You Tube video brought the Cordoba Initiative – now known as Park 51 –  to my attention for the first time. Since the proposed mosque had the full support of Mayor Bloomberg and New York City officials, and the building was unlikely to receive landmark status, I assumed the mosque was a done deal.

The national and international spotlights were not yet shining upon Park 51. Demagogues like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich had not yet weighed in. When I first became aware of the proposal for the mosque after watching the You Tube video two months ago there seemed to be only minor controversy over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, which is not at Ground Zero and not a mosque, but rather a cultural center more than two blocks away. A strip club known as New York Dolls is also in the same vicinity of Ground Zero as are an off-track betting parlor, an Irish pub and a number of fast food places.

What was the source of this video, I wondered, since the source was not mentioned in the narrative, and the narrator was never identified. A short internet search revealed the narrator to be David Wood, who heads a Christian organization known as Acts 17 Apologetics, an organization that seeks to convert Muslims to Christianity. I was relieved to find that the video originated with such an obscure fringe group unlikely to have any larger impact. Little did I know that the same kind of bigoted fear mongering that was expressed in the video would soon become mainstream.

The influence of emails that contain videos of obscure origin and links to hateful blog postings that are continually forwarded to more and more people, such as the one I received from my friend in June, should not be underestimated. They do have an impact in shaping public opinion. And this public opinion sways the politicians, who bend according to the polls.

Since receiving the email with the Acts 17  Apologetics video, I have received similar emails from other friends who forward videos and blog links that vilify Islam. These include an anti-Islam video produced by a German group known as The White Roses, which has the audacity to take its name from The White Rose, a resistance group in Nazi Germany that called for active opposition to Hitler, the inference being that Islam is akin to Hitler and Nazism, a viewpoint apparently shared by Newt Gingrich when he said that putting a mosque near Ground Zero was akin to putting a swastika next to the Holocaust museum.

I have also received email with links to Pamela Geller’s anti-Islamic Atlas Shrugs blog which includes information from her organizations – Stop the Islamization of America and Freedom Defense Initiative. Geller is spearheading a rally at Park Place on the afternoon of September 11. It is to be a demonstration against “the Ground Zero Mega Mosque.” Confirmed speakers include former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, Newt Gingrich and Geert Wilders, an anti-Islamic member of the Dutch parliament who wants to ban the Koran and  construction of new mosques in Holland, end immigration from Moslem countries and place a tax penalty on women who wear a headscarf.

How sad that on the 9th anniversary of the horrific terrorist attack on America, with the eyes of the world focused on America and Ground Zero, we risk showing the world that we are not the country we claim to be. We risk succumbing to intolerance, fear, hatred and bigotry. Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam of the proposed mosque, and his wife, Daisy Khan, have received death threats. Hostility toward Muslims and Islam is on the rise throughout the country, and the opposition to Park 51 is fueling the fire.

Rauf  has consistently denounced violence. He spoke out against terrorism after 9/11. Throughout his life, he has been dedicated to interfaith dialogue, befriending Christians and Jews and promoting understanding among people. He and his wife are adherents of Sufism, the mystical dimension of Islam which emphasizes peace, tolerance and divine love.

The 13th century Persian poet Rumi has been described as the most popular poet in America. Rumi was a Sufi mystic whose followers founded the Sufi Mavlevi Order. This Sufi Order is known for the whirling dervishes who perform a sacred dance that is a mystical journey of spiritual ascent. This Order, like Sufism in general, adheres to a doctrine of unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love. It sees truth in all religion and respects Muslim, Jew and Christian alike.

Sufism bears no resemblance to the type of Islam practiced by the 9/11 terrorists. If the bigots who plan to rally near Ground Zero on September 11 prevail, then the terrorists will have won. Osama bin Laden would like nothing better than for us to show that we are at war with Islam. Once we do this, we have lost the fight against terror and we have failed to honor those who lost their lives at Ground Zero.

America is in a battle for its very life. It’s a fight we can’t afford to lose.