Sometimes, the universe blesses us with access into foreign worlds we normally can't see.

For example, when you google "Mayor Eddie Perez" - my website - the40yearplan.com - is one of the top ten hits. And it seems that people mistake my content critical of Perez for that of the Mayor’s own site.

At first, I though some jokester, trying to have a good laugh, sent me various e-mails from the “Contact Us” page of my site, pulling my leg about my page being the Mayor’s.

I mean, after Jon Lender this month broke the hidden story from a few years back about lawyer Maureen Duggan’s “anonimus” whistleblower parking attendant letter to state ethics chair attorney Rosemary Guiliano about Alan Plofsky at the Ethics Commission, I don’t put anything by anyone.

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Yes, loyal readers, it's time for a new quarterly column feature: the awarding of the Franky.

The Franky is a booby prize for the worst abuse of taxpayer dollars to promote a politician's career through propaganda. Dear audience, you know I am talking about the dishonest practice of franking privileges. Here at the 40-Year Plan, we have selected an imaginary panel of experts to come up with awards.

Headlines in mass media shout "Another Hartford Shooting" seemingly daily. But there stands Eddie Perez addressing a militaristic assemblage of the latest round of uniformed Hartford Police cadets. The credit-card headline: "Public Safety is Priceless."

Ushering in the first-ever Franky for the lifetime acheivement of fleecing taxpayers, it's the Spring 2008 installment of the static Eddie-centric universe known as "The Mayor's Update."

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C leaning off my desk to study for labor law, I came across this gem, from the Feb. 21 minutes of the Hartford 2000 Monthly Meeting:

C. Discussion Items

 

1. Mayor's Visit: Folks were glad that Mayor Perez came to the January meeting, spent so much time with us, and had prepared himself to answer our questions. We believe that the relationship between the Mayor and H2K has improved over the past year. Folks were, however, disappointed that he never reached the Group B questions and folks felt he had been less than specific in some of his answers. It was also agreed, however, that we need to be more assertive in focusing his attention on specific questions and in identifying what, exactly, we are asking him to do.

That says it all, really.

This has got be a new record in audacity: Mayor Eddie Perez appears in 19 of the 21 photos printed in the latest edition of the Mayor's Update, that expensive, four-color glossy taxpayer funded advertisement for the city's chief elected official.

And in a new development, the Mayor's wife Maria is prominently featured. Look, there's the mayor with his wife three times, there's the mayor at three different ribbon cutting ceremonies, there's the mayor with a hardhat, there's the mayor on patrol with two cops, there's the mayor wearing a Starbucks barista apron, there's the mayor appearing to teach a young African-American boy, there's the mayor wrapped in the flag, there's the mayor taking the oath of office, there's the mayor taking a bribe.

No, woops, sorry. We don't have a picture of that last one, but certainly, the grand jury investigation down in New Britain is trying to develop an image of any wrongdoings that may have occurred on Eddie Perez's watch.

Of course, the latest in the collect-them-all series of "The Mayor's Update" makes no mention of the Mayor's legal battles. This frank features a message about the massaged crime statistics "Lowest Crime Rate in 30 Years," something we all know is not the truth.

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Who counts the votes for Mayor Eddie Perez and his supporters at the Democratic Town Committee meetings?

Eddie won't say who his people are, but before the election for the coveted DTC chairmanship Tuesday, March 11 at City Hall, someone counted and figured out that Perez supporter Sean Arena needed a few more to win and succeed outgoing DTC chair and Perez lieutenant Noel McGregor.

Arena's opponent, challenger Jean Holloway, the executive assistant to City Councilman Ken Kennedy, had her team counting, and on Monday night, they calculated she had 30 votes out of 59 Town Committee members, enough to capture the powerful post.

But on Tuesday, Arena had the 30, Holloway lost her majority, and she withdrew her candidacy. So Arena won by default.

Holloway supporters were crying foul because two of her supposed "yes" votes from the Town Committee's Fifth District, Mamie Bell and Ludella Perry Williams, both resigned Tuesday under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

Replacing Williams was North End power broker and Perez ally Abe Giles and taking over for Bell was Giles' grandson Miles Wiles. Giles had resigned from the DTC a few months ago, and was replaced by his wife, Juanita Giles, who napped intermittently during the meeting Tuesday night.

Giles has testified in front of the grand jury investigation into the alleged corruption in Mayor Perez's administration.

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The state of the city of Hartford is wonderful, just peachy, so long as you don't ask Mayor Eddie Perez or any of his department heads about the ongoing grand jury investigation into potential corruption in the Mayor's office.

Perez delivered a typically wooden state of the city address Monday night at City Hall to a standing room only crowd. His words touched on common themes - education, homeownership, job growth - and predictably ignored the elephant in the room.

The fact that dozens of city employees have been called to testify in front of a grand jury in New Britain about potential wrongdoing by the Mayor's office is not something the Mayor or his department heads like Corporation Counsel John Rose, Jr., Finance Department leader Tom Morrison or DPW chief Clarence Corbin will talk too much about.

"They are doing their job and I am doing mine," the Mayor said after his speech, in reference to the grand jury.

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The arrogance of power may lead to corruption, but for Eddie Perez, Johnny Law ain't too far behind.

In this morning's Hartford Courant, Jeffrey Cohen and Dan Goren explain how deep the state is digging into the Mayor's business. This doesn't sound like a fishing expedition.

State criminal investigators probing possible political corruption at Hartford city hall have asked for payment records related to the city's $1 billion school construction program — the first evidence of a connection between the investigation and the project.

The investigators have asked for and received payment records for Diggs Construction — the city's project manager on several school building projects — and for C&R Development, the construction manager for Noah Webster MicroSociety Magnet School, according to documents obtained by The Courant through a freedom of information request to the city treasurer's office.

The five pages of school payment documents, made available Tuesday by City Treasurer Kathleen Palm Devine, consist of computer-generated lists of payments. The payments to Diggs date from 2002 to 2004; the payments to C&R Development date from 2004 to 2007.

Four executives of Diggs Construction of Kansas, or their relatives, as early as April 2007, had given the Mayor a total of $1,000 in cash towards his re-election bid.

Joseph DeSanti, the local operations manager for Diggs, told the Courant he knew nothing. Mary DeSanti, possibly his wife, gave $250 to Perez.

The Courant quotes the man known for his obfuscation and silence, City Corporation Counsel John Rose Jr, as saying that "dozens of people from the city have been called to testify."

This probe is a drain on city resources and time. How many man hours of labor have been lost trying to determing the extent of Honest Eddie's dishonesty?

How long before we have Mayor Calixto Torres?

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Tongues have been wagging across the city the past few weeks about the curious hiring of Andrea Comer as council aide for newly-elected Councilman Matt Ritter.

It piqued my interest, too, so I set out to learn a bit more.

I'll start with Comer's political history. She used to work for Mayor Eddie Perez, campaigning for him in the fall of 2001, and then joining his mayoral staff. She left his office in August 2002 and claims there was no bad blood between them.

She transferred to the school system for a short period of time, exiting her job as spokeswoman when former Superintendent Tony Amato departed. Comer then went to the city's Health and Human Services Department.

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I'm not in Hartford right now, so it feels a bit disingenuous to write about Mayor Eddie Perez. Yet I have internet access here in the insta-city of Port Ghalib, Egypt, and I am reading the news, even on my few-and-far-between days off (Al Quayser was just not that interesting).

And before we leave for a 10-day delivery to Salalah, Oman, I want to contribute a few thoughts and links about from afar about the recent goings-on in CT's Capital city.

Eddie must go. I have been saying it for years, and I suppose now with his recent coronation, we have only to wait for Lear to fall.

I was somewhat distraught by the Mayor's re-election, but I understand that at $93 a vote (according to Bill Curry's calculations), you get what you pay for. I wasn't around for the campaign, but I can imagine the schlock that Perez was selling.

It's not that democracy failed here, and I refuse to give up on the one person, one vote form of government based on its failure to oust the idiot in chief in Hartford.

Link to what John Jay has to say...

Eddie Perez stands poised to break the $400,000 budgetary threshold for his re-election campaign.

The half-million dollar mark isn't far from that, and that boggles the mind. The obvious solution is publicly financed campaigns, but since that is four years away in Hartford at the very minimum, what exactly does that $400,000 mean to the city of Hartford?

First, between the primary and the general election, Perez won't likely garner more than 8,000 total votes, which means he is spending $50 per vote. That is about $20 more per vote than Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman spent in their 2006 battle royale.

According to the latest campaign finance reports, the money has been rolling into this campaign.

Between Art Feltman's $80,000, I. Charles Mathews' $40,000 or so, and Minnie Gonzalez's $9,000, we have $130,000 or so additional dollars. Add maybe $10,000 more for the rest of the mayoral crew, and we are at$540,000 total for maybe 15,000 votes between primary and general, or $36 per vote (still more than the Lamont-Lieberman fiasco).

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If I use schadenfreude to describe my immediate reaction to the news that the state's attorney's office searched Eddie Perez's house, does it reveal too much about me?

Sitting here in Florida reading the comments after the Courant's article, a few things stood out. First and foremost, the judge who signed a warrant for the search didn't do it on a whim, i.e. - the prosecutor presented some credible evidence that a crime of some sort was committed.

I would like to think the judge was wise enough to consider that signing a warrant would impact the election. And then determined that the facts before the bench merited such judicial action.

Eddie's apology or explanation is crap. As my mom always said, excuses are like assholes, everyone has one. I understand that Eddie's wife's illness was a terrible thing, but to blame your inability to pull a permit on her aneurysm is wrong.

Once it comes out that law enforcement officers are rummaging through your belongings, the only reasonable thing to do is resign. Eddie's continued presence in the mayoral office can only harm the city, as we have seen with John Rowland, Phil Giordano, Joe Santopietro, Joe Ganim, etc etc etc.

I redid the bathroom in my condo a few years ago, and my plumber wouldn't even do the work unless I pulled the permit. I don't believe I ever closed out the permit with a final inspection from the building department, but I paid the fees and posted the paper on my wall.

So what kind of contractor does work without demanding a permit? One who thinks he can get away with it.

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A one-question poll about the Mayoral primary solicited by an inscrutable company made the rounds of prime voter phone lines last week.

My number came up in the queue last Thursday evening, and I happened to answer the ring ring.

“If the Mayoral election were held tomorrow, would you be voting for Mayor Eddie Perez or someone else?” the mysterious Polly Pollster asked me, identifying herself as an employee of TCG Independent Research Company.

“I’ll answer your question if you tell me who hired you,” I responded to Polly. She declined, I sought to speak to a supervisor.

“In order for us to remain as unbiased as possible, we have not been provided with the information as to who is paying for this,” said Antonio Stevenson, a supervisor at TCG Independent Research Company.

Can you tell me where TCG is located? I asked.

“For security reasons, I cannot divulge that information,” Stevenson said.

Well, then I won’t be answering your question, I told him, and terminated the conversation. If I don’t know who is going to manipulate my opinion for their gain, they can’t have my thoughts for free.

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Right before I left for the UK and Dublin for my summer law school study abroad program, I received a phone message from Mayor Perez.

Silly me, I got all excited that he was calling to apologize for the Hartford Police Department.

No, it seems as if Mayor Robocall, ripping a page from the Sen. Lieberman playbook, wanted to make sure I received his latest campaign propaganda.

"It's important to know what issues are important to you," Mayor Robocall said. "Your ideas and thoughts are important to me. Si Se Puede."

He wants my feedback. How nice! Sure enough, I shuffled through my stack of mail, and I found the "Moving Hartford Forward... Together" flyer, which looks suspiciously like the oft-abused franking privileges known as the Mayor's Update.

It utilizes the royal blue, yellow and white lettering introduced to city residents by the Mayor's Update. While it lacks the city logo, as it should, the page size, color photo layout, glossy card stock and the tri-fold structure invoke the Mayor's Update, as well.

Pardon the fact that sitting in this internet cafe in Dublin, I lack a scanner to demonstrate the seemingly dishonest graphic theivery. But I have internet access here (it's $10 for 8 hours).

While we should rejoice that the Mayor's staff has put together a far more professional mailer than the last one I wrote about, this one seems to rely too heavily on the Mayor's city-financed brand-imagery.

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I'm angry, and not going to apologize. I'm angry about how the Hartford Police Department violated my rights and falsely arrested me.

I'm angry about how HPD officers beat up Mayor Eddie Perez's nephew, Ruben Perez, in a holding cell. I'm angry about what HPD must do to people every day and we don't hear about it because the victims lack access to the media.

Mayor Perez, on the other hand, does not seem very upset about how the Constitution, our civil society and our rights disappear daily.

Sitting around a table surrounded by more than 40 concerned Hartford residents, Perez seemed like a fidgety 12-year-old, uncomfortable in the suit his mom made him wear to the Asylum Hill Neighborhood Revitalization Zone meeting Monday night May 7 at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church.

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What Mayor are you going to get that is going to be perfect?" asked George Cruz, director of Hartford's San Juan Center.

I suppose he's right. I'm not really thrilled with any of the candidates right now.

And after our conversation Monday afternoon, April 30, Cruz had me thinking: we're all human, and in this particular theatre alongside the muddy banks of the Connecticut, the foibles of our species will dominate the story lines.

So in this week's presentation, "Why do we fight over crumbs while the warmongers escape scrutiny?", our beloved Hartford players act out the theme of divide and conquer, with sub-plots of greed, dishonesty and a dose of hope.

The story begins with billboards, about a half dozen of them up on a hill called Mount Trashmore. Mayor Eddie Perez decided the city could generate revenue for the general fund by plunking a bunch of advertisements into the grassy slope that is the mound of trash on Interstate I-91.

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If Eddie Perez loses in September, it will have been nobody's fault but his.

Aside from the shady deals, the egomania, and the bullying and strong-arming, there's the propaganda.

Relying on the deep pockets of the taxpayer during the past six years, Perez has created a potent brand image, portraying himself as a powerful leader. One of these brand image vehicles has been four-color glossy quarterly mailings called "The Mayor's Update."

That tactic has backfired though, as his own campaign has shattered his brand with its first official mailer, a poorly designed, badly color-corrected, flimsy, unvarnished two-color 8.5" x 11" flyer that appeared in my mailbox Saturday, April 28.

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This Sunday afternoon April 29 at Hartford Public High School, Mayor Eddie Perez will welcome the accreditation examiners from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, or NEASC.

NEASC placed the country's second oldest public high school on probation back in December 1997, when Perez was making his name at the Learning Corridor, and HPHS now has the chance to clear its historical name.

But this is not only a pass-fail exam for the Pub, it's for Mayor Perez, too. The buck has to stop with him, the self-anointed chairman of the board of education and the chairman of the school building committee.

After taking a 90-minute tour of HPHS Monday morning April 23, I met wonderful professionals who have dedicated their lives to serving students. But they are also deeply concerned with the present and future status of the edifice.

I also saw many, many construction problems that would give me pause if I were an inspector looking to certify the best educational practices at the Forest Street structure.

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Luis Cotto, over at La Paloma, shares this anecdote about El Alcalde this morning.

If one were to rely on recent criticisms of the man, one would think that El Alcalde was akin to oil companies in his disregard of the environment. His disregard to the work the Knox Park Foundation put in to the Farmington and Broad Street proposed site for the Pathways to Technology Charter School fueled this criticism. Knox Park planted multiple trees and shrubery on the site and created a much needed green space for that area. Eddie had the site dug up in his tug of war with the state. The site resembles the perfect mud football field now.

 

So it was with much surprise that IonHartford heard of El Alcalde’s participation in Knox Park’s Trees for Hartford’s Neighborhoods program this past Saturday, April 14. It was with added surprise to find out that this was not Eddie’s first foray into this program…he has participated in four other such plantings. Apparently Eddie is quite the arborist.

Link to IONHartford...

Mayor Eddie Perez continues to campaign for re-election on the taxpayer dime with yet another four-color Mayor's Update mailer to Hartford residents, which he can legally do until three months before the primary.

Whatever the statutory time limits, Perez continues to push ethical boundaries. But that's not the worst of it. Donating to his re-election campaign seems to be the cost of doing business for Hartford contractors.

Let's look behind the curtain on a very sloppy April 10, 2007 campaign finance report to see who is privately financing the Perez for Mayor 2007 campaign. Eddie has about $100,675 in the bank, and in the past three months, his juggernaut raised $75,750 from 157 individual donors and $7,805 from nine Political Action Committees.

His next closest competitor in the fundraising category, I. Charles Matthews, has some $40,000 in the bank, with $30,000 of that coming from I. Charles himself. The rest of the pack is far behind.

Thus, it should come as no surprise to anyone that 76 out of Perez's 157 contributors do business with the city, and they are responsible for $36,750 of the $75,750 total this report. Some of them are listed as having donated in March 2003, which seems kind of strange, because Perez was re-elected in November, 2003. Some of them don't have a year listed at all.

The average donation, then, is $482.48.

"Oh my God," said one political observer. "Sounds like pinstriped patronage to me."

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Mayor Eddie Perez once again is pushing the limits of fair play with his abuse of franking privileges.

This time, Mayor Perez and his crack crew of about three dozen executive staffers have sent a magnet advertising the new 3-1-1 phone info service to every Hartford resident. This past Saturday, I received my 5.25" x 8.5" laminated card with a magnet glued onto it. Some residents I know have yet to get them, but we'll talk about the timing issues later.

The card features a picture of the Mayor, as does the magnet. I think the idea is that a resident like myself will toss the expensive four-color card in the trash, and stick this magnet on my fridge.

First, though, I think they want me to read the card, where Perez is pictured holding a telephone receiver. The text says "Dear Friend, I have always believed that Government Works Best When It Listens!" Funny, his campaign is positioning itself to be a listening tour. The themes are eerily similar.

Among my many issues here is that the Mayor's office has a good idea to convince citizens like me to dial 3-1-1 when we see a pothole, when someone dumps trash incorrectly, or when the neighbor hasn't shoveled the snow on his sidewalk. There are plenty of illustrations for these problems that don't involve Eddie's mugshot.

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The whole town is talking. But Mayoral spokesperson Sarah Barr can't say a word.

"I can't confirm anything because I am not the contact for the campaign," Barr said Wednesday afternoon. The campaign contact will be made known at some point soon, she said.

Mayor Perez was out of the office and couldn't comment, and Superintendent Steven Adamowski was unavailable as well, but reliable sources say that Mayor Eddie Perez will officially announce his bid for re-election Monday, April 9 at 5 pm at Rawson Elementary School at 260 Holcomb Street in Hartford's Blue Hills neighborhood.

Perez is joining a crowded Democratic field that includes former Deputy Mayor I. Charles Mathews, state representatives Minnie Gonzalez and Art Feltman, former state senator Frank Barrows, and more.

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There is no coincidence, according to the hero V in the great Alan Moore graphic novel "V for Vendetta."

With that in mind, what should we make of the turn of events on Thursday, March 29 at VibzUptown, 3155 Main Street, Hartford?

A city health inspector showed up for an inspection at the club less than two hours before mayoral candidate I. Charles Mathews expected about 100 people for a campaign fundraiser.

It was odd, Mathews said Tuesday, April 3.

"At the end of the day, it may be just a tempest in a teapot," Mathews said. "But we were all set up and getting ready to have our fundraiser, at around 3:30, a health inspector waked in and indicated she had a responsibility to inspect the place."

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Correction: State Rep. Doug McCrory works full time for the Hartford Board of Education, half time as a vice principal at an elementary school, and half time as a minority recruitment officer. The 40-Year Plan regrets any inconvenience the error in reporting may have caused.

To avoid any appearance of impropriety in the recent hiring of State Representative Kelvin Roldán as a $90,000 a year fundraiser for the Hartford school system, Roldán should voluntarily agree to work half-time and take a commensurate salary.

Roldán's new job (documented here first) as a cabinet-level official in Superintendent Steven J. Adamowski's office - after Roldán lead the search committee to find the new superintendent - set off red flags for nearly everyone. Or at least those of us with an ethical compass.

The situation got Courant columnist Helen Ubiñas' dander up, in a column she called "Protége's Promotion a Blunder."

"So what do we have now?" Ubiñas asked in Sunday's paper. "A guy who works for the superintendent helping decide how much money the schools are going to get from the state. And a guy who can vote to raise or lower corporate taxes working with companies the schools lean heavily on."

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Mayor Eddie Perez will announce his official bid for re-election at some point in the future, he said Monday night after delivering his State of the City address to an overflow crowd in Hartford City Hall Monday evening.

"I haven't made a definite decision as to how we are going to do it," he said, but made clear it will happen. "Today is about the state of the city."

And the state of the city is fantastic, where not a mistake was made or a bad thing happened, according to his speech, which – minus the minor-league oration - sounded like a re-election stemwinder.

But Council President John Bazzano argued that the speech wasn't about presentation.

"We don't worry about delivery, it's content," Bazzano said. "It was all things important to the city: housing, police, education, quality of life issues."

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Kelvin Roldán, the 28-year-old Democratic state representative from Hartford's Fourth district, is on this meteoric career path:

He started out five years ago as an aide to Mayor Eddie Perez. In the fall of 2006, he sacrificed that $74,000 a year salary to run for Evelyn Mantilla's seat, which he won. Then Monday, March 5, he landed an $89,000 job in the Hartford Public School System.

Roldán is now acting Director of Strategic Partnerships, Superintendent Steven J. Adamowski said Tuesday, March 6.

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While it's a little to early to write the epitaph for Mayor Eddie Perez, City Council showed some teeth this week and went after him on the nasty, dirty rotten parking deal Perez gave Abe Giles.

But by moving it to the Parking Authority and not calling for an investigation, City Council is helping Perez save face here. Perez failed to inform voters of his tricky political giveaway in his Winter 2007 franking privilege. I wonder why.

The eight-page color brochure that Perez and his taxpayer financed re-election committee sends out quarterly has highlighted his latest achievements, including groundbreaking on Aetna's new 1200-space parking garage on Flower Street, the doubling of property values in Hartford since 1999 and the results of a 25-year study which show that serious crime has trended downward.

How Perez wants to take credit for property values doubling and crime trends dating back a quarter of a century, I’m not sure. He made sure to tell us that taxes are not doubling.

Double speak, though, erodes the integrity of the entire piece of literature. And frankly, I'm pretty tired of dishonesty in government.

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A stench of desperation now emanates from the second hall executive offices in City Hall.

I entered the hallowed halls at 555 Main Monday to pay taxes (a few days late – sorry, January was a topsy-turvy month – but I covered the interest), and the odor was unmistakable: fear.

Desperate people in positions of power do bizarre things to hold onto their fiefdoms. Mayor Eddie Perez has shown the all-too human tendency to overexert himself, and this past week demonstrated exactly how troubled the Mayor really is.

Understanding that political differences exist between Gov. M. Jodi Rell and myself, yet considering that we breathe the same air, share the same roads and enjoy the same sights in Hartford, there comes a time when previous disagreements must be set aside and bridges built, and coalitions made.

It is in this tradition of compromise, and this search for common ground that I say "Thank you" to Gov. Rell for expressing what many of us here in Hartford think about Mayor Eddie Perez's lust for his high school by the highway: It is a bad idea. Link...