Tom Bittman Complaint Dismissed—

Ethics Members Charged With ‘Protecting’ Council Official

By John Voket

Following the unanimous dismissal of an ethics charge against a Legislative Council member, the complainant Tom Bittman told The Newtown Bee that the Board of Ethics members’ “focus appears to be on protecting an elected official’s right to make political statements, regardless of whether those statements are true.”

Mr Bittman, husband of Board of Education Chair Lillian Bittman, said in a strongly worded complaint to the Board of Ethics July 12 that Legislative Council Vice Chair Mary Ann Jacob “lied about an elected official on another board, attacking her character through a post on the Internet.”

But Ms Jacob said the dismissal of the complaint against her by Mr Bittman is proof that “I didn’t call Lillian a liar.”

During a brief special meeting Monday, August 9, at the Newtown Municipal Center, with neither of the Bittmans in attendance, Ms Jacob and several supporters listened as the ethics board members examined the substance of the charge against the three points in the ethics code Mr Bittman said he believed were violated. Mr Bittman also complained that the board scheduled its special meeting on the matter while he was out of town.

“The ethics board set up their public meeting on the one week I told them I would be out of town, so I couldn’t listen to the public meeting,” Mr Bittman wrote in an email response to a request for comment. “It’s possible that the board decided that Ms Jacob isn’t crossing an ethical line in her statements. My concern is their focus appears to be on protecting an elected official’s right to make political statements, regardless of whether those statements are true.”

Mr Bittman said in his response, “The lesson is that the public will need to be more cautious about what elected officials say. This is certainly going to make the political climate in Newtown more nasty.”

Mr Bittman’s complaint hinged on a 51-word post that appeared on a Facebook page Ms Jacob administers on behalf of the local Republican Town Committee. While it was not part of the complaint, the same statement also circulated as part of an RTC email bulletin and post on the local GOP website.

According to the complaint, the statement in question reads: “Did you know the Board of Education was asked to share in the reduced revenue losses and the Board of Education Chair told the Board of Finance they would discuss the issue in public? Did you know only the Republican members of the Board of Education voted to discuss the issue?”

Mr Bittman says in his complaint, “Fundamentally this post calls my wife a liar. It can’t be read any other way, and can’t have any other purpose.” His complaint accused Ms Jacob of violating Sections 36-2, 36-4, and 36-10 of the local ethics code.

As the subject of the complaint, Ms Jacob has the right to have all fact-finding in the matter, as well as any subsequent hearing if warranted, to be held in public. As a result, the August 9 meeting in the council chambers at the Newtown Municipal Center at Fairfield Hills was open.

The members quickly determined that if anything in the complaint warranted examination, it might be the final rhetorical question in the post. But after another few minutes of feedback from Board of Ethics Vice Chair Steve Sedensky, members Suzanne Copp, George Schmidt, and Neil DeYoung, the panel voted unanimously to dismiss the complaint.

“I don’t think this is an appropriate ethics situation, Ms Copp said ahead of her vote.

“I don’t think this rises to the standard of an ethics violation,” Mr Schmidt echoed. “But it is worth noting the way the code of ethics is written — it’s really a code of ethics, service, and courtesy all combined — public officials who are elected office have to walk a pretty fine line or they may find themselves liable for this kind of action.”

Mr Schmidt said if elected officials want to strongly advocate for a political position they have to walk “a very thin line” or similar accusations of violations might continue to crop up before the board.

“I’d hate to see this kind of thing occur more frequently than it already has,” he added, “because it really shouldn’t be referred to the Board of Ethics.”

Addie Sandler said, “There’s no way I feel the essence of what was posted was a violation.”

Mr Sedensky then moved to find the complaint had no merit, and that the complaint did not warrant a hearing. The board concurred, with member Ronald Wilcox abstaining because he said he was involved in previous legal proceedings with Ms Bittman on an unrelated issue.

Following the decision, Ms Jacob said the dismissal “came out as I hoped and knew it would.”

“A warrantless complaint was filed against me,” she said. “I talk about issues, not about people.”

Ms Jacob added that she wanted it made clear that the post that spurred Mr Bittman’s ethics complaint was not on her own personal social networking page.

“Facebook is not the problem, and this has nothing to do with my social network page,” Ms Jacob said. “I keep my Facebook page closed and private, and I don’t make any political comments on it. The RTC page is an open forum and anyone can post on it. How can using one political party’s social network page differ from the other — the Independent Party of Newtown has its own Facebook page.”

Although Ms Jacob is just the administrator of the RTC Facebook site, Mr Bittman continued to attribute the posting in question to the council vice chairman.

“Ms Jacob said there was never a discussion by the Board of Education related to the Board of Finance request,” Mr Bittman contended. “The truth is there are four pages of discussion from three meetings, a unanimously passed motion, and a letter sent to the Board of Finance in response to the withdrawn Board of Finance motion. This isn’t crossing a thin line.”

The assertions in the RTC posts are rooted in budget deliberations from earlier this year, when it was learned the town was facing a revenue shortfall. That shortfall eventually resulted in an unprecedented budget amendment to keep last year’s spending plan on track.

During discussions on that issue at a Board of Finance meeting, it was suggested that both the town and school district share the burden of the overall shortfall. Finance board officials had pointed to surplus funds in the school board budget at the time as evidence that the district could afford to share the burden.

On February 25, the finance board tendered and subsequently delayed voting on a resolution calling for the school district to freeze spending of any surplus dollars in consideration of sharing the financial burden of the shortfall. The finance board vote on the motion was postponed in order to give Ms Bittman an opportunity to bring the proposal to the school board, and Ms Bittman publicly agreed to discuss the issue with her board.

Ms Jacob said that while the revenue shortfall and related budget matters were part of various discussions by the school board, the issue reflected in the RTC post exclusively refers to a motion on March 16 to add to the school board’s agenda discussion about the postponed finance board resolution.

According to Ms Jacob, the majority of the school board, including Ms Bittman, voted against adding that item to the agenda

“None of the discussion at any Board of Ed meetings was relevant to the postponed motion made by the Board of Finance,” Ms Jacob said.

Mr Bittman said there was a vote to add a discussion to the agenda, but the vote failed.

“The truth is discussion was already on the agenda, for the second time, and the vote was whether to stop the discussion and make an immediate decision [returning a negative response to the Board of Finance]. The vote failed, discussion continued until a positive motion was passed unanimously after yet a third discussion,” he said.

While the paper minutes to the meeting have long been entered into the public record, there are apparently no audio or video transcripts available to help discern the fine points and timeline of discussion on the matter.