The Board of Selectmen is poised Tuesday to discuss if not resolve a matter of division among the elected body’s members regarding part-time employees of the town.
While Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams have said the full Board should be approving all town hires, including part-timers, as it has in the past, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan has pushed back, even soliciting a legal opinion from the town attorney’s firm to support his view.
In the Nov. 4 memo, lawyer Nicholas Bamonte said he “found no authority in the Town’s Charter or Ordinances that expressly grants power to the BOS to approve the hiring of part-time or seasonal town employees whose payroll have already been approved in the Town budget.”
Yet Corbet in a Dec. 9 response memo cited Chapter 14 Section 1 of the Town Charter, which reads:
“The appointment and dismissal of all employees of the Town, except those who are elected or are under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education, the Fire Commission, or the Police Commission, shall be made by the Selectmen. All appointments shall be made on the basis of merit and after examination as to fitness. Before the appointment or dismissal of any paid employee, the Selectmen shall consult with the board, commission, committee, officer, department or individual to whom the services of such employee are to be or have been rendered.”
Corbet said in the memo, “I look forward to the review of the approval process for all full-time, part-time and seasonal employees relevant to this Town Charter requirement on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2022.”
At that meeting, however, Moynihan said the Board should discuss the issue of part-time workers in executive session rather than the public meeting “because we have a list of employees that we want to discuss.”
It wasn’t clear whether Moynihan’s comment was a pretext for discussing the matter out of the public eye. (He has been challenged with calls for moderation and public input from fellow selectmen with increasing frequency in recent months, including on the planned West School cell tower and preservation of the “Selectmen’s Comments” item on Board meeting agendas.)
Corbet responded to Moynihan, “I certainly agree if we have a list—I haven’t seen the list yet—but that I would recommend we do it in executive session, the list for sure.”
She added, “I do want to talk about the approval process itself, though.”
Moynihan said, “We can discuss that when we come out [of executive session].”
However, no such discussion took place at the Dec. 13 meeting. Moynihan said the Board was “taking no action on the items discussed in executive session today.”
Corbet said, “We are postponing the discussion and review and approval of employees for the January 3rd regular meeting on the agenda.”
An item titled “Discussion of Part-Time Employees, Possible Executive Session” appears on the agenda for Tuesday.
In her memo, Corbet noted that “[t]he review and approval by the Board of Selectmen of proposed new hires (full time, part-time and seasonal employees) has been a consistent past practice in accordance with section C14-1 of the Town Charter.”
“Subject to data provided (following an FOIA request) for all current positions held under Town employment, it appears that all the 183 full-time positions have been approved by the Board of Selectmen,” she continued. “Of the 18 positions identified as part-time, 9 have been approved by the BOS and of the 28 seasonal and temporary positions currently held, one position has been approved. In addition, there are a number of poll worker and GetAbout positions which have not been approved but these positions have been previously brought before the BOS, albeit not consistently.”
Corbet said that, further to public discussion of the hiring process, the Board may go into executive session for the formal retroactive approval of all the positions listed above.
Corbet did reach out to the town attorney’s firm to discuss the Board’s role in approving all hires and both lawyer Ira Bloom and Bamonte “acknowledge” that the Town Charter “does identify the BOS as the ultimate authority that would approve hires recommended by different department heads,” Corbet said in the memo.
“Furthermore, the attorneys acknowledged that they were not aware that historically, part-time and seasonal hires have been brought to the BOS and they reiterated that ‘past practice and interpretation is a valid method that a court would employ to ascertain the intent of local law,’ ” Corbet wrote. “Accordingly I look forward to the discussion of this Agenda item and the re-establishment of the employee approval process.”