In hope of clearing the air, the town’s Board of Ethics has been asked to review any potential conflict of interest Selectman Steve Zemo may have when discussing or voting on matters that relate to the Board of Education and its budget — at Zemo’s request.
“We’re going to the ethics committee,” Zemo told The Press on Thursday, March 10, two days after the meeting where his participation in school budget deliberations was questioned.
Zemo said he’d asked First Selectman Rudy Marconi to bring the issue to the ethics board.
“I asked Rudy, so we could put this aside for once and for all, to bring it to the ethics committee,” he said, “so they could decide whether Steve Zemo has a conflict over voting on anything, debating anything relative to Board of Education and the educational system.”
Zemo had been upset when two fellow selectmen, Democrat Barbara Manners and Republican Maureen Kozlark, had asked him if he felt he had a conflict of interest in discussing the school budget, since his spouse is a member of the Board of Education and chairman of its budget subcommittee.
First Selectman Rudy Marconi confirmed on Friday that he’d contacted ethics board Chairman Bart Van de Weghe, on behalf of Zemo, to initiate the proceedings.
“At his request I called Mr. Van de Weghe,” Marconi said Friday. “I discussed Mr. Zemo’s request and I’ll shortly be sending Mr. Van de Weghe an explanation of the issue.”
“He agreed to reach out,” Zemo said of Marconi. “He agreed on the idea, so that we have an objective opinion on this. And then we proceed from there.”
Van de Weghe said he couldn’t comment on whether the ethics board had been asked to look into any specific situation.
He did agree to explain the process.
“The way in which we get matters to the board, there’s really two avenues,” he said. “One is a request for an advisory opinion, and one is a complaint. The request for an advisory opinion usually comes from the person whose conduct is at issue, or potential conduct is at issue — it’s usually in advance, but it doesn’t have to be.
“A complaint is more of an involved process. The complaint has to set out a statement of facts, and it has to be notarized. And it has to identify the provisions in the charter, in the standards of conduct, that were allegedly violated. That’s the complaint process.”
Origin of problem
Zemo and his spouse, Michael Taylor, came to The Press office Thursday, March 10, to discuss the situation after it came up at Tuesday night’s Board of Selectmen’s meeting.
The selectmen had been discussing the “non-binding recommendation” on the school budget that the charter requires them to give to the Board of Finance each year.
Most of the board seemed to be working toward a consensus that taxes would go up too much unless something was done to mitigate the 5.72% increase sought by schools Superintendent Karen Baldwin — they eventually recommended the finance board hold taxes to a 3.5% increase.
Zemo strongly disagreed, arguing in support of Baldwin’s proposal for more special education spending to assure all students receive an appropriate education — calling it a “moral outrage” that schools aren’t adequately financing the individual education plans that all special needs student have.
As Zemo actively argued that the selectmen shouldn’t recommend that the finance board cut the school budget, Manners raised the question and then Kozlark said she’d thought about it, too: Had Zemo considered whether he had a possible conflict of interest, as a result of Taylor’s position on the school board and as chairman of its budget committee?
“In this particular case it’s hard to understand why there wasn’t any conversation prior to the meeting, either through a phone call or old-fashioned ‘Let’s talk about it over a cup of coffee,’” Zemo said. “Just because I was dissenting on a non-binding recommendation, it seemed as if that’s what was motivating it. …
“I’m the only selectman that has a child in the school system, and I was certainly advocating for the 19% of the children in the school system that have special needs — and plans are not being funded. No one else was talking about that,” Zemo said.
“We were talking about other constituents who have needs — people with food pantry needs, people who no longer want to support the budget.”
Taylor added, “The challenge for us has been, we can’t identify a conflict. A conflict of interest requires two pieces. There’s the piece where you have the authority or the office, where you’re making the decisions. And then there’s the piece where the decision you make has some benefit that flows to your family or your business.
“In Steve’s discussions on the Board of Selectmen on the educational system of our town, I can’t see any benefit that flows to either of us. … That’s part of the reason it’s so hard to understand.”
The two selectwomen who raised the issue said in separate emails this week that they’d been concerned about board members meeting an “appearance of conflict of interest” standard.
“Conflicts of Interest are governed by Section 11-5 of the Town Charter which requires town officials ‘be acutely sensitive to possible conflict of interest issues’ and that they ‘conduct themselves in a manner that will avoid conflicts of interest.’ In my opinion, if a town official is ‘acutely sensitive to possible conflict of interest issues’ the town official would acknowledge at the board table that their spouse is the chairman of the BOE Budget Committee which the official is opining upon. This acknowledgement would address any appearance of conflict,” said Kozlark.
Manners made clear that she did not at all doubt Zemo’s integrity.
“I have never believed that Steve had a conflict,” Manners said. “I feel strongly that he has the ‘appearance of a conflict’ and perhaps because of my being a lawyer and having worked for a judge for several years in my early life, I feel strongly about recusing oneself when there is even the ‘appearance of a conflict.’”
Manners said she didn’t feel a review by the ethics board was needed, and had no intention of filing a complaint to get one.
“I’ve known Steve 20-plus years and don’t believe he would let his feelings get in the way of what he believes is best for the town,” Manners said.
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