Harkins vows to make Stratford proud

Written by Rep. John Harkins
Friday, 30 October 2009 09:22

Government. Politics. Elected official.

Too often, these are words or titles that are met with a great deal of disdain and mistrust by the public. Instead of being viewed as the building blocks of our democracy, the very institution of government, and the people who make it work, are reviled as self-serving and broken.

That has been true of Stratford in the last four years, and I’m running for Mayor to change that. I want to restore the public’s trust in Town Hall.

As mayor, one of my first acts to restore that trust will be to make changes to the ethics policies to which elected officials and political appointees are subject.

First, we must end the appearance that Stratford Town Hall is an employment agency for friends and family of elected officials. Stratford needs an even tougher nepotism prohibition, as well as tighter conflict of interest restrictions governing town hiring practices. This is particularly true when it comes to our public safety agencies.

Mayoral staff (i.e. “cabinet officials”) who are not subject to council approval must play by the same rules as the rest of the town’s civil service system. Unlike in the current administration, I will not award bonuses or raises to mayoral staff when wage freezes are being negotiated with unionized employees, even if those wage freezes have not yet taken effect. My administration will not tolerate what happened earlier this year — a last-minute rush to give mayoral cabinet members 6 to 10% raises prior to the enactment of a wage freeze with town unions.

Nothing is more important than transparency and openness in how taxpayer dollars are spent, and to that end I will work to clarify when an expenditure must be approved by the Town Council, and when it need not be. We have seen headline after headline in the last four years of the mayor spending money without council approval or consultation, and the Town Council claiming that their authority was circumvented. Enough is enough. I will consult frequently and openly with the council when it comes to matters of finance.

Finally, while it has been the crux of my efforts to reduce waste in town hall and keep property taxes in check, conducting a line by line audit of every town department, including the mayor’s office will help improve transparency in government. Timely compliance with the auditing committee’s requests for information will be mandatory for everyone including myself. Unfortunately, despite the Town Council’s creation of a similar body over his veto, the mayor has been less than forthcoming and painfully slow in cooperating the current Financial Advisory Committee. That is unacceptable, and it will change if I am elected.

I want Stratford to have a government that is great as the town we live in. As your mayor, I’ll have the courage to make the reforms necessary to our ethics laws to restore your trust in government because it is time to restore the pride in our town.

State Rep. John Harkins is the Republican candidate for mayor.