Aldermen did not adhere to<\/a> when the mayor and all the Aldermen were all Republicans (save for one member who was unaffiliated but elected on the Republican ticket).<\/p>\nAccording to the Ansonia City Charter, the mayor was supposed to present a budget by Monday (Feb. 8).<\/p>\n
The Aldermen recently voted to override that deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before taking office, city Democrats criticized the Republicans for not following the rules in the charter. The Republicans at the time said the budget relied heavily on state aid, the amount of which isn\u2019t known until later.<\/p>\n
Caroline Baird, a partner at the city\u2019s corporation counsel firm Androski Law, recently advised the Board of Aldermen that they were within their rights to set new deadlines which contradict the charter.<\/p>\n
Background<\/p>\n
The deadlines in the charter were written into law and approved by voters at a referendum in 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They were part of a wider set of charter changes championed by Cassetti\u2019s administration, including taking budget approval power away from the Board of Apportionment and Taxation and giving it to the Board of Aldermen.<\/p>\n
The Aldermen, during Cassetti\u2019s administration, followed the new charter deadlines in 2015 and then violated them for nine years in a row.<\/p>\n
Charter Change?<\/p>\n
Elected officials from the previous administration and the current administration both said the charter changes created a budget process that can\u2019t be followed.<\/p>\n
Tyszka said Feb. 10 he wants to see the Cassetti-era charter revisions reversed. He said the city\u2019s budget process should go back to the way it was before Cassetti \u2013 with the tax board getting the final say over the budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m going to ask the charter revision people to do. Go back to the old way, because the way they did it doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s a free-for-all,\u201d Tyszka said during the Feb. 10 Board of Aldermen meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANSONIA \u2013 A financial consultant hired by Mayor Frank Tyszka\u2019s administration to review past city budgets is scheduled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[114,268,85,46,266,267,17725],"class_list":{"0":"post-294899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance","14":"tag-top-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}