Legal Bills Arrive for Ethics Complaints

The town has received a bill totaling more than $18,000 for attorney fees for two ethics complaints.

The bill for the first complaint, brought by Rosetta Jones against Ann Mattson, is $8,473.50. In that complaint, Mattson was formally censured for accepting tickets to a home show.

The bill for the second complaint, brought by Candy Buebendorf and Gary Murphy against Rosetta Jones, is $10,290. That complaint was dropped by Buebendorf and Murphy.

Council Chairman Donna Jacobson said that the bill comes with a caveat, and that is that the amount billed by Town Attorney Bruce Chudwick, of Shipman and Goodwin, is more than what the final bill will be, as the town has negotiated a cap of $240 an hour for legal services.

"The amount reflected in the bills is prior to the credit the town receives," she said.

In the second complaint, Buebendorf and Murphy claimed that Jones had given information about the initial complaint to a local newspaper, and that the timing and the release of the information violated Montville’s Code of Ethics.

In a letter that Murphy read to the council, he and Buebendorf said they were dropping the complaint because of the length and incompleteness of the investigation, and because “the undue delay has placed the ethics complaint in the midst of political election activities,” and “the unanticipated expense of a protracted investigation has the potential of placing an unwarranted burden on the taxpayers of Montville.”

Jacobson said that, regarding the ethics complaints, "from my perspective, every procedure was followed. The complaints were filed, we followed procedures and this is what it cost. The people of the town have to decide whether these were frivolous or not."

Councilor Dana McFee said that he was "in shock that Candy Buebendorf, the one particular councilor who complained about the cost of fighting the sex offender case would spend this kind of money" and then drop the charges.

Mayor Joe Jaskiewicz said he was "a little surprised" at the amount being billed, though council Vice Chairman Ellen Hillman said the amounts were about what she expected they would be.

She said she was still feeling the sting of a line in the letter from Buebendorf and Murphy. "To say that several councilors who are running for re-election are biased is wrong," Hillman said.

Buebendorf said that she and Murphy "knew that what we did was going to be controversial."

She said that one of the reasons that they dropped the complaint was that, though two months had passed since they had filed the complaint, only they had been interviewed, a fact that Buebendorf said she found "stunning." 

She said that going to the next phase in the complaint process would have been almost like going to a full-blown trial, and it "had the possibility of being pretty long and expensive."

"When Gary and I talked about it," she said, "we really felt that, for fiscal reasons, it was better to cut our losses."

Jacobson said that one lesson that has come out of the ethics complaints is that "it's time to update them."

Buebendorf, Murphy, McFee, Jacobson, Hillman and Jones have been nominated to run for various offices in November.

To read about Buebendorf and Murphy dropping their complaint, click .

To read about the Democratic nominees, click .

To read about the Republican nominees, click .

To read about the Independence for Montville nominees, click .