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The 600K Scandal
Update Nov 10. On November 8 Frank Cieplinski appeared before the City Council and was gently questioned about how invoices are approved. "Cieplinski maintained his office is understaffed." He was not directly asked if he had signed the "DiMassa invoices". And that was that. What a grilling!
Update: West Haven employee John Bernardo was arrested for his alleged role in the scandal
In a "scoop" the CT Mirror on Oct 20 revealed that there was another signer of the invoices that sent $600,000 of Federal "CARES" money to a company controlled by Michael DiMassa (now) the former State Representative and City Council aide. There is a signature above the title "director of finance". The signatures are not really legible. West Haven’s Finance Director Frank Cieplinski has been in that post since 2019. He has not returned any reporter's request for comment.
There's also the bigger question of the responsibility of the elected politicians and heads of city departments in looking out for the money. Why didn't any of them question how the full $1.2 million was being used? It was money to help people during the pandemic. Didn't the Health Department have ideas on how to use the money? How about other departments who were in charge of helping out-of-work West Haven residents?
Here's an article worth reading about the scandal in the Hartford Courant
The Election
Mayor Rossi is ahead 24 or 29 votes in the counting and may hang on, but certainly the scandal has driven many of the usually rather passive West Haven voters out to punish her. There hasn't been a Republican mayor in the city in, what, 30 years, but this ineptitude may have been the final straw.
Under the Democrats a whole neighborhood was condemned to make way for an "upscale" mall and sits boarded up five years later. The Administration admitted it was out of ideas and tried to turn the city over to a "city manager" and the voters turned them down in a referendum. In response to the Black Lives Matter movement last year the city passed a toothless "racism is a public health crisis resolution". And it still celebrates "Columbus Day" in the school system, blind to the national revulsion against Queen Isabella's gold-seeker.
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