CAMPAIGN SPOTLIGHT: Eileen Coladarci for City Clerk

Eileen Coladarci, a Danbury native, attended public schools in Danbury, including Danbury High and has been on the Danbury Democratic Town Committee since 2004, currently serving as webmaster for www.danburydemocrats.net. She spent nine years on the Common Council, two of which as Legislative Leader.

Eileen has served as chair and fundraising chair of Danbury Youth Services, and was instrumental in spearheading one of their major, and most popular, fundraising mechanisms - the annual Police Department/Fire Department basketball tournament.

Eileen has demonstrated experience in public relations, evident through her work with artists and graphic designers who have graduated from the Western Connecticut State University art program. Through the website www.wcsu.edu/artalumni, she provides art alumni a way to reconnect, as well as to stay abreast of job opportunities and art shows and events. Eileen also provides publicity for the Kent Art Association, serves as treasurer of the Richter Arts Association, and frequently works with the Danbury Hospital Public Relations department.

Eileen has a Masters degree from Western Connecticut State University and is currently working at WCSU as the administrator of special events and stewardship.

She celebrates over 30 years of marriage to Emil Coladarci, another Danbury native, and has two sons and one daughter-in-law, Chris, Richie and Jenna, respectively.

Eileen is a member of St. Gregory the Great Church.

From Wednesday, here's the unedited version of the BRT tax deferral press conference featuring Helena Abrantes, Common Council members, and candidates running for office.

The Helena Abrantes campaign has a section of their website dedicated to the BRT tax deferral. There you can read the News-Times article, as well as here WLAD's report, on the Democrats proposal and petition to rescind the deferral. All the information you'll ever need from Abrantes and the Democratic team is one click away.

Sen. Joe Lieberman is the fourth and most prominent elected official to be tied into the scheme that got local trash tycoon James Galante charged with violating state campaign finance laws. A records review by the Hartford Courant indicates that Galante bundled $14,000, bypassing legal limits, to Lieberman's 2004 presidential bid through the friends and family of employees. (Lieberman hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing.)

Meanwhile, State Sen. Louis DeLuca is under intense pressure to resign due to FBI recordings of him asking Galante to send someone to threaten his grandson-in-law. And Danbury mayor Mark Boughton continues to attest he could not have known a third of his PAC's 2003 intake came from Galante, who was well-connected in the city.

State Sen. David Cappiello looks most likely to emerge from this mess with half a halo.

"About five years ago, one of [Galante's] employees gave me a bunch of checks," says Cappiello, a Republican representing Danbury. "I thought it was strange and went to the authorities and they said it was clear."

Investigators would eventually determine that the $15,000 Galante associates gave to Cappiello's PAC was not "clear." Cappiello says he then split the money between the Red Cross, YMCA, St. Jude's Medical Center, Ability Beyond Disability and Newman's Own. He's washed his hands of Galante's money, but says, "When I met him, he seemed like a nice guy, genuinely concerned about Danbury and I'm not sure all of that was a front... He did give some $3 million to my district."

Pardon the one-sidedness of our look at the Danbury mayoral race. Republican incumbent Mark Boughton declined to talk to us. And Concerned Citizens candidate John McGowan demanded we never call him again after we asked him to clarify statements he made on a public-access show implying that residents should shoot undocumented immigrants.

So that leaves Democrat Helena Abrantes. And while we couldn’t talk to Boughton, we can talk about him—and even without his input, we should. Education, business development and affordable housing are just as important to Danbury as they are to the rest of the county, but the talk of the town is Boughton’s hard-line, headline-grabbing approach to illegal immigration and its ripple effects.

“By going on CNN and Lou Dobbs, he hurt the city because everybody is talking about Danbury and how bad it is,” says Abrantes, a former town clerk and three-term common councilwoman. “Why would somebody want to move to Danbury after hearing that?”

Boughton has taken a hands-on approach to problems presented by an influx of Brazilians and Ecuadorians—plenty of them undocumented. His UNIT (Unified Neighborhood Inspection Team) initiative cracked down on rowdy volleyball games, which Boughton told the Weekly in August were “part of an underground economy where some people sold food and wagered money to pay their rent” and wanted Immigration and Customs Services to deputize Danbury police to enforce immigration laws. In Sept., 2006, ICE apprehended 11 Ecuadorian day laborers in Kennedy Park, and the resulting racial-profiling lawsuit against the city revealed that Danbury police officers made the arrests, though Boughton had said that the city played no role in the raid.

Abrantes says, under her administration “if someone is a criminal, [ICE] can go into Danbury and arrest them but I’m not going to do something illegal to get them. That could cost us a lot of money; the city is getting sued. You have to use the laws that are there.” (In past interviews, Boughton has said he couldn’t discuss the suit as it is ongoing. He’s toned down the rhetoric, telling the Danbury News-Times, “People are passionate on both sides.”)

Abrantes says there are other ways to address the problem than raids. “Businesses are creating false documents for some of these workers,” she says. “The police can go undercover and stop that sort of thing.”

The problems caused by the Boughton immigration plan extend outside the courtroom and outside the immigrant community, says Abrantes. Boughton may have “opened Pandora’s Box.”

“If you go online and read the comments at the newspaper’s site, I have never seen such bigotry in my life; I didn’t even know people used those sort of words anymore,” she says of the semi-infamous NewsTimes.com. “What’s scary is that all the anger in the city is giving credence to people who’d ordinarily be in the shadows.” She points to the recent scandal in which two Republican officials, neither of whom has apologized publicly, were caught forwarding emails with crude Latino caricatures. “I don’t think there would be such acceptance for that sort of thing if we were talking about this civilly and realistically.”

Abrantes made it clear she doesn’t think Boughton is a racist, just a politician. “It’s political posturing,” she says. “I think he’s gearing up to run for something else.”

Okay. That’s out of the way. Let’s talk about other issues.

Danbury High School is over capacity and the principal was warned by the fire marshal. What would you do about that? “I’d talk to the owner of the Palace Theatre on Main Street and start a science, technology and arts school. I’d also look into another magnate school.”

Taxes? “We need to bring in a business base and stable source of taxes...Taxes have gone up every year since Boughton took office. Water and sewage have gone up too. That needs to change.”

Housing? “We’ve been overdeveloped in recent years and need to regulate it better… In Danbury, they are building either multi-family units or McMansions. There’s nothing in between for the middle class-person.”

Main Street? “The zoning shows aren’t being enforced. There are a lot of signs and trash that have popped up since they took the cops on bikes off the streets. I’d like to hire 32 more police officers and get some of them who are behind desks out in the streets.”

Illegal Immigraiton:



School over-crowding:



Vision for the Palace Theater



Boughton's irresponsible development:



Boughton-BRT/Crosby tax deferral:



Traffic problems:

Contributions from associates and friends of now-indicted garbage executive James Galante to the 2004 presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman have sparked the interest of federal investigators.

Lieberman's bid for the White House took in at least $14,000 from Galante, his associates and their relatives in the fall of 2003, according to a Courant review of campaign records.

The contributions to Lieberman, a longtime Democrat who became an independent in 2006, are similar to allegedly bundled contributions to three Republican officeholders that earlier this month led to state charges against Galante, who is also facing a 2006 federal racketeering indictment.

What's more, people familiar with the campaign matters say, the names of Lieberman, the three Republicans and about a dozen other Connecticut and New York politicians have turned up on what the FBI loosely refers to as a "ledger" that agents seized from Galante's office while investigating mob influence in the trash industry.

The so-called ledger, a subject of interest to a legislative committee investigating state Sen. Louis DeLuca, R-Woodbury, summarizes information provided to Galante by his lobbyists on fundraising goals set by a number of candidates, the people familiar with the documents said.

[...]

What's more, people familiar with the campaign matters say, the names of Lieberman, the three Republicans and about a dozen other Connecticut and New York politicians have turned up on what the FBI loosely refers to as a "ledger" that agents seized from Galante's office while investigating mob influence in the trash industry.

The so-called ledger, a subject of interest to a legislative committee investigating state Sen. Louis DeLuca, R-Woodbury, summarizes information provided to Galante by his lobbyists on fundraising goals set by a number of candidates, the people familiar with the documents said.

Now it turns out that several of those same employees, friends and relatives gave a total of $10,000 to Lieberman's campaign on Nov. 25 and 26, 2003, a Courant examination of federal campaign finance records shows.

[...]

Cappiello, DeLuca and Boughton have not themselves been targeted by authorities, and all three said what Lieberman is saying now - that they thought the contributions were legitimate and had no idea Galante could have been manipulating the finances.

I am a human pileup of illegality. I am an illegal driver and an illegal parker and even an illegal walker, having at various times stretched or broken various laws and regulations that govern those parts of life. The offenses were trivial, and I feel sure I could endure the punishments — penalties and fines — and get on with my life. Nobody would deny me the chance to rehabilitate myself. Look at Martha Stewart, illegal stock trader, and George Steinbrenner, illegal campaign donor, to name two illegals whose crimes exceeded mine.

Good thing I am not an illegal immigrant. There is no way out of that trap. It’s the crime you can’t make amends for. Nothing short of deportation will free you from it, such is the mood of the country today. And that is a problem.

America has a big problem with illegal immigration, but a big part of it stems from the word “illegal.” It pollutes the debate. It blocks solutions. Used dispassionately and technically, there is nothing wrong with it. Used as an irreducible modifier for a large and largely decent group of people, it is badly damaging. And as a code word for racial and ethnic hatred, it is detestable.

“Illegal” is accurate insofar as it describes a person’s immigration status. About 60 percent of the people it applies to entered the country unlawfully. The rest are those who entered legally but did not leave when they were supposed to. The statutory penalties associated with their misdeeds are not insignificant, but neither are they criminal. You get caught, you get sent home.

Since the word modifies not the crime but the whole person, it goes too far. It spreads, like a stain that cannot wash out. It leaves its target diminished as a human, a lifetime member of a presumptive criminal class. People are often surprised to learn that illegal immigrants have rights. Really? Constitutional rights? But aren’t they illegal? Of course they have rights: they have the presumption of innocence and the civil liberties that the Constitution wisely bestows on all people, not just citizens.

Many people object to the alternate word “undocumented” as a politically correct euphemism, and they have a point. Someone who sneaked over the border and faked a Social Security number has little right to say: “Oops, I’m undocumented. I’m sure I have my papers here somewhere.”

But at least “undocumented” — and an even better word, “unauthorized” — contain the possibility of reparation and atonement, and allow for a sensible reaction proportional to the offense. The paralysis in Congress and the country over fixing our immigration laws stems from our inability to get our heads around the wrenching change involved in making an illegal person legal. Think of doing that with a crime, like cocaine dealing or arson. Unthinkable!

So people who want to enact sensible immigration policies to help everybody — to make the roads safer, as Gov. Eliot Spitzer would with his driver’s license plan, or to allow immigrants’ children to go to college or serve in the military — face the inevitable incredulity and outrage. How dare you! They’re illegal.

Meanwhile, out on the edges of the debate — edges that are coming closer to the mainstream every day — bigots pour all their loathing of Spanish-speaking people into the word. Rant about “illegals” — call them congenital criminals, lepers, thieves, unclean — and people will nod and applaud. They will send money to your Web site and heed your calls to deluge lawmakers with phone calls and faxes. Your TV ratings will go way up.

This is not only ugly, it is counterproductive, paralyzing any effort toward immigration reform. Comprehensive legislation in Congress and sensible policies at the state and local level have all been stymied and will be forever, as long as anything positive can be branded as “amnesty for illegals.”