Should a corporate officer who serves on the city council vote on things that directly affect her corporation? Your city council says that’s perfectly OK.
On November 12, 2018, after his mother, Sharron Catallo, was decisively voted out of office, Curt Catallo spoke to the Clarkston City Council about what he perceived as her unfair treatment. I’ve attempted to reproduce the text below; however, you can hear it for yourself by going to the Independence Television website at the link below. (Mr. Catallo’s comments begin at time marker 00:10:43.)
http://216.11.46.126/CablecastPublicSite/show/2462?channel=2
“I’m Curt Catallo from 90 North Main Street. I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate Sharron Catallo, my mother, on her years of service to the community, to the City of the Village of Clarkston, Michigan, and on behalf of myself and Erich Lines and Anne Stevenson and the 800 employees of Union Joints, I’d like to personally apologize for the undue attention that the decision for us to do business in Clarkston, Michigan brought to her during her tenure. I feel that there was some conspiracy peddling individuals who propagated at her expense and used a 50 year old birth certificate to somehow diminish the fact that she was making decisions that were best for the City of the Village of Clarkston. If you look at her history of voting, it’s fair to say that she abstained in every single vote that had anything to do with Union Joints or Union Adworks, and it’s fair to say that at no point in her life has she ever owned a piece of any of our businesses or enterprises, and I think that the fact that she was tried in the court of the public opinion was most unfortunate and undeserving of somebody who gave such care and commitment to the City of the Village of Clarkston. Thank you.”
When I first heard this on the video recording of the council meeting, I thought that the use of the phrase “it’s fair to say” was really quite odd. If something is true or false, that’s an objective standard – the thing you are talking about is or it isn’t. If someone says that something is “fair to say,” what follows is usually subjective, meaning that whether it’s true or not is a matter of opinion.
Honestly, I didn’t give this further thought . . . until Rick Detkowski resigned from the city council.
The city council has the right to fill vacancies and to make rules regarding how that should be accomplished, but the way that Mr. Detkowski’s vacancy was filled was farcical even for those who follow Clarkston politics. We were told that there were two people who had expressed an interest in filling the vacancy, one of whom was Sharron Catallo. Both had to explain to the council why they were interested in being considered, and then it was time to vote on a replacement. City council members decided they would vote on these two candidates in alphabetical order, and since “C” for Catallo comes near the beginning of the alphabet, they voted on Mrs. Catallo first. To the surprise of no one, Mrs. Catallo received four votes from her friends. The second interested person didn’t even get the courtesy of a vote.
Section 4.18 of our city charter (our local constitution) prohibits council members from voting on issues in which they OR A RELATIVE “have a proprietary or financial interest or as the result of which they may receive or gain a financial benefit . . . ” The definition of relative includes a son. We have two ordinances that try to limit conflicts of interest to persons residing in the same household, but whenever there is a conflict between a charter and an ordinance, the charter language wins.
Is it the end of the world if someone has a conflict of interest in a matter that comes before council? Not at all. It’s just a slight inconvenience. Is Mrs. Catallo barred from public service simply because her son owns businesses in Clarkston? Absolutely not. Sections (A) and (B) of Clarkston ordinance 33.02 explain what happens if a council member has a conflict of interest. The ordinance simply requires that the conflict be publicly disclosed and the person with the conflict is prohibited from voting on only those matters involving the conflict.
That’s it. The conflicted council member is even allowed to participate in the discussion if s/he wishes to do so – but that person must take a seat in the audience and participate as any other resident is permitted to participate. Once the matter involving the conflict has been addressed at the meeting, that council member has no limitations whatsoever on going back to the table and participating in the rest of the meeting.
It’s really a question of fairness and transparency – Clarkston residents voted on a charter that requires that the playing field be as level and as fair as possible.
Curt Catallo has been quite clear that he has a strong interest in parking issues. This makes sense, since he knows that he doesn’t have enough restaurant parking to support all three of his restaurants. And, if it’s too hard to find a parking space, people will find other places to have dinner. (While this is a problem for all of the city’s restaurants, none of the other restaurants have a family member sitting on the city council.)
Mr. Catallo has regularly appeared at city council meetings and expressed hostility to paid parking. Much of the parking revenue has gone to address the parking issues that arose as a result of the new restaurants – things such as additional striping, the purchase of parking meter, lighting, and hiring employees to ticket people who improperly park have all been required. Mr. Catallo apparently believes that overflow parking should be “free” – in front of our homes. At the meeting adopting paid parking for Clarkston, something that former Mayor Percival noted had been discussed for eighteen months at that point, Curt Catallo expressed his disgust toward the city’s decision to adopt paid parking, stating that it “makes the city into a ‘money vampire,’ sticking a ‘blood funnel into anything smelling like money.’” Clarkston News, August 31, 2017, “Parking Kiosk Coming to Downtown.” (That article also notes that Sharron Catallo voted against paid parking at that meeting and suggested that the vote be delayed in favor of more research and review – she lost.)
After Sharron Catallo was reinstated on the city council into the position formerly held by Mr. Detkowski, I did some research and learned that there was probably a reason why her son used the “it’s fair to say” language when speaking of his mother’s relationship to his businesses and why he limited his comments to Union Joints and Union Adworks. After you finish reading, you can decide whether you agree with Mr. Catallo that raising objections to some of Mrs. Catallo’s voting amounts to “conspiracy peddling.”
I wrote a letter to the city council and asked that they reconsider Mrs. Catallo’s involvement in matters that could affect her son’s business. I say “reconsider” because this isn’t the first time that this issue has come up. Fellow council members and Clarkston taxpayers have periodically asked Mrs. Catallo to recuse herself on parking matters, and she has always refused. I’ve provided a link to the council meeting where my letter to council regarding the conflict of interest was discussed. It’s approximately a 20 minute discussion and begins around 00:35:50:
http://216.11.46.126/CablecastPublicSite/show/2784?channel=1
As you will note from the video, there were several motions relating to the parking issue scheduled for consideration at the meeting. The city attorney opined that he personally didn’t think that Mrs. Catallo has a conflict of interest, and everyone on the city council could have a proprietary interest in parking (seriously?). Notwithstanding, he wisely deferred to the city council to make the final decision regarding whether Mrs. Catallo has a conflict of interest requiring that she recuse herself on matters affecting her son’s business interests.
My impression, formed while watching the meeting, was that the real discussion regarding Mrs. Catallo’s conflict of interest took place before the meeting, and those involved knew exactly how things were going to turn out before the formal discussion was staged for the rest of us. I’m not suggesting that there was a violation of the Open Meetings Act, only that friends might stick together in numbers that are less than a quorum. You may have a different impression, but you must admit that it is extremely odd that the formal discussion on a motion to disqualify Mrs. Catallo focused on Scott Reynolds, and me, and included a startling confession from the mayor that he had his own commercial business interest that is affected by parking.
I think that Mr. Marsh revealed a bit too much when he asked if the alleged conflicts of Sharron (Catallo), Scott (Reynolds), AND Eric (Haven) needed to be considered in connection with each motion (at around 41:16 of the discussion) – BEFORE Mr. Haven disclosed his business interest at the meeting. Only Mr. Marsh knows for sure.
Let’s discuss the things that were thrown at the wall to dilute the discussion regarding whether Mr. Catallo’s mother should abstain from voting on issues that touch upon his business interests.
First, there was a claim that Mr. Reynolds shouldn’t vote on one of the motions involving a contract with the owners of a private parking lot because one of the owners made a contribution two years ago during Mr. Reynolds’ very first campaign for a council seat. This isn’t exactly secret information – if a campaign spends $1,000, the contributions must be reported, and these reports are posted online for everyone to see. Since council members running for reelection tend to reuse their campaign material, they don’t usually meet that $1,000 threshold and don’t have to tell anyone who contributed to their campaigns. Because of this, we have no idea if this person also contributed campaign money to other council members, and none of the other council members were asked – or voluntarily admitted – that this was the case. This objection came from an audience member, and the mayor allowed this audience member to interrupt Mrs. Wylie just to bring up this point. Was that interruption planned? Only Mr. Haven and the audience member know for sure.
Second, it was suggested that Mr. Reynolds shouldn’t be voting on matters involving parking on his own street. No one raised the obvious point that if this really were a prerequisite for disqualification, then Mrs. Catallo would have ALSO been disqualified from voting on restricted parking on Buffalo and on Church – a matter that was also being considered that evening – since her house is on the corner of both streets. Nor did anyone seem to remember that the council had already discussed whether merely owning a home would be a disqualification quite a while ago, and they decided that it was not.
In yet another attempt at deflection away from Mrs. Catallo, David Marsh attacked me personally for having the temerity to even raise the issue, and Mr. Marsh adjudged my concerns as insincere. Frankly, I think that Mr. Marsh should take a hard pass on any issue involving honesty or sincerity, given his use of inside information to try to slide into his current council seat as an unopposed candidate last November (click on the post titled “November 2018 Election” if you would like to learn more about the conduct of Mr. Marsh).
I think that the biggest surprise of the evening was Mayor Eric Haven’s public disclosure – for the first time that I’m aware of – that he owns a commercial building on Washington Street that he leases to the optometrist. Obviously, that means that Mr. Haven has a proprietary interest in parking decisions – yet he has continued to vote on parking matters all these years. Mr. Haven trades on a pious reputation, yet not disclosing his own personal financial interest certainly runs counter to that. (If this failure to disclose had come out before the last election, would he have won?)
There was also a rather bizarre suggestion that I should personally have been aware that Mr. Haven was hiding his business interests and should have mentioned it in my letter. Apparently, it’s the taxpayer’s job to catch city council members concealing things, rather than trusting them to honestly disclose conflicts of interest. Sorry, city council members, that’s not how it works.
Following those disclosures, Mrs. Catallo said that her perceived conflicts were really no different than Mr. Reynolds or Mr. Haven – it’s just that her issues are “a little more visible.” And with that, the council circled the wagons and Scott Reynolds, Eric Haven, David Marsh, Jason Kniesc, and Al Avery voted that Sharron Catallo could continue to vote on matters that could affect her son’s businesses. Susan Wylie was the lone vote in favor of Mrs. Catallo’s recusal.
To be continued . . .