Newport
At the conclusion of the hearing in Sullivan County Superior Court on the petition filed by Bert Spaulding Sr. seeking to postpone Tuesday’s vote, Judge Brian Tucker said he would issue a ruling either today or Monday.
Spaulding’s attorney, Mike Shklar, of Newport, told the court the school district had violated state law by failing to provide details in the form of “cost items” of the teacher contract during public hearings in January and February.
“Cost items must be disclosed in the budget hearing, not the gross appropriations,” Shklar said. “What was presented was bits and pieces.”
Shklar said voters were told the total contract value of $223,445 and that each teacher in the district would receive a $1,240 step increase but no other cost breakdown was provided until after the Feb. 7 deliberative session. As an example, he said the cost of “loyalty payments” in the contract were not available at the public hearings nor were the cost of benefits.
The one-year contract, along with a one-year agreement for support staff, is included in the main budget article of $17.7 million on the school district warrant.
Shklar said voters did not have the authority to amend the ratified contract at the deliberative session, but had the cost items been provided ahead of Feb. 7, voters could have amended the general fund budget if they thought the contract had unnecessary costs.
“If voters do not have all the cost items, they cannot tell what the $223,445 is for. It is very clear,” Shklar said about the law, “all cost items must be disclosed and made available to be discussed at the public hearing and you can’t discuss what has not been disclosed.”
According to state law, a “cost item means any benefit acquired through collective bargaining whose implementation requires an appropriation by the legislative body of the public employer with which negotiations are being conducted.”
Shklar said there is a “structural deficit” in the process in that it did not give voters the opportunity to decide if the contract had excessive appropriations.
The remedy, he said, is a new hearing to present the numbers, which he said weren’t provided to the public until late February.
The school district’s attorney, Dean Eggert of the Manchester law firm Wadleigh, Starr and Peters, argued several times throughout the hearing that the district had abided by state law.
“Our position is that there was full and adequate disclosure of the cost items by the public hearing stages and deliberative session,” Eggert said.
Eggert said the cost items were publicly discussed when the contract was ratified on Jan. 10, at a public hearing on Jan. 12 and a Budget Advisory Committee meeting on Jan. 18.
He made similar statements regarding the other meetings. “The gross appropriation includes those cost items.”
Eggert said stopping the vote would disenfranchise 3,000 voters all “because (Spaulding) didn’t get enough details in his view.”
He asked Tucker to let the vote go forward.
When Spaulding went to court four years ago and forced a second Newport school meeting after a judge agreed that the school district failed to provide voters with the amended warrant in a timely fashion, a second school vote was held on Town Meeting Day, which in Newport is the second Tuesday in May.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com
