BRIDGEPORT — While technically a part-time job, being a state legislator is still a time-consuming responsibility — between helping voters locally and attending meetings and votes at the US Capitol. State in Hartford.
Yet two of Bridgeport’s newly elected lawmakers — Democrats Herron Gaston and Fred Gee — also have full-time city jobs and are also local religious leaders.
And some wonder if they’ll be able to juggle it all, or if the taxpayers who fund their city and state’s salaries will be harmed.
Gaston and Gee were elected last November to the state Senate and House of Representatives respectively. Gaston earns $142,591 as assistant general manager. This department, headed by CAO Janene Hawkins, essentially runs the city for Mayor Joe Ganim and is currently understaffed. Ganim laid off a second CAD assistant last July.
And Gee is in charge of the Small Business and Minority Development Office. He is paid $95,385 per year.
Both are non-union political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the mayor.
Gaston and Gee are also local pastors, the former from Summerfield United Methodist and the latter from Impact Church.
The General Assembly convened Jan. 4 at the Capitol in Hartford for the 2023 session, which adjourns at midnight June 8. Over the past few weeks, Hearst Connecticut Media has reached out to Gaston and Gee to discuss their busy schedules and whether they intend to remain full-time employees of Bridgeport and have received no response from either the other.
In a statement, Ganim gave no indication that their municipal workloads would change or that he was concerned about their productivity.
“The City of Bridgeport, now and in previous administrations, has had many state legislators who have worked for city government,” Ganim said. “Senator Gaston and State Rep. Gee are no different. When carrying out their legislative responsibilities, they are not compensated by the city unless they are using personal time or vacation But like all legislators, they will enjoy a certain level of flexibility to carry out their municipal duties while fulfilling their legislative responsibilities.”
Connecticut law prohibits employers 25 or older from discriminating against people who run for and serve in the General Assembly, even if they lose work time to do so. The law requires employers to allow shift workers to change their hours if necessary, but also clarifies that it is not a violation for an employer to withhold “wages or salaries for any lost time.”
Callie Heilmann, head of civic group Bridgeport Generation Now, said taxpayers have a right to know more details about “how the city plans to spend its time.”
“The Bridgeporters deserve strong leadership on Capitol Hill (in Hartford) and we deserve dedicated people working full-time at City Hall to deliver high quality service,” Heilmann said. “Being present at the legislative session and constituent services is very time-consuming. Public hearings alone can last 10 to 12 hours.”
As noted by Ganim, Gaston and Gee aren’t the first Bridgeport staffers to also sit on the General Assembly and face questions about time management.
When he was first elected to the legislature, State Rep. Chris Rosario was also Democratic Mayor Bill Finch’s anti-blight chief.
“It wasn’t as easy as I thought,” admitted Rosario, who Ganim fired after beating Finch in the 2015 primaries, in a recent interview.
Rosario said that now that he had more experience and seniority on Capitol Hill, he was better able to balance those responsibilities with a day job.
“The fact that they come in as new members, at least for this next term, is probably a bit more of a juggling act for them,” Rosario said.
Thanks to technological changes brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, grassroots lawmakers can still attend committee meetings and vote by computer. But when the full House and Senate meet, which will increasingly happen in the final weeks of the current session, lawmakers are expected to report to Hartford. Meanwhile, business ultimately goes on all day and sometimes late into the night.
Bridgeport Councilman Scott Burns, co-chair of the council’s budget committee, said he would be interested to know if Gaston and Gee would still end up receiving their full salaries this fiscal year. He added that the OAC and small business offices, like other city departments, will be scrutinized for their performance in the upcoming spring budget process.
“(But) we have to do things within (union) contracts, (municipal) charter and state law,” Burns noted.
State Rep. Joe Gresko, D-Stratford, has also worked part-time for Bridgeport in recent years as an advisor to Ganim on sustainability and environmental initiatives.
“There are a lot of other lawmakers who have full-time jobs in other places handling it,” Gresko said this week. “It’s a time management skill that needs to be practiced or learned.”
Gresko said he was paid to work 19 hours a week for Ganim, but would work more during the non-session months of July through December to make up for the time he was supposed to be at Hartford earlier in the year.
“In July, August, September, October, I spend almost 40 hours a week (in Bridgeport),” Gresko said. “When it comes to session time, I always put in 19 hours. I may have only been there for seven hours, so I use some of those ‘reserve’ hours. … So it all happens in the washing.”
But Gresko also acknowledged that, when offered a job with Ganim, “I asked for part-time due to what I saw as time constraints on both positions” with the city and the legislature.
Charlie Stallworth, a newly retired state representative, was for a time in the same position as Gaston and Gee, the latter being his successor in the legislature. Stallworth was a state representative, headed the East End Baptist Church, and earned $99,000 as Ganim’s full-time assistant.
“It’s doable. I think the planning is so necessary,” Stallworth said.
He added that he sometimes works on city business on Saturday and Sunday evenings and also uses his days off from the city for legislative duties.
Stallworth, however, when running for re-election in 2016, faced intense criticism ahead of this summer’s Democratic primary from opponent Maria Pereira, who had sought his record for being in the legislature and had found him insufficient when it came to attending committee meetings.
“I can do better because we can all do better,” Stallworth said at the time. He had also insisted that when it came to important issues for Bridgeport, he worked hard with the rest of the city’s legislative delegation to get things done.
Stallworth said this week that people like him who seek the challenge of having multiple roles in and for their communities don’t do so for the sake of power or money.
“I think service is kind of at the heart of my heart,” Stallworth said. “These are just expressions of service. I love to serve.”
Pereira, currently a councilor and former school board member, argued this week that people with as many jobs as Gaston and Gee can’t do them all well.
“One thousand percent steps,” Pereira said. “It’s not possible. … It’s really full-time commitments, to do it and to do it very well. (And) it’s really a double tax on taxpayers’ money at the municipal and state levels.”
