By Tim O’Brien
Columnist
During a failed attempt at running for state representative, one of Ald. Lou Salvio’s own election flyers misspelled his name as “Salvo”. For a man who has repeatedly shown himself to be the nastiest politician in New Britain, the moniker “Salvo” has stuck – and for all the wrong reasons. Salvio’s entire political career has been built on attacking, criticizing and tearing others down rather than building up and moving our community forward.
Salvio’s nastiness is now costing New Britain taxpayers $9,500. As reported by the New Britain Herald, the city is forced to settle a lawsuit and Human Rights and Opportunities complaint brought by a City Council employee, who alleges that Salvio sexually harassed and stalked her, including driving by her house.
The alleged sexual harassment and stalking appears to stem out of a partisan political grudge Salvio has been carrying out against the employee’s family. That partisan grudge, in particular against the aunt of the employee’s husband, former Ald. Suzanne Bielinski, culminated in an egregious abuse of power by the administration of mayor Erin Stewart.
This would not be the only time that Salvio has attacked the family of an elected official to carry out a partisan political grudge against a perceived political adversary. In 2013, Salvio falsely accused my wife of having a car illegally registered in New York. In his false accusation, Salvio admitted that he had been monitoring my home for some time, all in an attempt to politically attack my wife in order to get to me. The car with New York plates in front of my house he was monitoring turned out to be the one belonging to my then 87 year old mother-in-law, who was a New York resident, frequently visiting with her daughter and grandchildren.
What kind of a man does these things?
It is ironic that the Republican-dominated City Council considered a resolution asking city taxpayers to pay $9,500 to cover for Salvio’s misdeeds at the same meeting during which they considered repealing the ordinance providing for the city HUD grants committee. That committee has existed entirely because of partisan attacks brought by Salvio against City Council Democrats. In years past, Salvio falsely accused Council Democrats of having conflicts of interest in the allocation of funds the city receives from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). These accusations caused months of legal consternation and bureaucratic paperwork, the only real result of which were Council Democrats — who did not actually do anything wrong — having their names dragged through the mud.
For legal reasons that defy all rational common sense, the creation of this HUD grants committee, to allocate HUD funds, instead of the full Council, was the only complete solution that allowed the city to untangle itself from a morass of bureaucratic paperwork and false, politically-motivated perceptions about honest elected officials – a mess created only because Salvio maliciously made stupid, partisan, groundless complaints to HUD officials, who were then forced to respond by putting the city and guiltless elected officials through the ringer.
There seems to be no end to the maliciousness, mean-spiritedness and damage, costly to taxpayers, that has been and will continue to be caused by Ald. Lou Salvio. It seems to defy reason and basic decency that such a person would still enjoy the political support of the mayor and the City Council’s Republican majority.
Tim O’Brien is Treasurer and a member of the Board of Directors of the New Britain Independent, and is a Columnist for the Independent. He is the former Mayor of New Britain, and also served as State Representative for parts of New Britain and Newington and was a New Britain City Alderman. The views expressed here are the opinion of the author and are not necessarily the views of the New Britain Independent Newspaper, Inc.
