Legal Questions Apparent About Republican Caucus

The slate City Council members run under determines their party caucus, according the city’s Town and City Clerk. But legal questions remain about New Britain Council Republicans’ caucus meetings, in spite of the Clerk’s comments.

Republican Town and City Clerk, Mark Bernacki, made his comment in response to a request by the New Britain Progressive for a copy of a filing that would apparently allow Council members to meet in closed-door caucus meetings that the public are not allowed to attend.

But Bernacki said that such a filing has not been made, adding that is not necessary because, “Common Council members caucus with the slate they ran with regardless of their party affiliation.”

Several Republican Council members, including the Republicans’ Majority Leader, Ald, Daniel M. Salerno (R-AL), claim to not be Republicans, despite having been elected as Republicans, on the basis that they maintain their personal registration to vote in Democratic Party primaries or in neither parties’ primaries. All of the Council Republicans were elected as Republicans, except newly appointed Ald. Paul Catanzaro (R-AL), who has said that he will caucus with the Republicans.

Under the pretense that the Republican Party and its Council caucus represents Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliateds in the city, critics say, the actual Democratic Party is portrayed by the current Republican city hall as not needed. Critics say that Stewart and other Republicans’ are attempting to make the city a one-party regime by defining bipartisanship as loyalty to the Republican political machine, in general, and to the Stewart family, in particular.

But, when Council members who were elected as Republicans do not then register to vote in Republican Primaries, it appears to present legal problems for the entire Republican Council caucus.

State law requires that meetings of a majority of Council members must be publicly noticed and open for the public to attend. Closed door meetings of Council members who are “a caucus of members of a single political party” are an exception to this, but only for a legally constituted caucus.

The nine Council Republicans are a majority of the Council, and, so they can only meet in a non-public caucus with eight or more of them at the same time if they are legally constituted as a caucus

There are two ways that a caucus can be legally constituted under state law. The simple way is for Council members elected together under a party slate to all be registered to vote in that party’s primaries. This was the case for Council Democrats in the 2017 to 2019 Council term, when Democrats were in the majority.

But, it gets more complicated when Council members elected under a party’s slate are not registered to vote in that party’s primaries. In those cases, if they win the Council majority, another step is required to legally hold closed-door caucus meetings. State law says that they must, “register their intention to be considered a majority caucus,” with the Town and City Clerk.

But, when the New Britain Progressive asked for such a document from Bernacki, he confirmed that, “We do not have any document on file.”

The requirements under state law would apparently mean that any closed-door caucus meeting held by at least eight Council Republicans since November of 2019 may have been an illegal City Council meeting.

These legal questions have existed before – in the previous Council term of office when Republicans held the Council majority. On August 29, 2017, the New Britain Progressive reported that, “Since this applies to the whole Council term of office, such violations apparently may have been occurring for nearly two years.”