Despite committing crimes that shattered the public’s trust in Hartford’s city government, former Mayor Eddie Perez has returned to his work in the community and is living an “admirable life,” his attorney, R. Bartley Halloran, told a judge Wednesday in a bid to save Perez’s city pension.
It’s been more than a year since Perez pleaded guilty to taking a bribe and attempted first-degree larceny by extortion, two felonies. But fallout from the case, which began with arrests in 2009 and has run through the state’s criminal court, Appellate Court and Supreme Court over the past decade, continues to dog the former mayor.
A month after Perez pleaded guilty, Attorney General George Jepsen’s office filed a lawsuit seeking to revoke or reduce Perez’s city pension. Records show Perez has collected $2,328.76 in monthly pension payments from Hartford since October 2016.
In 2010, Perez was convicted by a jury of five felony corruption charges. The extortion and bribery charges arose from small, self-serving deals in which he was accused of taking $40,000 in kitchen and bathroom renovations from Carlos Costa, a city contractor hired to work on a Park Street improvement project. Perez lied to an investigator by saying he had paid for the work, and later took out a loan to pay Costa.
Prosecutors said Perez also blocked an effort by Hartford’s public works department to fire Costa from the city project for poor performance.
In addition, the state charged that Perez attempted to extort money from a private developer for the benefit of a North End power broker, and that, in return, the broker would secure votes for Perez, who was seeking re-election.
Perez resigned his city post, which he had held since 2001, a week after the verdict.
He was sentenced to three years in prison, but his convictions were overturned by the state Appellate Court in 2013, and those reversals were upheld by the Connecticut Supreme Court three years later. The state then moved to retry Perez, and the former mayor pleaded guilty last August. He was spared prison time.
On Wednesday, during a trial that lasted only two hours, Halloran tried to persuade Judge Cesar A. Noble to allow Perez, 62, to hold on to his $27,945-per-year pension.
Halloran highlighted the family’s financial troubles — Perez is now working a $45,000-a-year job with the Capitol Region Education Council, a significant decline from the six-figure salary he pulled in as mayor; his wife, Maria, was forced to go back to work despite constant headaches and short-term memory loss stemming from aneurysms she suffered; the pair moved from their renovated home on Bloomfield Avenue to a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house on Catherine Street that was purchased in a foreclosure auction; and Perez owes $300,000 to $400,000 in legal fees, a sum he said is “more than I’m going to be able to pay in my lifetime.”
Perez recently sued the city, seeking more than $1 million for legal bills he incurred during the entire ordeal.
Robert Teitelman, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office, on Wednesday pointed out that Perez has $288,234 in a retirement account from a previous job with Trinity College; $12,718 in retirement funds through his current position at CREC; and another $9,770 in a retirement account belonging to his wife. A 2017 tax return for the couple listed a combined, adjusted gross income of $102,967.
Teitelman did not take a position on the extent of the punishment Perez should receive, but he suggested that the penalty should be at “the higher end” of the scale, possibly an “outright revocation” of his pension.
He noted that the former mayor’s actions eroded public trust in government.
“Crimes of this sort go to the heart of public confidence in their elected officials,” Teitelman said. “If the elected mayor for one of the largest cities … isn’t the poster child for a stern remedy, I don’t know who is.”
In 2008, after years of tussling over the parameters of the law, Connecticut’s General Assembly adopted a measure allowing judges to revoke or reduce the pensions of state and municipal employees who are convicted of, plead guilty to or plead no contest to crimes related to their offices. The crimes include embezzlement, felony theft from the state, bribery in connection with a person’s position and committing a felony by using a public office to obtain profit, gain or advantage.
When making a decision, the law requires a judge to consider the damage done to the city or state by an official’s illegal actions, the amount of trust or responsibility placed in the official and the needs of the official’s innocent spouse or children.
Since the law took effect, the state attorney general’s office has initiated 21 cases to revoke or reduce a public official’s pension. In five of them, pensions were revoked under agreements with the office. Eleven of the cases were decided by a judge with differing results. In one case, a pension was reduced by 17 percent; in another, a judge revoked the pension but allowed a portion of it to continue going to an official’s former spouse. In three cases, the pension was left intact. And in yet another, a judge revoked the entire pension.
Five cases are pending. Perez is the only elected official whose pension has come under threat as a result of the law. Noble did not issue a ruling on the case Wednesday.
In his closing arguments, Halloran told the judge that the ordeal has “devastated” Perez, and his entire family has paid the price.
“Mr. Perez clearly did something that was wrong … and he admits that,” Halloran said. “But that doesn’t define his entire life. As bad as it is, it does not define his entire time as mayor.”
