Mr. Wesley Marsh
Chairman Board of Finance
New Fairfield, CT
Dear Mr. Marsh,
I would appreciate your reading my statement below regarding a BOF member who is in Conflict of Interest into the record during Correspondence and Announcements portion of the next BOF Meeting.
Thank you,
Doug Thielen
TOM EDWARDS IS IN CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Mr. Edwards is a member of both the Permanent Building Committee and the Parks & Recreation Commission. As such, he cannot be seated as a member of the Board of Finance [BOF] because being a voting member of the BOF constitutes a conflict of interest to his sworn fiscal responsibility.
The two aforementioned organizations continually request major appropriations and approvals from the BOF and, at minimum, Mr. Edwards needs to recuse himself on all of those occasions. Nor should he be permitted to argue the merits of a proposed approval since he is inherently biased by being a regular/permanent member of one of the two boards that periodically request monetary approvals from the BOF. The best and cleanest way to eliminate any conflict of interest is to ask Mr. Edwards to either resign his positions on both the other two committees on which he serves or resign his position on the BOF.
If you will kindly check with the Secretary of the State, Mr. Edwards' conflict of interest will be confirmed.
Doug Thielen
