Bloomfield
The Bloomfield Dispatch:
An Investigative Series
Mission Statement
Bloomfield, Connecticut is at a crossroads. Rising property taxes, stalled development, and a lack of transparency have left residents asking questions that have gone unanswered for years.
This page serves as the central hub for my ongoing investigative series, "Bloomfield’s Crisis of Governance." Here, you will find data-driven analyses, fact-checks of official town narratives, and the documentation necessary to form your own opinions in order to hold our elected officials accountable.
This is a living document. New articles will be added to the top of the list as the investigation proceeds. (If you're new, start at the bottom and work your way up.)
The Investigation So Far
Next Up: Part 5.3 & Part 6. In the upcoming Part 5.3, we finish the "13 Reasons" and crunch the some payroll numbers to reveal a massive "Wage Inversion" and "Pension Spiking" that are threatening the Town's solvency.
Why did the Town lose track of its cash? This installment exposes the "Digital Blackout"—the Administration's decision to abandon its enterprise financial software in favor of vulnerable, manual spreadsheets. We document how this technological regression directly led to the 15-month failure to reconcile bank accounts and left a $117 million government running on guesswork.
On January 3, 2025, Town leadership boasted of "Strong Finances." On that same day, internal logs reveal the Finance Department had ceased reconciling bank accounts for 15 months. This first forensic installment dissects the Administration's own "13 Reasons" for the collapse.
In a defiant "Fact Sheet" speech, Mayor Harrington labeled reports of the town's financial crisis as "misinformation." This rebuttal uses the Town's own internal documents to expose the truth: the 15-month "offline" spreadsheet blackout, the OPM "Tier I" warning letter the Council tried to hide, and the legal budget that has already burned through 170% of its funding.
Released FOIA documents prove that Council leadership knew about a "Tier I" state takeover threat in July but allowed the Administration to deny it in public meetings. The investigation exposes a "confession" from the Town revealing that the Finance Department effectively ceased functioning—tracking a $117 million budget on manual spreadsheets without bank reconciliations for over a year.
While the administration remains silent on the overdue audit, the forensic data speaks volumes. This installment exposes a "Material Weakness" finding in the town's internal controls, reveals that the $21 million drop in debt was a massive correction of past errors rather than fiscal savings, and documents legal spending that has burned through 185% of its budget in just 20 weeks.
A hard look at the math behind the "revenue neutral" myth. This article presents an analysis of 15 years of budget data to uncover the hard truth: the mill rate cannot drop enough to offset reassessment hikes. It also exposes how the "Phase-In" strategy may actively reduce state aid, effectively costing the town money.
An examination of the town's fiscal crisis uncovers the beginnings of its true cost of mismanagement: an audit-flagged, $21 million "miracle" reduction in OPEB debt—a paper cleanup caused by bad data, not cash—and a town attorney who has already blown through 185% of the annual budget in just 20 weeks. This catastrophic deviation from historical patterns is just the beginning of systemic failure.
The opening article in this series reveals the profound structural deficits within Bloomfield's leadership, focusing on the disastrous handling of the 2024 Revaluation and the resulting chasm between the Town Council's official narrative and the economic reality for its residents.
The investigation began here. A documentation of the town's failure to respond to basic inquiries and Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests, establishing a pattern of opacity that necessitates this series.
Note: This investigative commentary relies on public documents and recorded statements. All analysis falls under the protection of Connecticut's anti-SLAPP statutes (C.G.S. § 52-196a) regarding free speech in connection with a matter of public interest.
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