WEST HAVEN — Although Scott Jackson has served as the city’s finance director since late February, Mayor Nancy Rossi has never confirmed the circumstances under which his predecessor, Frank Cieplinski, left the role.
On Feb. 24, Rossi said in a statement that Cieplinski was “no longer employed by the City of West Haven,” yet she has declined to state explicitly whether he was terminated. Despite the lack of confirmation, the Register confirmed with a City Hall employee who requested anonymity that Cieplinski had showed up for work that day, a Thursday, and was at some point escorted out.
Under oath in November, Cieplinski confirmed that he had been terminated. His firing came after former state Rep. Michael DiMassa, who had been granted signatory authority for the city’s COVID-19 expenditures, was arrested for his role in the theft of those funds. The $1.2 million in theft was made possible by Cieplinski’s signature. DiMassa testified during the same jury trial, which led to a guilty verdict for DiMassa’s coconspirator John Trasacco, that he deliberately distracted the finance director by handing Cieplinski fraudulent payment vouchers in a stack of legitimate ones while making small talk.
Cieplinski confirmed a prosecutor’s statement under oath that he had been summoned to a conference room wherein Rossi, the city’s personnel director, Treasurer Mike Last, Corporation Counsel Lee Tiernan and Public Works Commissioner Tom McCarthy were waiting. He said Rossi provided several reasons for Cieplinski’s termination and he was let go. Earlier in the trial, Jackson testified that Rossi had reached out to him personally to ask if he would be prepared to assume the job and that he had not applied for the role and it was never publicly posted.
Although neither the finance director nor the public works commissioner report to one another, McCarthy defended his presence in the room when Cieplinski was terminated.
“It’s normal in our administration,” he said. “I do other things besides public works.”
Before being appointed to the role of commissioner, McCarthy had been a campaign manager of Rossi’s successful 2017 mayoral campaign, which unseated incumbent mayor Ed O’Brien. Last, who also managed Rossi’s campaign, was elected to his role as treasurer. For eight months of her first term, McCarthy served as a volunteer adviser to the mayor before being appointed to the Public Works Commissioner role.
Although those present in the room for Cieplinski’s termination may hint at who in city service Rossi trusts most, experts said it violated no rules that McCarthy was present in the room and may not even be especially unconventional.
“Generally the rule is you don’t want an audience but you also want a witness, because any time there’s any issue that arises, if theres potentially a lawsuit, you don’t want to create a scenario where there’s a he-said-she-said,” said Alison Wall, an assistant professor of management in Southern Connecticut State University’s School of Business with a specialty in human resources management. “It’s really a case-by-case basis as to why they chose to have those people in the room at the time.”
Gary Phelan, a lecturer in employment law at Quinnipiac University and a shareholder at Mitchell & Sheahan, P.C., said it is possible that having the public works commissioner in the room for that meeting could be “overdoing it,” but it is “in some ways actually a wise thing to do.”
“It’s a good management practice to err on the side of caution with respect to verifying what happened in the termination meeting,” he said.
Rossi did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
