CITY OF HARTFORD
Date:
June 27, 2013
To:
Distribution
From:
H. Patrick Campbell, Chief Auditor
HP
Telephone:
860.757.9951
Subject:
Special Review of Councilman Aponte’s Involvement With and Voting History
on Matters Relating to the Spanish Ameri
can Merchant’s Association
The Internal Audit Commission received a special request to review various matters relating to City Council
member Aponte’s financial
/operational involvement with and City Council voting history on the Spanish America
n Merchant’s Association (SAMA). The following are our
findings to date on the matters that were raised as potential issues and concerns relating to Councilman Aponte and SAMA. According to the original complaint made to the Internal Audit Commission (IAC), a number of
issues and concerns were raised regarding Councilman Aponte’s involvement with and voting on
the sale of a city-owned property to SAMA. This property was subsequently subdivided and a portion of it was sold to Hartford Hospital to accommodate the construction of a new parking
garage. More specifically, the complaint noted that “Councilman Aponte is the Chair of the City Council’s Planning and Economic Development (PED) Committee. In addition, Councilman
Aponte was the agent for service for SAMA either just before this deal went into the City or was the agent for part of the time as the deal made its way through. If this is true that he voted either in committee or on council and indeed was the agent or was recently agent for service and did not
disclose it and recuse himself, it might be an Ethics issue.”
During the course of this special review, the following other potential issues and concerns were noted by the IAC and reviewed. This included: Councilman Aponte was paid for providing legal or other services to SAMA. Councilman Aponte received political contributions from SAMA officials for his most recent run for City Council.
There are “other conflicts’ concerning Councilman Aponte and SAMA.
The following are the results of our review relating to the issues and concerns noted above: 1.
Councilman Aponte was not and appears never to have been an Agent for Service for SAMA. To verify this, we obtained information online from the Commercial Recording Division of
INTERDEPARTMENTAL
MEMORANDUM