Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [106]
Bullock’s eyes lit up. On corporate letterhead, the president of Pfizer had told the president of the NLDC that his company saw the ninety acres around its facility as an extension of Pfizer’s research-and-development headquarters. Milne had committed Pfizer to occupying one hundred rooms per day in the new hotel. He had said Pfizer required more conference space outside the footprint of its own facility. He needed extended-stay housing for visiting scientists and permanent high-end housing for full-time employees. The specificity of the plan amazed Bullock. It was pretty clear, he concluded, why Pfizer wanted Susette and her neighbors to go away.
“We are prepared,” Milne had written, “to enter into agreements with the NLDC and developers to build the type of facilities we require, but this is not just about Pfizer. The plan developed by the NLDC is intended to transform New London and is destined, we believe, to become a model for high impact, high value public/private partnerships.”
For Bullock, the situation was very much about Pfizer. The company had made it a requirement that the state make certain commitments and do things a certain way before it would commit to building a facility in the city.
When Bullock returned to Washington, he immediately took Milne’s letter to Berliner. “Look what we have here!” Bullock said.
Berliner read it. “This confirms our suspicions,” she said. “Pfizer is the driving force behind the municipal-development plan.”
“This document takes it out of the realm of mere suggestion and into the category of demands,” Bullock said. “It wasn’t just Pfizer saying, ‘Here’s what we’d like and here are our thoughts.’ It’s a document that says, ‘These are our requirements.’ Pfizer required these things as part of the MDP.”
“And all those requirements were put in the MDP,” Berliner said.
“That’s right,” Bullock said, grinning. “Pfizer was driving this and it was primarily for their private benefit, not the public benefit.”
But Bullock and Berliner recognized it would be difficult to link eminent-domain abuse directly to Pfizer since the drug company had never obtained the private properties. That had never been the plan. After all, the company didn’t want ownership or even possession of the surrounding neighborhood. It just wanted the area around its facility cleared and redeveloped, a process that would ultimately improve the value of its investment and benefit the company.
Bullock and Berliner began to understand the power and the convenience of the personal relationship between Milne and Claire. The arrangement simultaneously afforded Pfizer both control and cover. Ostensibly, whenever Claire pushed Pfizer’s agenda, she was acting in the capacity of an agent for the City of New London, not for Pfizer. Legally, the distinction was critical.
“Pfizer was always one step removed from this process,” Bullock said. “The takings were not for Pfizer.”
“That’s going to make it difficult for us to directly show a private benefit because Pfizer can claim: ‘This isn’t for Pfizer,’” Berliner said.
“That’s right,” said Bullock. “And if you accepted the fact that taxes and jobs are a legitimate public use, then of course the city is going to try and benefit Pfizer.” He could hear Tom Londregan’s defense already. “The city is going to say: ‘Of course we did things to please Pfizer. What’s good for Pfizer is good for New London.’”
Yet one thing was clear. With documents so clearly tying Milne to the Fort Trumbull development, it was no longer as critical to get him to testify. Bullock preferred to let the documents speak for themselves at trial, convinced that Milne would try to explain away their significance.
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GO AHEAD, ASK YOUR QUESTION
June 8, 2001
Given a choice, Governor Rowland would have stayed as far