Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [152]
The next day, news of the evictions and the NLDC’s decision to break the moratorium splashed across the front pages. Everyone from the New London City Council to the governor was blindsided. They were shocked that the NLDC would take such a drastic step at such a sensitive time.
The news sparked a backlash against City Hall. The city council looked inept. The NLDC looked ruthless. And the governor’s wishes looked irrelevant. The Coalition to Save Fort Trumbull Neighborhood issued a statement calling on the city council to disband the NLDC once and for all.
Indeed, the city council appeared ready to do just that. Just twenty-four hours before the NLDC issued its eviction notices, City Hall officials had met with them on the status of negotiations with the homeowners. No one had said boo about resorting to forced eviction. Now the city council had egg on its face. Tired of looking foolish, some members of the council called for a vote of no confidence in the NLDC.
From the governor’s mansion, the situation in New London looked like a never-ending train wreck. The longer the standoff continued, the more publicly embarrassing it became. It was bad enough that Tom Londregan had taken the governor to task in the state’s largest newspaper. Now the NLDC had squeezed the property owners, validating the perception that the agency was out of control and out of touch.
Governor Rell was at wits’ end. But it was hard to know where to direct her anger. She couldn’t go after the city; it had nothing to do with the eviction notices going out. And she couldn’t just pound on the NLDC. The agency was a creature of the state, set up by her predecessor to serve as a blunt instrument to allow the state to get its way in New London without interference from locally elected officials. The state had passed $70 million through the NLDC to carry out the project. If the state walked away from the NLDC now, it would be kissing a mighty big investment good-bye.
Angry and embarrassed, Governor Rell huddled privately with her legal counsel Kevin Rasch; her chief of staff, Lisa Moody; and Ron Angelo, deputy commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development, which had more direct contact with and oversight of the NLDC than any other state agency.
The governor felt like telling the city to simply incorporate the holdouts’ houses into the development plan or else. But she wasn’t sure the city would comply.
Instead, Rell decided to appoint a special mediator in hope of getting the parties to sit down and find a way to resolve the dispute once and for all without resorting to forced evictions. In the meantime, she dispatched her chief counsel, Rasch, to New London to tell the NLDC to rescind the eviction notices at once.
John Kramer was in his office at the institute in Washington when he read online that Goebel and Joplin had denied breaking their moratorium pledge. Smelling blood, Kramer called Bullock on his cell phone in Baltimore, where he had traveled to give a speech. Bullock took the call on a crowded train platform.
“They are now claiming the pledge only applied to new eminent-domain actions,” Kramer said, before reading Goebel’s exact quote.
“He’s lying!” Bullock shouted into the phone, oblivious of the fact that he was surrounded by commuters. “We have to document their lies. I know there are news stories where they are quoted on this.”
While Bullock ranted, Kramer did a quick search on his computer and pulled down an Associated Press story from late July that quoted Joplin saying that the NLDC would allow the houses in Fort Trumbull to stand while the legislature took up the eminent-domain issue. “We are going to abide by the moratorium,” Joplin told the press at that time.
“We have to do a news release,” Bullock said. “We have to destroy whatever shred of credibility these people have left.”
Kramer hated to hesitate when he saw an opportunity to bury an adversary. He kept