Town Attorney Has Been Keeping It Legal

For Newtown For More Than A Decade

By Steve Bigham

Since 1990, David Grogins has served as town attorney for Newtown. In these litigious times, he is Newtown’s last line of defense. It is a job he does not take lightly.

“I feel very responsible. Here, the decisions you make affect a lot of people. It’s not like defending a client who can fire you if you give bad advice. You have to sleep at night, so you have to be careful in how you do things,” he said in a interview this week.

A town attorney serves as legal adviser for a town and is charged with providing both legal advice and representation in lawsuit cases.

Mr Grogins, 56, has been a Newtown resident since 1977 and believes his longevity as town attorney is due to the fact that he treats his position non-politically.

“When I first started doing this, the town attorney was Bill Lavery and the position was a political job. Not political in the negative sense, but the town attorney was more the political advisor of the first selectman in addition to being the town attorney. When Bill went on the bench [became a judge] I think he recommended to [then first selectman] Jack Rosenthal that I do some work for the town,” Mr Grogins recalled.

Soon after, Rod Mackenzie took office and brought in his own town attorney. Mr Mackenzie is remembered as one of the Newtown’s most controversial first selectman.

In 1989, Zita McMahon and Jack Rosenthal waged a fierce battle for first selectman, a race in which Mrs McMahon eventually prevailed.

“I was torn. I really liked Zita. I’d known her because she was Jack’s administrative aide, but I had to be loyal to Jack. Jack hired me, Jack brought me in.”

After Mr Rosenthal lost, Mr Grogins figured he was all done as town attorney in Newtown.

“Strangely enough, Zita asked me if I wanted to be town attorney. I was shocked and very pleased and I loved working for Zita. She was a real smart lady,” he recalled.

And Mr Grogins has been town attorney ever since, serving both Republicans (Bob Cascella) and Democrats (Zita McMahon, Jack and Herb Rosenthal), a testament to his determination to keep the job non-political. Mr Grogins credits Mrs McMahon for helping him shape that non-political role.

One of the first issues Mr Grogins handled was the issue of the Garner correctional facility, which the town fought long and hard to keep out.

The town attorney said he tends to avoid attending meetings of local boards and commissions for fear he might have to give an opinion off the top of his head.

“To give an opinion off the top of you head, you’re really risking a disaster,” he said. “If I don’t go, at least I’ll then have time to be reflective.”

Mr Grogins said his most memorable experience in Newtown occurred at the first town meeting he ever ran.

“Until then I never wore glasses, and it’s kind of dark in the high school auditorium. Somebody asked a controversial questions, and I had brought my Roberts Rules book and I had my statutes. So he asked the question and I said I was going to read right out of the statutes. I knew the answer, but I couldn’t read the thing. I realized at that moment that I needed glasses. All of a sudden I couldn’t read,” he recalled with a laugh.

Mr Grogins has been wearing glasses ever since and presiding over many town meetings.

The role of the town attorney has changed immensely over the years, Mr Grogins said.

“The types of things that town attorneys are getting involved in now, people wouldn’t have dreamed about 50 years ago. The standard in employment law forever was people were at-will employees. If you didn’t like the way a guy worked, you fired him and that was the end of it. Now, that has changed substantially.”

The Lysaght Case

Nowhere has that been more apparent than in the town’s decision to fire former police chief James Lysaght and his ensuring lawsuit against the town.

“It was our recommendation from day one was to make an agreement with him and part company. He chose not to accept that. It was a very personal thing for the chief and it was a difficult case because it wasn’t like the guy was caught with his hand in the till. He didn’t do anything illegal or fraudulent or criminal. It was essentially a traditional management-owner issue. There was a difference over the way the management should be accomplished. And, quite frankly, we made a very substantial offer,” Mr Grogins said.

In that case, Mr Grogins’ job was to keep the town out of litigation.

“We did the best we could, but he felt it was necessary to defend himself, and I don’t blame him. The guy had a lot of integrity and we were calling that into question. Unfortunately it had to be litigated,” the town attorney said.

Mr Grogins also recommended that the town not sue the state over the jail’s construction. We had no chance of winning, he said. Mr Mackenzie then came in and spent $500,000 to sue the state and lost, although the state did agree to give the town several acres of open space land.

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said Mr Grogins has done a fine job in providing legal advice to Newtown. Always calm and careful, he never gives a rushed answer, lays it out clearly and lets the town officials make the final decision.

“He puts out all the possibilities of the various options. Like everyone else, he’s not perfect, but by and large he’s given the town good advice over the years,” Mr Rosenthal said. He calls them as he sees them. He’s not a partisan person. He’s certainly not a `yes’ man. He doesn’t tell you just what you want to hear. The fastest way for a public official to get in trouble is to have an attorney say I’ll do whatever you want. That’s not David’s approach.”

Charter Revision

Recently, Mr Grogins provided legal help to the Charter Revision Commission, whose proposed changes to town government were approved in part by voters last week. The split vote forced Mr Grogins and other town officials to scramble in an effort to interpret what it all meant (see related story).

The proposed charter changes took a major hit last month when it was discovered that an “effective date” had been left out. That meant changes – such as the creation of a Board of Finance – would be required to go into effect 30 days after the election. The original intent was to incorporate the changes into the charter by 2003. The oversight was a major one and there was much blame to go around. Some blamed the attorneys. Others blamed the Charter Revision Commission leadership for not relying on the attorneys enough. Chairman Bill Sheluck wrote the entire draft, a task usually given to the lawyers.

“I take some of the blame for that,” Mr Grogins said. “We had a very clearly defined role. I would not go to their meetings. They would do the drafting. Bill wanted to do that stuff and he was very good at it. He’s a smart guy. When they had an area where they had questions they’d send it to me, and I would give my opinions. At the end, they asked me to review it and we felt there was nothing in the charter that was against what was allowed under the statutes.”

However, the “effective date” was left off and Mr Grogins acknowledged the oversight.

“And I feel badly about this and I think there is enough blame to go around. I think I did the job they asked me to do, but maybe I could have done it better,” he said, adding that he is not an editor.

Mr Grogins grew up in Danbury and after graduating from high school and attended Union College in Schenectady, New York before moving on to law school at Boston College. Eventually he opened up a branch office in Danbury with the Cohen & Wolfe law firm.

“After a while I decided I really didn’t want to do litigation, so I started to do a lot of development work and I was active politically. I was on the Board of Education during the early 1980s. He would become town attorney soon thereafter.

Mr Grogins’ parents owned the Nutmeg Plumbing Supply Company and he jokes that he became an attorney because he didn’t want to work in the plumbing business. He and his wife, Suzanne, an interior designer, have been married 34 years. They have lived in their home on Alberts Hill Road since 1977.

“Newtown is a great town. Many other sort of upper-middle class towns are kind of homogeneous, but Newtown runs the gamut and diversity is good,” he said. As towns grow, however, the issues become geometric. It gets a lot more complicated, There are decisions that we simply have no control over, like development.”

The Grogins have two children, John, 30, who plans to begin medical school next year, and Allison, 26, a fashion designer in New York City.

When he’s not litigating, you can often find Mr Grogins on the links at Redding Country Club where he is a 12 handicap.