Recognizing The Inevitable

To the Editor

In an otherwise excellent series of articles covering the Legislative Council’s initial rejection of the proposed education administrator’s contract, followed by its failure to reject a marginally more advantageous contract, one important detail was not mentioned.

After the council’s initial rejection, a binding arbitration process set forth in state statute was triggered, composed of two rounds of arbitration. Had the council rejected the contract a second time after the first round of arbitration, an arbitration panel would have been obliged to pick between the town’s and the administrator’s previous offers. Because the parties availed themselves of an optional mediation process in the first round of arbitration, however, a stipulated agreement between the parties was reached, submitted, and adopted in the first stage of arbitration.

By virtue of that agreement, each side’s previous offer was considered identical. Therefore, had the council rejected the contract a second time, the arbitration panel would have had not choice but to reaffirm the very agreement the council had rejected. In short, council rejection of the contract would have resulted in the identical contract being reimposed. The arbitrators’ bills to the town to reimpose the same contract on it would have only been additional salt on the wound.

Recognition of this inevitability led many council members, myself included, to not reject the contract again despite continued misgivings and/or dissatisfaction with some of its provisions.

William F.L. Rodgers

Chair, Legislative Council

208 Hattertown Road, Newtown                          December 23, 2004