Proposed road closure could lead to first development in new Norwich industrial center

Claire Bessette

Norwich ― The City Council on Monday started a process to discontinue a portion of Lawler Lane in a move that could help attract the first development project to the new Occum Industrial Center.

The council considered a resolution to discontinue 1,500 feet of Lawler Lane where land for the Occum Industrial Center lies on both sides of the road.

City Manager John Salomone said a potential developer has expressed interest in the industrial park parcels on both sides of the road but only if three parcels can be merged, with the closed portion of Lawler Lane becoming part of the merged, developable parcel.

No details of the potential development have been made public.

“There are users who have expressed interest in these three lots, but only if they can be merged to create a buildable area across Lawler Lane,” Salomone said. “So a little chunk of Lawler Lane is needed to complete the three lots.”

The entire stretch of road proposed for closure is abutted by the Occum Industrial Center, owned by the Norwich Community Development Corp. Abutting properties on either end of the closed portion would have nearby outlets ― Canterbury Turnpike to the south and Scotland Road to the north.

Development on the industrial park land would not use Lawler Lane at all, Salomone said, but would exclusively use the new industrial park access road that will run from Route 97 near Interstate 395, Exit 18. The industrial park road, funded by $11.4 million in state grants, is planned to end at the Lawler Lane industrial park property.

The two disconnected portions of Lawler Lane would be closed off with cul de sacs, Salomone said. Only a short end of the Lawler Lane would remain at the Scotland Road intersection. To the south, the road would stretch from the Norwich Worship Center at 165 Lawler Lane to the intersection with Old Canterbury Turnpike just past the John Moriarty School on the right.

The Lawler Lane industrial park property initially was envisioned to be marketed later in the development of the 384-acre industrial park. Much of the land is former farmland and a large portion abuts I-395 off Canterbury Turnpike. But Salomone said the potential developer expressed interest in the Lawler Lane property specifically.

The council referred the proposed resolution, which was co-sponsored by five of the seven members of the City Council, to the Commission on the City Plan for a recommendation. The commission must review any report on city real estate matters.

The commission’s next meeting is at 7 p.m. Aug. 20. The council plans to vote on the resolution at its Sept. 16 meeting. Salomone said the council will take public comment prior to voting.

Along with Republican Mayor Peter Nystrom, Democratic Council President Pro Tempore Joseph DeLucia, Democrat Mark Bettencourt and Republicans William Nash and Stacy Gould co-sponsored the resolution.

Salomone said the proposed road closure has been discussed with Norwich public safety officials and school leaders.

Police conducted traffic counts on Lawler Lane for three months. An average of 386 vehicles per day traverse the road, qualifying it as a “very low-use road” with fewer than 400 vehicles per day.

Torrington's new economic development chief puts focus on industrial sites: 'A lot to invest in here'

Emily M. Olson

TORRINGTON — In his new job as the city's economic development director, William Wallach will help decide the future of the recently demolished Torrington Company Standard Plant. 

"There's a very strong identity here, of innovation, of community," said Wallach, a Newtown resident who started on the job in Torrington in June. "This property is so important to the city's identity, its history and what it wants to be."

A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Wallach is familiar with the landscape in Torrington. He came to his new position from the state Department of Community and Economic Development's brownfields division. He replaced Rista Malanca, who left for a job with the Northwest Hills Council of Governments in 2023. 

Wallach is up to date on the city's efforts to remediate, develop and rebrand properties such as the old Nidec site, another former Torrington Company property on Franklin Street that is now Franklin Plaza.

"I've worked on many of Torrington's projects," he said. "They've done a lot in the last 10 years."

Demolition of the Standard Plant on North Street, a project that began in October 2023, was completed at the end of July. To help finance the estimated $4 million demolition, the DECD provided a $2 million Brownfield Remediation Grant for IRG Realty Advisors LLC, representing Torrington Standard LLC, owner of 70 North St.

The property owner, Torrington Standard LLC and IRD Realty Advisors, ran the demolition project with Manafort Brothers Construction, razing 24 of the 26 buildings. Two buildings remain standing, and one is occupied by a manufacturer, Wallach said.

Now, the 9.4-acre property offers nearly 500,000 square feet of space and is a blank page awaiting its next iteration, Wallach said.

The Torrington Company evolved in 1898 from the Excelsior Needle Co., which was organized in 1866 and manufactured sewing machine needles, according to Glenn Carbone, brother of Mayor Elinor Carbone and a principal with IRG. 

Wallach will use his experience as a brownfields adviser to help the city and IRG come up with the next steps for the property. 

"Working with the city, William will help decide on the future of the property," Mayor Carbone said. "Now that we have a blank slate, we can see more opportunities, how this can support industry."

Wallach said he has "a vision of how to best use that (newly cleared) property" on North Street. 

"Torrington has a history and identity as an innovator and an industrial community, and today, we have technical, high-end manufacturing going on here, with world-leading industry," he said. "This property at 70 North Street can take advantage of that opportunity. With a half-million square feet of space, it can become a campus, it can be an icon. It can be a pinnacle, with more companies that want to come here."

Wallach, who lives in Newtown with his wife, Casey, and their two children, is a native of Indiana. He earned a bachelor of arts in political science from Ohio State University and a master of science in political science and public policy: state and local government and urban studies from Southern Connecticut State University. 

He served in the Marines between 2003 and 2011, completing two deployments during Operation Iraqi Freedom for a total of eight years, three months and 17 days, he said. He also served in artillery operations at Camp Pendleton, Calif.; recruiting duty in New Jersey; and as a company commander of Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Lejeune, N.C.  

After leaving active duty, he worked for Cintas Corp. as a service manager in charge of operations in the Bronx, N.Y. In 2018, he became a parent and a stay-at-home dad.

In 2022, Wallach took a job with the state as a project manager in the DECD's office of brownfield remediation and development and was promoted to community development specialist in 2024. Working directly with Torrington, he said, is the best place for him to be. 

"In my head, I'm always asking myself, why not Torrington? Why isn't Torrington in the front of the line for development? There's a lot to invest in here," Wallach said. "The incentives the state's putting together are perfect for Torrington, to help it continue to improve and use that industrial identity."

To get to know his community and hear their views, Wallach is planning a public forum on economic development for residents, business owners and others to attend. 

"The public forum is because I know the public is hungry for information, and I want to give it to them," he said. "I want to say, here's what we're doing, and here's our plans. What do you think?"

He also wants to meet the community. 

"It's putting a face on this office as part of the great city of Torrington," Wallach said. "I love the job, the work, and what the mayor's trying to do."

More details on the forum at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 29 at City Hall will be announced on the city's website at torringtonct.org. 

Wage theft complaint backlog grows, but Dept. of Labor lacks staff

José Luis Martínez

Workers across Connecticut have been submitting thousands of complaints to the state’s Labor Department for years. There’s the case of 10 workers in East Haddam who claimed they were not being paid after removing asbestos from a local school. There’s the Ashford bakery waitress who said she was not paid over $7,000 in wages. And in an extreme case, there’s the Barkhamsted tree-cutting company owner who allegedly refused to pay one of his workers, then threatened the rest of his employees with a gun after they asked for their paychecks, and then assaulted an EMT while being arrested for the gun incident.

For decades, investigators from the state Labor Department answered those complaints, and they recovered an average of more than $5 million of those stolen wages every year.

But things have changed. Due to budget constraints, fewer investigators and the effects of COVID, stolen wage recoveries have dropped sharply since 2017, to only $2.4 million last year.

A recent report from the state Auditors of Public Accounts highlighted several concerns within the department, noting that in May of last year, more than 800 wage and workplace complaints, 41% of those received, had not be assigned to an investigator. This year, the backlog is about 1,000 cases, and thousands of new complaints come in every year, which investigators say is causing workers’ complaints to linger in the queue for months.

Thomas Wydra, the division's director, said that they have a broad mandate, including 160 statutes and regulations the unit enforces, including sick leave, meal periods, drug testing, breastfeeding in the workplace and other laws that are constantly evolving with every legislative session. He adds that each year’s wage recovery levels may vary due to anomalies including big ticket collection cases like an investigation involving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Certainly we're doing the best that we can. Our staff are acutely aware of the demand and of the case law,” said Wydra. “Every complaint that's sent to us is important to us, and we have to follow proper investigative protocols and guidelines … We will not rush through a case simply to get through it and get through the backlog.”

Meanwhile, legislative proposals that would have increased staff at the unit have failed for two years in a row amid budget constraints.

The struggles facing Wydra and his unit, however, are not exclusive to the past few years.

The recent decline in investigators and legislative solutions

Pleas for more investigators at the wage unit go back decades. In 1949, the state’s Labor Department noted in its annual report to the governor that additional staff was “necessary,” given the backlog of cases.

In 2014, one of the wage unit’s field supervisors at the time, Sandra Barrachina, pleaded for more funding in the midterm adjustments to the budget, arguing that staffing levels were not keeping pace with changes in labor law, creating an “exorbitant” caseload and “tremendous” backlog. That same year, in the budget revisions for the 2015 fiscal year, the legislature appropriated $300,000 for six additional positions at the wage unit.

But staff levels since then are down. State payroll data show that the number of investigators has dropped in the past decade while managerial staff has barely increased. In early 2015, there were 29 wage investigators and agents, while in June 2024, there were 21. The number of supervisors remains the same, and the position of assistant director was brought back in 2023 after being defunded in 2015. There is currently one active job opening in the wage unit for a wage and hour investigator.

And in the past two years, as the backlog of cases has increased to record levels, two other investigators have asked lawmakers to support legislation that increases the number of investigators — but the proposals never made it to a floor vote after passing out of committee.

The bill's failure to pass was a "missed opportunity," according to several advocacy organizations around the state that issued a press release, including the Hartford Deportation Defense, Connecticut For All, the Connecticut Worker Center, the Naugatuck Valley Project and Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees labor union.

"Our Governor is basically saying that it’s OK if people are forced to wait months or years for justice after they’ve been wronged by a bad boss," reads a statement by Fredy Huaman Cárdenas, campaign coordinator at Hartford Deportation Defense. "The reality for immigrant workers in our state is that exploitative employers can completely get away with not paying you overtime, or not paying you at all of the work you’ve already done, and still be able to operate that same business without hearing anything from the Department of Labor even after a complaint has been made. It’s a disgrace, and we must fix it.”

There are two types of investigators at the unit. Wage and hour investigators, currently five of them, focus on minimum wage and overtime violations, while wage enforcement positions, currently 16, have a broader mandate including commissions, bonuses and final paychecks, among other things.

The proposal in 2023 would have increased the number of wage and hour investigators to at least 45 over the next few months. There was no fiscal note for that bill, but the lowest current projected annual salary for a wage and hour investigator at the start of their hire is about $63,500, so an increase of 40 investigators at that rate would equate to some $2.5 million to be spent in the following fiscal year, if not counting wage enforcement agents as part of the requirement.

This year, though, the bill was changed to require at least 22 investigators by October and 45 by the end of fiscal year 2026, thus tapering off the initial costs. The fiscal note for that bill indicated that, over the next two fiscal years, it would have cost $6.3 million in salary, overhead and fringe benefits, since more supervisory positions would have also been needed.

The report notes, though, that the proposal would be less costly if the bill's interpretation of "wage and hour inspectors" includes both wage and hour investigators and wage enforcement agents, not just the former, in which case fewer positions would have to be added.

"I think that as we fall farther and farther behind, it will require that we act more quickly in order to solve the problem. So I would imagine that next year's bill will be different than it was this last session and the session before, because we're farther behind," said Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, co-chair of the Labor and Public Employees Committee.

faced by people with criminal records when they try to re-enter the workforce. 

"I hope that people understand that if we want government to work, if we want it to really make a difference in people's lives, if we want to enforce the laws that we have on the books and create even greater conditions for Connecticut's workers and families, then we have to be willing to fund government. And those who argue for small government, they're really not helping the people of Connecticut," Kushner said.

"It seemed to us that this solved an issue," said Rep. Steve Weir, R-Hebron, ranking member of the Labor and Public Employees Committee. "Why Democrat leadership didn't take it up? Why the governor didn't weigh in on this? I don't know. That I can't speak for."

The appropriations committee, chaired by Democratic legislators, didn't take up the bill for consideration in 2023, and no adjustments to the budget were made this year.

"I don't know if they looked at the fact that, you know, does the offset of the income from the fines that are levied, do those offset the expenditures?" Weir added. "These are customer-facing people, employees who bring in revenue to the state. They're acting to protect some of the most vulnerable."

Weir was referring the civil penalties that the wage unit can impose on businesses for labor violations, which can range anywhere from $300 to $5,000 per individual offense. The funds go to a dedicated account that the Labor Department can use for any expenses. Since 2012, the civil penalty fund has received anywhere from $600,000 to $1.8 million a year, totaling over $13.1 million as of last year.

It's what Ed Hawthorne, president of the CT AFL-CIO, brought to legislators' attention earlier this year in public hearing testimony.

“They [investigators] actually bring in more money than we pay them. There is no legitimate excuse as to why we should not have an army of them out there,” Hawthorne said.

When the law authorizing this fund came into effect in 1993, it was written such that civil penalty funds could only be used for any personnel expenses at the Labor Department, including wage investigators.

“It was monumental and changing of what we were able to do. We were able to hire six people immediately, and that increased our staff up to almost 40, which was very important,” said Gary Pechie, who was director of the wage unit at the time the law was passed.

A year after the law went into effect, the law was changed to allow the civil penalty funds to be used for all other expenses, not just personnel matters. In recent years, civil penalties have been used for Labor Department expenses such as IT support, electricity, rent and internet and the wage unit’s case management system, among other services.

Civil penalty funds also continue to be used to hire more staff at the division. In the fiscal year ending in 2006, eight of the 36 positions in the entire division were funded by civil penalties, while in 2022, six of the 26 positions were civil-penalty funded.

Civil penalties started off as a $150 fine for each violation of wage and state contract law. A few years later, in 1997, the fine was increased to $300. Since then, penalties have been added for violating laws regarding child labor, workers' compensation, employee regulation and their personnel files, and stop-work orders. The last time changes were made to civil penalty amounts was last year, in which penalties were increased for stop-work order violations.

“I think increasing the penalties is something that should be addressed. When an employer breaks the law, they need to know that there's consequences to that,” Hawthorne said earlier this year.

Weir expressed caution. "The goal is not to, as I look at it, to be punitive to business. What we want is compliance. And so having huge penalties, I don't necessarily equate that with more compliance."

Kushner said she's open to increasing the fines for guilty employers.

"I think there's another reason, not just because it helps fund the positions," she said. "I think it's also important to have fines that will actually work to be a deterrent to the violations, so that we stop violations before they occur."

Inner workings of the wage unit

Declining staff was not just increasing the pressure on the investigators that remained at the unit — it was even proving difficult for Labor Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo. In 2022, she testified against a legislative proposal regarding paid sick leave due to the need for more resources to enforce the legislation if it were to pass.

“Connecticut Department of Labor needs to oppose this bill due to a fiscal impact,” the Commissioner told the Labor and Public Employees Committee regarding the paid sick proposal. “The reality of going from businesses that are covered with 50 or more employees and 69 job classifications to all employers and their employees does require that the agency would need additional staff in our wage and workplace standards division, as well as our legal division.”

The bill had a fiscal note that indicated additional staff requirements at the unit.

Different inspectors, different results?

Over the years, with fewer investigators on the ground, wage recovery levels dropped, but internal reports show that the amounts collected by each investigator can also vary.

In the last fiscal year, for example, one investigator recovered over $400,000, almost a fifth of the total, compared to others who recovered less than $50,000 in the entire year. As Wydra noted, though, some cases may be anomalies, such as big ticket collection cases that not every investigator works on. Other investigators may end up working on more cases dealing with smaller amounts.

Anthony Soto, a former wage enforcement agent who supported legislation to increase staff and left the division last year, said there needs to be more accountability across the division.

"I think the numbers will support, you'll see that there's a group of people that consistently are performing at a high level, and there's a group that's always performing at a lower level," Soto said.

But experience plays a part too, he said, noting that many investigators with years of experience, who often provided guidance to the rest of the team, have retired.

"The tables now are shifting a little bit, where there's fewer people with a lot of experience and a lot of people with three to four years' experience where you understand the work, you know what you're doing, but you still kind of need guidance, because not every case presents itself the same," Soto said. "When you have less experienced people there, it kind of delays the process and makes it harder to get through."

Along with staffing levels, the number of investigations and complaints also dropped in recent years.

From fiscal year 2014 to 2022, the number of complaints dropped from just under 4,000 cases to 2,500, a 36% decrease, but the number of completed investigations dropped faster, 52%, from 4,500 to 2,100 in the same time frame, according to data detailed in the governor's proposed budgets over the years.

Some years may have more investigations than complaints because investigators are going through the backlog of cases, reopening cases or pursuing non-complaint-driven investigations. Fiscal year 2022 was the first time that more complaints were received than investigations were completed.

Soto said that the cases they received vastly differ in complexity and are not “predictable” since some cases might involve one worker while another involves dozens. Two years with the same number of cases or recoveries may not be an apples-to-apples comparison, he said.

But as cases and investigations went down, the backlog of cases went up from 200 in late 2020 to almost 1,000 this year, extending the amount of time a worker waits to have their case assigned to an investigator.

An audit released last month for the fiscal years 2021 and 2022 recommended that the Labor Department’s wage unit continue to improve its tracking procedures, highlighting that pending and unassigned cases accounted for 41% of the total in May 2023. There was one case that had not been assigned to an investigator for 336 days.

“The department agrees that delays in processing claim investigations decrease the likelihood of wage restitution for employees and has already identified insufficient staffing as the primary factor in these delays,” the Labor Department notes in the audit. The Labor Department added that legislative proposals to increase staff have not moved forward in the past two years.

Soto noted that the backlog could include cases that the wage division has no jurisdiction over or duplicate cases, inflating the total. The Labor Department indicated that, in the current pile, there are 27 duplicates out of 997 pending cases.

Even after the backlog is dealt with, Soto insists that additional staff is important when trying to be more proactive about wage enforcement.

“Having more boots on the ground never hurt,” said Soto.

What he meant by being proactive is that they’ll go beyond the complaints they’re receiving and target specific industries known for labor violations.

That's known as "strategic enforcement," according to Jenn Round, a director at the workplace justice lab at Rutgers University, where she helps labor enforcement agencies across the country improve their efficiency while creating resources, curriculum and training. She also helped to launch and led enforcement at the Seattle Office of Labor Standards.

Round notes that this strategy starts with tracking data on the number of violations and complaints by industry.

"By looking at these two data points, we can really pinpoint which industries there's a lot of violations happening, but not very many complaints coming in the door. And a lot of times, these are the industries where workers are the most vulnerable, and they're not filing a complaint."

Bartolomeo echoed the need for more proactive enforcement in an interview for her reappointment as commissioner last year.

“We often are in a situation where we are responsive to complaints. It would be wonderful to be in a situation where we could do more proactive enforcement and less responsive to complaint enforcement, because we do know that it's needed,” said Bartolomeo.

Technology and efficiency

Near the end of this year’s legislative session, amid pleas for more staff from investigators, advocates and victims of wage theft, Gov. Ned Lamont expressed skepticism about increasing staff.

“I'd like to think about other ways we can address this, not simply adding more people," Lamont said at an event hosted by The Connecticut Mirror on April 30 when asked about budgeting for more wage investigators. “We can say the answer to this is more investigators and more people. I've also put a lot of money into it and technology, we've talked about AI … Technology makes them three times more efficient.”

“Gov. Lamont recognizes that improved technology can play a role in creating efficiencies throughout government, as does having additional staff,” Lamont spokesman David Bednarz said in a follow-up statement. “Wage and workplace investigations require humans to walk job sites, conduct interviews and review documents, but technology can speed up transcription or help identify filing duplicates, and that will help humans complete their tasks faster. The administration is always reviewing ways to create efficiencies in every office, and both of these are options being explored.”

Wydra confirmed that two of those improvements would help, including transcription and identifying duplicates. He also thinks it'd be helpful to have a platform that allows employers to pay civil penalties and wage payments online, as they currently only accept payments through mailed checks.

One of the most recent technological upgrades to the division was its case management system, which debuted in 2019. It was a $622,000 project that took almost two years to create. Since then, it’s helped digitize the wage complaint process by allowing workers to submit complaints online and to centralize case information.

An audit of the Labor Department for 2019 found that there were some problems in the use of the system.

“The division lacks sufficient controls to ensure that it properly documents all complaints in the eWage system,” reads the audit, published in 2022.  “An instance was identified in which a serious allegation, involving child labor, was not entered into the eWage system. The complaint was received by the director and assigned to a field agent. Neither entered the case or any related information into the eWage system.”

The Labor Department acknowledged that there was a delay in inputting the data into their system, but they say that “the [child labor] allegations were investigated thoroughly and immediately on the same day that the information was provided to the Wage and Workplace Standards Division.” 

In the audit report released last month for the fiscal years 2021 and 2022, auditors noted that the issue regarding how complaints are managed on eWage were resolved along with other accounting requirements.

As for public access to case data, individual complaint and employer information is not available on the Labor Department’s website, as opposed to states like Massachusetts and Maine, which have datasets available for download.

Leadership at the division

From the 1990s and well into the 2000s, the wage unit was recovering at least $4 million in wages a year. At the time, it was being led by Pechie, who rose through the ranks at the unit starting in 1977 as an investigator and eventually director in 1989 until he retired in 2016. He represented Connecticut as a member of the Interstate Labor Standards Association, an organization of state labor department officials where he served as president twice, in 1995 and 2012.

“It was just, you know, hard work and getting out there and making it your mission to act like it's your money that's not being paid to somebody,” Pechie said about his agency's recoveries.

Pechie noted that caseloads weren’t as big back then as they are now, saying he was assigned only about three cases a month as an investigator. He attributes much of his success as director to size of his staff, which was more than 40 people. It’s why he wrote to legislators this year in support of increasing the number of investigators at the unit.

“I think the current director and the staff can get things straightened out ... it’s just going to take time,” Pechie said.

When he retired in 2016, they hired another investigator who rose through the ranks: Resa Spaziani. In her first fiscal year, she recovered the highest amount of wages on record, over $8.9 million.

But during her time at the helm, clashing among employees became public. Human resources complaints driven by union disputes, allegations of favoritism and personal conflicts among employees caused Spaziani to step down after just over a year and a half in 2018, according to the Yankee Institute.

In her second and final fiscal year, annual wage recoveries dropped 44%, the largest year-to-year drop recorded since the 2000 fiscal year.

But the employee grievances didn’t end after Spaziani stepped down. Earlier this year, a federal lawsuit was filed against the Labor Department by Jide Ebo, a wage investigator since 1989. Ebo claims in the complaint that he was denied promotions due to his race, national origin, and age, alleging favoritism and intentional undermining by state officials, according to Connecticut Inside Investigator. The lawsuit seeks his appointment as assistant director, compensation, and a declaration of civil rights violations, while the Labor Department denies the allegations.

After Spaziani's departure, the Labor Department hired Wydra, a long-time member of the Hamden police department, to lead the wage enforcement division. Before joining the state, Wydra was a patrol officer in the 1990s, moved up the ranks as sergeant, lieutenant, deputy police chief and eventually chief of police in 2006, according to his resume, published by the city of Somerville, Mass., when he applied for the city’s chief of police job in 2014.

Unlike his predecessors, he had no experience as a wage investigator in the unit, but the Labor Department said that he had 26 years of labor law experience on both the union and management side of collective bargaining as well as in the enforcement of labor law.

"I brought my own insights and experiences for sure. And, in my opinion, I blended fairly nicely into the division. Again, it's a team effort," Wydra said of his experience at the wage unit. "We are all about fact finding and doing our job fairly and objectively. But we have a great team at the Wage and Workplace Standards Division."

In Wydra’s first fiscal year at the unit, ending in 2019, wage recoveries went up 11% to $5.5 million, still the second-lowest amount since 2000 to that point. The following year, in 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, recoveries went back down to $2.7 million as businesses around the state closed.

The following fiscal year, ending 2021, recoveries bounced back to $4.3 million, what seemed a sign of recovery. But the next two years' recoveries dropped. After a low of $1.9 million in the 2023 fiscal year, 2024 recovery levels inched back up to $2.4 million.

Reactions from advocates

Miguel Fuentes, a member of the Carpenters Local 326 labor union who often relays labor violation information to the wage division, said he's had a positive experience working with Wydra.

"We're gonna continue to try to help them, but they've never not been willing to at least discuss a concern, and that's invaluable," Fuentes said.

Fuentes did express concerns about whether there was a succession and training plan in the unit as people joined and left. Wydra said that they hired an outside vendor to train staff on human trafficking cases and that staff is consistently trained on legal matters and case law, which is affected by changing statutes and regulations.

One of Fuentes' goal still surrounds advocating for more "manpower" at the wage unit, indicating that besides wage-theft, money laundering and human trafficking also occur in the construction industry.

Ardemar Torres, another member of the Carpenters Local 326, said that not catching businesses guilty of underpaying workers makes it difficult for other law-abiding contractors to compete.

"This is the reason why we get up every morning. There's good people out there that really want to do this. And competition is tough. It's tough for those contractors. They they want to pay the right way. They want to pay the correct wages, pay the taxes," said Torres, who regularly visits job sites with Fuentes to educate workers about their rights.

It's the case for Ben Whelan, a long-time residential contractor from Madison who said he has to compete with others who don't properly pay their employees.

"On the shoreline where I work, I'm in the minority ... we're one of the last few left that have actual employees that are paying the necessary payroll taxes," Whelan said. This, he said, makes his prices for clients higher compared to contractors who don't have to pay additional costs.

"Your average homeowner does not know what's going on with this," Whelan added. "Homeowners should be holding their contractors accountable when they come through the door and ask the questions: Are your guys properly classified? Is there proper workers comp on the job?"

He also added that since currently only registrations are needed to become a residential contractor, a licensing requirement should be considered so that the state has more oversight.

Kimberly Glassman, director of the Foundation for Fair Contracting of Connecticut, which monitors public works projects to ensure compliance with state laws, said that worker misclassification — for example, classifying a worker as an independent contractor instead of as a salaried employee who would earn benefits — along with lack of workers' compensation and not paying fringe benefits are ways that employers try to increase their profits.

"They are very stealth at this. They have companies and lawyers and insurance companies that are showing them how to circumvent these laws. Some of these loopholes are legal, some of them aren't, but they are very astute at it," said Glassman, who said that they are monitoring 60 to 70 construction projects at a given time. While her organization can't conduct audits, they do a lot of their investigations by combing through documents they receive via Freedom of Information Act requests.

In addition to advocating for more wage investigators, she also said that protecting and expanding standards for prevailing wages, licensing, apprenticeships and the bidding process is a focus of the organization at the legislative level.

"By and large, we're talking about low-wage workers or middle-class workers who are just trying to get by and take care of themselves and their families," said Glassman.

One immigrant rights organization, New Haven-based Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), called for Wydra's resignation earlier this week.

"We feel like he has like failed his job and his duties," said John Jairo Lugo, co-founder of ULA, who led a press conference on Thursday evening in front of the Labor Department's American Job Center in Hamden in response to the Labor Department audit report released last month.

Karime Pimentel, lead organizer of the Naugatuck Valley Project, speaks at a rally against wage theft in front of a Connecticut Labor Department building in Hamden. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror

"[The backlog is] outrageous. That's horrible for the working class and also in particular with the with the immigrant community," said Lugo, who said that ULA has been referring cases to the Labor Department for more than 22 years. "But lately it has been like the worst time for our organization."

"We are very disappointed that ULA would even make that suggestion," Bartolomeo said in a statement to the CT Mirror regarding the calls for Wydra's resignation. "CTDOL has worked with ULA for years, especially on domestic worker protections, and they know how hard CTDOL has advocated for additional Wage and Workplace Division staffing. CTDOL and state officials continue to seek workable solutions to clearing the backlog; we encourage ULA to join us."

Lugo said that in many cases, only part of the wages claimed were recovered, which the Labor Department pushes back on.

"A wage investigator’s top priority is to collect the full amount of verified back wages owed to each worker. Many workers, including those identified by ULA, were paid in cash, making those wages virtually impossible to track and verify," the Labor Department said in a statement.

The Labor Department said that it urges workers to keep records, such as a log of hours and pay, even if they're paid partially in cash, so that in the event of a wage complaint, they have some documentation that investigators can use. If no payroll records are available, wage-theft cannot be established, unless an employer admits guilt. "Due process for employers requires that investigators must be able to substantiate any wage bill they issue," the statement read.

And even if payroll records are available, recoveries can't be guaranteed due to scenarios out of the department's control. In cases of bankruptcy or lack of assets, investigators are not able to recover full wages immediately or at all. Another recourse investigators may take is putting employers on a payment plan. In the case that full wages aren’t recoverable, the wage unit negotiates as much as possible and disburses it across the pool of workers who are owed.

"Wage agents are in contact with workers throughout the process to get permissions to pursue, negotiate, and collect owed wages on their behalf. When investigations are finalized, CTDOL sends letters to impacted workers identifying the payment amount, the type of payment (full, partial), and reminds them that they may pursue their employer through the courts if they disagree with the payment amount," added the Labor Department.

ULA is also demanding that more money be allocated to the Labor Department to increase the number of wage investigators and that more attention be paid to helping noncitizen workers obtain labor-based deferred action, which allows workers to receive temporary deportation protections from the federal government if they're part of a state labor investigation. As of early 2023, the application process for this type of deferred action became more streamlined when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security centralized the intake of applications and required a letter of support from a federal, state, or local labor agency such as the Connecticut Department of Labor. The Labor Department confirmed that they had a deferred action process, but data regarding its use was not immediately available.

Lugo also placed blame on Lamont, suggesting some of the state's rainy day fund, which is around $4.1 billion, should be used for the Labor Department.

"The leadership of the state is also failing the working class community, and that's why we're here today. And we will be on the streets. And we will keep denouncing this situation that's happening with the Labor Department," Lugo said.

The sentiment was echoed by Hamden district council member Abdul Osmanu, who is running to be state representative and was at the press conference.

"Our state sits on $4 billion at this moment that it refuses to allocate to the houseless, the hungry, and today, those in need of a hand in pursuing justice," Osmanu said. "I'm here to stand in solidarity, as an attack against one of us is an attack against all."

Also in attendance were other members of ULA, Comunidad sin Fronteras and the Naugatuck Valley Project.

Within the hour, a handful of state residents took turns retelling their personal experiences regarding labor complaints, while they stood beside banners that read "Unidad Latina en Acción. PORQUE SOLO EL PUEBLO SALVA AL PUEBLO," which is Spanish for "Latino Unity in Action. Because only the village saves the village."

One former construction worker, Bella Vazquez, said that it took over a year to hear back about her complaint regarding unpaid wages.

"I won't lose hope. I know there will be justice. And it's outrageous because the same boss didn't just do it to us. He's still working and keeps doing it to other people," said Vazquez, who also testified to legislators in March.

Another worker from Ecuador at the rally who's been in the state for two years, Jimmy Torico, told the CT Mirror that he is yet to submit his complaint to the Labor Department regarding $3,000 in unpaid wages over three weeks.

"We have to keep fighting. Hopefully we'll see justice. It's not fair that one works and they [business owner] keep the money," said Torico.

Stamford Finance Officials to Review $460 Million Cost for Replacing Westhill High School

Angela Carella

STAMFORD – It started at $300 million. It went to more than $500 million then was scaled back to perhaps $425 million.

Now the cost to rebuild Westhill High School has landed at about $460 million.

The main reason for the eye-popping escalation is “industry trends” in school construction, according to information from city and school officials and their contracted engineers and architects. Costs have continued to escalate “in an unprecedented fashion since the pandemic,” they said.

Three years ago, when the Westhill plan was conceived, costs ranged from $350 to $750 per square foot of construction, officials said. The estimate for 2026, when work on Westhill is slated to begin, is $700 to $950 per square foot.

Westhill is projected to come in near the top of that scale, $900 per square foot.

It’s a far cry from the original estimate of $560 per square foot. 

Mayor Caroline Simmons and schools Superintendent Tamu Lucero discussed the latest figures this week with members of the Board of Finance, who must sign off on the expenditures.

They were joined by members of the Project Planning Committee, formed in October to oversee the city’s long-term plan to rebuild or repair public school buildings. The committee chairs are Director of Operations Matt Quinones and Director of School Construction Katherine LoBalbo. Members include Lucero, Director of Administration Ben Barnes, City Engineer Lou Casolo and one person each from the Board of Education, Board of Finance, Board of Representatives, and the Planning Board.

To plan, design and implement the project, the city has hired a phalanx of contractors – SLAM Collaborative, the architect;

Colliers, the project leader; and Dimeo-Bismark, the construction manager.

Kemp Morhardt of SLAM, the architect, acknowledged the big bump in the Westhill price tag.

“I realize that everyone, including ourselves, has sticker shock,” Morhardt told the group. “But we have worked on the building.”

To get the total from $500 million to $460 million, they reduced the size by 35,000 square feet, the largest cost reduction, Morhardt said. 

They eliminated a practice field and a large retaining wall needed to support it, he said. To save space, they reduced the number of parking spaces in the plan and moved mechanical equipment to the roof. Working with Lucero’s office, they eliminated three science rooms.

“We did everything we could to reduce costs,” Lucero said.

Simmons told the group that, despite the 53 percent increase in the cost of rebuilding Westhill, “we are confident we can still afford our local share.”

After the state agreed to cover 80 percent of the costs it deems eligible, the city’s share was estimated to be $60 million, and the state’s share $240 million. 

That was when the project was going to cost $300 million.

Now the city will have to go back to the state to ask for 80 percent of the revised cost, $460 million, which would take the state’s share to about $368 million. 

But not all costs are eligible for state reimbursement, and the ineligible costs, which Stamford taxpayers must cover, will amount to millions of dollars. 

Officials now expect Stamford’s share to be $114 million, or 90 percent more than originally thought. 

One thing that may drive the price is that Westhill is the only city high school with a pool. It will cost $19 million to replace it, and the state will reimburse just 40 percent of that. A pool now is included in the design, but whether it makes it into the final design will be decided later. 

The design and cost estimates will be updated in early 2025 and again in the fall of that year, officials said.

Other cost drivers affect the Westhill project, architects and engineers said. The school is built on slopes and hills, requiring a lot of site work. The 1971 building has asbestos, PCBs and other hazardous materials that require expensive removal during demolition. And the work must be planned and staged to accommodate 2,2oo students and staff who will be in school during construction.

Officials said they explored renovating the building but the cost was not that much less, and the state agreed. A renovation would take two years longer, harm the learning environment, and “the savings historically seen for renovating buildings seem to have diminished with the advent of modern mechanical systems and more stringent building and energy code requirements, which make it challenging to retrofit mechanical systems,” according to a document posted at www.spsbuilds.com.

Not only that, but if the project were to change from a rebuild to a renovation, the city would have to re-apply to the state, which would jeopardize the 80 percent reimbursement rate, officials said. 

The city plans to pay for its share of the project using tax-exempt bonds and money from Fund 57, a cash reserve set up by the Board of Finance two years ago. Money for the school building fund is raised by taxing Stamford property owners an extra 1 percent a year.

So far Fund 57 has about $50 million, and officials expect it to nearly double by about 2030.

The Westhill project is expected to be finished in 2029. Officials plan to also rebuild Roxbury Elementary School and construct a new South School on two campuses in the Cove neighborhood south of Interstate-95.

Westhill project officials are scheduled to meet with the Board of Finance during its monthly meeting that begins at 7 p.m. Thursday.

Finance Board Chair Richard Freedman said he wants to know when architects from SLAM knew that the Westhill costs had ballooned from $300 million to $500 million, and when they told the city. His board didn’t learn about it until several weeks ago.

“I’d like to know the answer to that question,” Freedman said. “It’s coming up late in the game.”

Finance board member Dennis Mahoney said he has questions about the educational specifications approved by the Board of Education. The specifications identify the number and nature of the spaces the school board wants for the new building.

“I think a jump that big can’t be just because of the rising cost of construction,” Mahoney said. “Some of those added costs have to be in the ed specs.”

Interstate 95 on-ramp at Exit 15 in Norwalk is closed through Thursday morning, police say

Liz Hardaway

NORWALK — An on-ramp for Interstate 95 in Norwalk will be closed through Thursday morning, according to local police. 

The state Department of Transportation closed the Exit 15 on-ramp to I-95 North on Sunday evening to allow construction crews to work in the area. The closure goes through Thursday at 6 a.m., Norwalk police said in a Facebook post Sunday. 

West Avenue traffic north of the on-ramp will be detoured to the Route 7 on-ramp, the Exit 1 off-ramp and then to Route 7 south to I-95 North. Meanwhile, traffic south of the closure will be detoured onto Cedar Street to Connecticut Avenue and then to I-95 north’s on-ramp at Exit 14, according to Norwalk police. 

The closure is part of a project to rehabilitate the on-ramp over the drainage structure. Waters Construction Co., Inc., was awarded the project for more than $6.3 million in March and it is scheduled to be completed by Nov. 4.