LTE: Severance Raises Troubling Questions

The following Letter to the Editor is by Fairfield resident Scott Bisang:

The recent statement from Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick regarding her severance package raises more questions than it delivers answers. Those questions relate to Ms. Kupchick’s judgment, competency, and honesty. And her continued unwillingness to simply apologize for screwing up.

In an email to residents, Ms. Kupchick apparently sought to explain the severance by pointing at actions of her staff. Ms. Kupchick asserts that in 2021, her former HR chief approached her with changes to a 2016 benefit policy, designed to address challenges attracting senior-level talent.

Presumably, this would have been a significant issue for Fairfield, particularly in light of Ms. Kupchick’s pledges to reform Town Hall in the wake of the fill pile scandal. In her email she implies she inadvertently approved the 2021 policy without noticing that it was changed to provide severance benefits to “elected” officials – i.e., herself.

Public documents available on the Town website present different facts. In reality, Ms. Kupchick approved the change to grant severance to elected officials on 11/25/19, her first day in office.

Taking Ms. Kupchick at her word, and allowing that she failed to recall signing that policy in 2019, her recounting of events is still deeply troubling. Indeed, the 2021 policy meant to solve the Town’s recruiting problems contained only minimal benefit changes. If Ms. Kupchick is relating what she believes to be the truth, this means that she unwittingly approved not one, but two, policies without carefully reading or understanding the implications of either.

Ms. Kupchick portrays herself in a passive role after her election loss, stating that details of separation benefits were “shared” with her by the current HR Director. She claimed she “didn’t question the package’s consistency with prior practices for First Selectpersons.” Really? Are we to believe Kupchick failed to recognize the departure from past practice – even though any comparable payment to her predecessor would have been made under her watch, and from her own department’s budget?

It shouldn’t be a controversy that an elected official doesn’t get severance - no other town in CT does this. Why should Fairfield? It would be nice if an elected official finally accepted responsibility for their actions and simply apologized. We endured four years of Ms. Kupchick blaming others in weekly emails for her own failures. She still doesn’t realize that approach is a losing one.

Scott Bisang
Fairfield, CT