Tom Tyler Wants to Be Enfield’s Democrat. His Record Says Otherwise

Enfield Democrats will decide the 58th District primary on September 1. Before they do, they deserve the full record; not the version being told on the campaign trail.

Follow the money: Records show Tom Tyler’s household has given $15,500 to the Enfield Republican Town Committee since 2016- including $9,500 filed under his wife’s name, whose occupation is listed on every filing as “homemaker.” Over the same period, the Tyler gave $3,020 to the Enfield Democratic Town Committee. Not a single household donation has gone to Enfield Democrats since 2016.

The timing is the part that’s hard to explain away. Tom Tyler’s last donation to the Enfield Democratic Town Committee was July 10, 2023. His first donation to the Enfield Republican Town Committee came one month later, August 26, 2023.

That summer, Tyler donated to the Enfield Republican Town Committee and worked to help Republicans win control of the Town Council back from the Democrats. When they did, the new Republican majority appointed him Enfield’s Town Attorney, a paid government position. It was only after his Republican donations and his role in that campaign came to light that the Enfield Democratic Town Committee removed him. Voters can draw their own conclusions about what that timeline adds up to.

What Tyler did with the power he had: Before any of this, Tyler served as Chairman of Enfield’s Board of Assessment Appeals. In 2023, the Town commissioned an independent legal review by Berchem Moses PC, a law firm with no stake in local politics to examine both that year’s property revaluation and the BAA’s conduct under Tyler’s chairmanship. Their findings, a matter of public record, are serious:

The BAA violated Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act by withholding public documents from the Town. When the Town Attorney asked for them back, the independent reviewers described Tyler’s response as “unnecessarily antagonistic and adversarial.” The board illegally reduced a property assessment to zero for a fellow BAA member Tyler has called a “good family friend”; she recused herself from the vote, he didn’t. The board’s decisions cost Enfield taxpayers roughly $650,000 in lost revenue. And in the reviewers’ own words, the BAA “exceeded the permissible scope of its review” and “exercised authority it does not possess.”

To be fair: the Tax Assessor did overstep on some farmland classifications that year, and those errors were corrected through the normal appeals process. But the independent review found Tyler’s BAA overcorrected in the other direction, wrongly restoring farmland status to properties that didn’t qualify. Both things happened. Tyler’s version of events, that the BAA simply rescued taxpayers from an out of control assessor, leaves out the half of the story that involves his own conduct.

Why this matters no: John Santanella is a good man and has done great things for the 58th District. We don’t agree on everything but the Democratic Party has a big umbrella, and that’s a good thing. John has done an excellent job in his first term as State Representative. He’s championed our schools, worked to bring more money home to the district, and he’s currently fighting to lower taxes and make Enfield a better place to live. There’s no reason to move on from him now, especially not for a candidate whose donation history and business relationships run almost entirely to the other party.

The record is public. Read it before September 1.