Six Minutes In, the Secretary Resigned. The Video Is Gone.

On the evening of January 26, 2026, a three-member subcommittee of Fairfield's Town Plan and Zoning Commission opened its third meeting in two weeks. About six minutes after the meeting was called to order, the Commission's Secretary, Kathryn Braun, read a resignation letter into the record and left the call.

If you go to the Town's official website looking for the video of that meeting, you will not find one. There is no video link. And to find record that the meeting occurred at all, you'll need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, below 2022.

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If you look for the video of the subcommittee's first meeting — January 19, the meeting at which the subcommittee began drafting the proposed bylaws — there is a link. The link, as of June 19, 2026, points to a recording of the Fairfield Fire Commission's January 9 meeting. A different body, a different date, a different topic.

The minutes of the January 26 meeting were never posted. Braun's resignation letter — addressed to the Plan and Zoning Commission, the Town Clerk, the Town Attorney, and TPZ Staff — is not in the public archive.

This is the story of those thirteen days.

How the subcommittee got built

On January 13, Chairman Tom Corsillo proposed the creation of a Bylaws Subcommittee, to be chaired by Vice Chair Jeff Randolph, with Commissioners Steven Levy and Kathryn Braun as members and the Chairman himself as ex-officio. Commissioner Veronica Monahan moved to expand the subcommittee's scope to also study actions Town staff was taking with state and other entities on behalf of the Commission. Her amendment failed 2-5.

The motion to form the subcommittee then passed 5-2. Braun and Monahan opposed. The same five-vote majority that would, across the year, vote five-to-two on every Public Act 25-1 implementation question, voted five-to-two here too. This was the first such vote of 2026.

Thirteen days

January 14. Randolph emailed Braun and Levy with a 45-day completion timeline, weekly Zoom calls, and a Google Docs workflow. He asked for the two committee members' comments on his proposed outline by January 23 — nine days from his email.

January 18. Braun emailed Randolph asking him to slow down. "Tom said there is no deadline on this and this does not take the lead over other work for commission is doing. I do not believe we should be rushing this."

Randolph's response, in full: "We will be creating by laws and have invited you to be part of the process. If you elect to not participate, that is your decision. We will keep you copied on all correspondence and as always consider your input."

Five days after the subcommittee's formation, the subcommittee's chair told one of its three members that if she didn't want to participate, that was her choice.

January 19. First subcommittee meeting. Held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Town's official video link for this meeting now points to an unrelated Fire Commission meeting held on January 9.

January 22. Second subcommittee meeting. The day of the meeting, Braun emailed Town staff to confirm that FairTV was set up to record the meeting and post it on the FairTV page. She also asked whether minutes would be taken and when they would be due under Connecticut's Freedom of Information Act. The meeting again lacked quorum.

January 25. Randolph circulated a clean and redlined draft of the bylaws. In his cover email, he wrote that he had "incorporated Steve's changes." He did not describe incorporating Braun's. By this date, Levy had not attended a subcommittee meeting in person. Whatever changes he had contributed had been made outside the meetings.

January 26. Third meeting. Braun read her resignation letter into the record approximately six minutes after the meeting was called to order, and left the call. The Town's official archive lists no video for this meeting. No minutes were posted.

About the first meeting

The January 19 meeting is documented in three places: a set of meeting minutes submitted by Randolph, a cover email Randolph sent to the full subcommittee that same evening, and the Town's public archive. The three accounts don't agree with each other.

The minutes say "the meeting was cancelled at the last minute in deference to Commissioner Braun." The cover email Randolph sent at 7:17 PM that same evening — to the other two subcommittee members and to the Town's planning director — says the meeting "was not cancelled, but no quorum was present, and no actions were taken." Same author, same day, two different characterizations.

The minutes describe Braun's absence with words other than "absent." She is listed as "refused to attend." Steven Levy, who also did not attend, is listed as "excused."

The minutes also claim Randolph "attempted to contact Commissioner Braun more than eight times by email, text message, and voicemail." Randolph's own email to Braun the previous afternoon names a smaller number: "I emailed you twice, texted you twice and called you twice." Six attempts. The minutes inflate the count.

The night before, Braun had asked Chairman Corsillo to cancel the meeting. Her email listed her reasons in writing: Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a legal holiday, Town offices were closed, the meeting was not an emergency, she had not been involved in planning it, the subcommittee had not yet held an organizational meeting and had no chairman, public notice was inadequate, and the proposed bylaws appeared to be "a modified redux of the rules change attempted a year ago."

Randolph emailed Braun at 2:18 PM the same day to say he would reschedule the meeting to Thursday, January 22. He then held the Monday meeting anyway — alone, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, with Town offices closed — and submitted minutes that simultaneously say the meeting was cancelled and not cancelled.

What was in the draft

Braun's resignation letter, two single-spaced pages, identifies the substantive defects she encountered when she read the January 25 draft. They are documented in her words.

The word 'censure' appeared five times. The targets were the commissioners themselves — with the threat of ethics complaints attached. The draft would also have required each commissioner to annually sign a conduct pledge.

Section 6.2 would have limited the Commission's authority and jurisdiction in conflict with Connecticut General Statutes §22a-19, which grants citizens the right to intervene in commission proceedings to protect the environment.

Section 6.4B would have identified site plans, special permits, and subdivisions as quasi-judicial proceedings. Connecticut law and practice are unambiguous that these are administrative, not quasi-judicial. Quasi-judicial authority sits with the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Section 8.1 would have provided that "only seated members who have heard the evidence and have no conflict of interest may vote" — in conflict with Connecticut law, which permits a commissioner who reviewed the recordings of a public hearing to vote.

And, most consequentially: the draft would have removed the Commission's Secretary from any role in preparing the Commission's agenda. Agenda control would move to the Chair and to Town staff.

That last change came in a draft prepared after the Town's most recent election, in which a member of the minority party — Kathryn Braun — was elected as Secretary, and in which she had begun attempting to add staff reports to the Commission's agenda.

What's there now

Five months later, the bylaws remain unadopted. A snapshot of the live draft, retrieved June 15, shows that the legal-conflict objections Braun identified are still in the document. The "censure" language is still there. The quasi-judicial mischaracterization is still there. The agenda-control shift is still there. None of the legal conflicts she identified — five months on — have been corrected on the record.

What this looks like

A chairman whose subcommittee chair told a sitting commissioner within five days that she could opt out. A subcommittee that drafted documents on private Zoom calls and Google Docs before Braun had submitted her comments. A draft that would have shifted agenda-control to the Chair just after a minority-party Secretary was elected. A meeting at which the Secretary resigned in writing on the public record — the meeting whose video and minutes are missing from the Town's archive. A draft whose legal-conflict objections, five months later, have not been corrected.

In her resignation letter, Braun wrote: "Any chair is the first among equals. He or she is not the boss. Furthermore, the staff works for us, and answers to us, as set forth in the Town Charter."

That is the position she resigned to defend. The bylaws would have moved the Town in the opposite direction. They are still on the table.

Emily Hau is a Fairfield resident. She is paying very close attention.

Read the series:

Part 1: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman spends his day job advising New York housing-finance lenders — and why his public posts about that work matter for the residents whose zoning he votes on — is available here: https://patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/fairfields-tpz-chair-voted-against-parking-protection-nodx

Part 2: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman voted three times against engaging outside legal counsel on Connecticut's new housing law — and why his New York day job involves advising on exactly that kind of legislation — is available here: https://patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/why-fairfields-tpz-voted-5-2-three-times-keep-public-hearing-cts-new-housing-nodx

Part 3: The developer-initiated zoning regulation amendments now in front of the Commission, and the specific 0.92-acre Southport parcel one of them appears to have been drafted for — is available here: patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/can-developer-buy-zone-wreak-havoc-seems-it-nodx

You're reading Part 4: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman used a bylaws subcommittee to constrain a sitting commissioner — and why the video of her resignation isn't on the Town's official YouTube.

Part 5: How Fairfield's planning director misstated a regulation her own office had just drafted — and why her misstatement defined a 4-3 vote that left downtown unprotected. Coming soon.