Simsbury First Selectman to Resign After Salary Cut

By David Gurliacci (Patch Staff)

First Selectman Mary Glassman announced Monday that she will resign from the position Jan. 2 after the Board of Selectmen decided to cut her salary by 35 percent in July 2015.

“The recent action of the Republican majority on the board of selectmen to cut my salary and impact my pension affects me personally and financially,” Glassman said in a news conference Monday, as reported in the Hartford Courant. “What is most troubling is that the action the Republican board members took is a politically motivated abuse of power. It is a calculated step taken by the Republican party that should trouble the people of Simsbury.”

(For more quotes from Glassman’s statement, see the Courant article.)

The board had voted to cut Glassman’s $113,850 annual salary to $75,000 with the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, 2015. A consultant had recommended that some job responsibilities be taken from the position of first selectman and that the salary be reduced at the beginning of the next term of office, according to the Courant.

The GOP majority on the Board of Selectmen had voted Monday, Nov. 24, to reduce the first selectman’s salary, according to a different article in the Courant. Republican board members Cheryl Cook, Nancy Haase (who had run against Glassman for first selectman in 2013) and Mike Paine voted to lower the salary; Democrat Lisa Heavner and Republican Sean Askham voted against the idea. Glassman herself abstained.

Paine denied Glassman’s objection at the meeting that the move smelled of politics, according to the earlier Courant article. He said that with a good part of Glassman’s job responsibilities being transferred to a new position of assistant director of administrative services, it wouldn’t be right to wait until the start of the next term of office.

In an editorial Monday, the Courant was having none of it: “Members of the Republican majority on the Simsbury board of selectmen say, unpersuasively, that no partisan slight was intended last week when they cut First Selectman Mary Glassman’s pay by 35 percent to take effect in July, in the middle of her current term. Nonsense. How could it be anything but a partisan slap in the face to Ms. Glassman, a long-serving Democrat who just happens to be one of the best municipal officials in the state?”