Part 29 (1/2)

”That guy is a real jerk,” she said.

When Kathleen Mitch.e.l.l read Goebel's statements, she knew they had to hurt. She called Susette to try to buoy her up.

”I don't give a s.h.i.+t what he says,” Susette said.

But Mitch.e.l.l knew she did care. Beneath Susette's hard-edge exterior she had a compa.s.sionate heart. She hadn't gone into nursing to get rich. She hadn't abandoned Tim LeBlanc when an accident turned him from a lover to a patient. And she had never gotten paid a dime to lead the fight in Fort Trumbull. She didn't deserve to be smeared by the agency that resented her for trying to stop them from seizing her home. Mitch.e.l.l said that Goebel had gone too far.

”I know what he was trying to do,” Susette said. ”Instead of taking so much time to try and make me look dirty, why not just tell the truth?”

”Let's go get him,” Mitch.e.l.l said.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and Dave Goebel had family and friends over for a backyard cookout. All of a sudden, it sounded like a parade pa.s.sing by out front. But it wasn't a holiday. Goebel checked to see the source of the commotion. In front of his house he spotted Mitch.e.l.l and Susette, who was holding a sign that read, ”Goebel Minister of Propaganda.” Members of the Fort Trumbull coalition and nurses who worked with Susette at the hospital marched behind them on the sidewalk. Pounding on makes.h.i.+ft drums that Mitch.e.l.l had made out of empty cat-litter containers, many protestors had their own signs: ”It's abuse and the abuser lives here” and ”'She is not a good woman,' said the man who kicked the woman when she is down.”

All together, they started chanting: ”Dave is a bad man. Dave is a bad man.”

As the crowd swelled, Susette spotted an authentic military Humvee coming down Goebel's street. Painted in camouflage, the oversize vehicle bellowed smoke from the rear exhaust. The driver had on a World War II military helmet and was puffing on a big cigar. It was Billy Von Winkle looking like General George Patton.

The crowd erupted in laughter and cheers as Von Winkle blasted his horn and parked right in front of Goebel's house, revving up the protestors to chant even more loudly.

Susette didn't know how she would have survived the eight-year struggle without Mitch.e.l.l and Von Winkle. Every time she had felt ready to give up, they had shown up to steady her with their audacity.

Von Winkle hadn't come alone. John Steffian emerged from the pa.s.senger seat, carrying his own sign, which quoted the English poet John Milton: ”A dismal universal hiss, the sound of public scorn.”

Mitch.e.l.l loved it. Only John Steffian would bring Milton to a street fight in a Humvee operated by a cigar-chomping funny man dressed up like Patton.

”We need to make more noise,” one of the protestors shouted.

Cars pa.s.sing by started honking while people yelled out the windows, ”Give them back their houses!” and, ”Eminent domain sucks!”

A lazy Sunday afternoon in New London's most upscale neighborhood had turned into an irreverent street exhibition. Since the demonstration remained peaceful and didn't damage property or obstruct traffic, the police let it proceed without interference. Before long, press photographers showed up on Goebel's lawn to record the spectacle, and a reporter knocked on his door, seeking his reaction. ”It was a very good lesson for my grandson in const.i.tutional law,” he told the reporter.

The retired admiral did not look amused.

42.

BLINDSIDED.

September 13, 2005 Rich Beyer was working when he got a call from his tenant in Fort Trumbull, reporting he had received a notice from the NLDC indicating he had to vacate his apartment. ”What is this?” the tenant asked.

Beyer dropped what he was doing and drove to the apartment building to examine the doc.u.ment. It was an eviction notice. Beyer's tenants had ninety days to vacate.

Beyer called Von Winkle and asked if his tenants had received eviction notices. Von Winkle checked and confirmed they had not. But the Cristofaro family and Byron Athenian had.

Beyer got the picture. The three property owners on Parcel 3 of the NLDC's development plan had been targeted. But what about Governor Rell's moratorium? Per request of the governor, all eminent-domain actions in the state were supposed to be on hold until the legislature completed its review. The eviction notices strongly indicated to the homeowners that the NLDC no longer cared what the governor or the legislature said.

Beyer was furious. He and Von Winkle agreed it was time to get Bullock involved. Beyer called him.

At first, Bullock thought Beyer had to be mistaken. But when Beyer read Bullock the notice, he realized it was true. On top of serving eviction papers, the NLDC was also demanding monthly occupancy fees and liability insurance during the interim.

Bullock calmly a.s.sured Beyer and the others that the inst.i.tute would fight the evictions. Then he grabbed Berliner and stormed into Kramer's office and blew his stack. ”These b.a.s.t.a.r.ds never cease to amaze me,” he said, insisting it was time to drop the hammer on Goebel and Joplin.

The three of them quickly worked up a press release and sent it off to all the Connecticut media. ”The NLDC's actions are breathtaking in their arrogance and defiance of the wishes of Governor Rell and Connecticut's legislature,” Bullock said. ”The NLDC is an unelected, unaccountable body that has been given the government's eminent domain power and is out of control. It is time Connecticut's political leaders at the state and local levels reel in this group.”

Joplin and Goebel didn't appreciate the inst.i.tute's attack. Goebel implied that the moratorium pledge his agency had taken applied only to new condemnation actions-not the ones involved in the Supreme Court case. ”There are no new takings,” he told the press. ”All this was done five years ago, and now the Supreme Court has ruled. The city has been extremely patient waiting for this to go through the court system. Now that this is done, we're implementing the decision.”

Joplin echoed Goebel. ”Now we've won,” he said. ”We've reached the end of legal arguments. It's time to move on and push this project forward.”

The next day, news of the evictions and the NLDC's decision to break the moratorium splashed across the front pages. Everyone from the New London City Council to the governor was blindsided. They were shocked that the NLDC would take such a drastic step at such a sensitive time.

The news sparked a backlash against City Hall. The city council looked inept. The NLDC looked ruthless. And the governor's wishes looked irrelevant. The Coalition to Save Fort Trumbull Neighborhood issued a statement calling on the city council to disband the NLDC once and for all.

Indeed, the city council appeared ready to do just that. Just twenty-four hours before the NLDC issued its eviction notices, City Hall officials had met with them on the status of negotiations with the homeowners. No one had said boo about resorting to forced eviction. Now the city council had egg on its face. Tired of looking foolish, some members of the council called for a vote of no confidence in the NLDC.

From the governor's mansion, the situation in New London looked like a never-ending train wreck. The longer the standoff continued, the more publicly embarra.s.sing it became. It was bad enough that Tom Londregan had taken the governor to task in the state's largest newspaper. Now the NLDC had squeezed the property owners, validating the perception that the agency was out of control and out of touch.

Governor Rell was at wits' end. But it was hard to know where to direct her anger. She couldn't go after the city; it had nothing to do with the eviction notices going out. And she couldn't just pound on the NLDC. The agency was a creature of the state, set up by her predecessor to serve as a blunt instrument to allow the state to get its way in New London without interference from locally elected officials. The state had pa.s.sed $70 million through the NLDC to carry out the project. If the state walked away from the NLDC now, it would be kissing a mighty big investment good-bye.

Angry and embarra.s.sed, Governor Rell huddled privately with her legal counsel Kevin Rasch; her chief of staff, Lisa Moody; and Ron Angelo, deputy commissioner of the state's Department of Economic and Community Development, which had more direct contact with and oversight of the NLDC than any other state agency.

The governor felt like telling the city to simply incorporate the holdouts' houses into the development plan or else. But she wasn't sure the city would comply.

Instead, Rell decided to appoint a special mediator in hope of getting the parties to sit down and find a way to resolve the dispute once and for all without resorting to forced evictions. In the meantime, she dispatched her chief counsel, Rasch, to New London to tell the NLDC to rescind the eviction notices at once.

John Kramer was in his office at the inst.i.tute in Was.h.i.+ngton when he read online that Goebel and Joplin had denied breaking their moratorium pledge. Smelling blood, Kramer called Bullock on his cell phone in Baltimore, where he had traveled to give a speech. Bullock took the call on a crowded train platform.

”They are now claiming the pledge only applied to new eminent-domain actions,” Kramer said, before reading Goebel's exact quote.

”He's lying!” Bullock shouted into the phone, oblivious of the fact that he was surrounded by commuters. ”We have to doc.u.ment their lies. I know there are news stories where they are quoted on this.”

While Bullock ranted, Kramer did a quick search on his computer and pulled down an a.s.sociated Press story from late July that quoted Joplin saying that the NLDC would allow the houses in Fort Trumbull to stand while the legislature took up the eminent-domain issue. ”We are going to abide by the moratorium,” Joplin told the press at that time.

”We have to do a news release,” Bullock said. ”We have to destroy whatever shred of credibility these people have left.”

Kramer hated to hesitate when he saw an opportunity to bury an adversary. He kept Bullock on the phone and ripped off a release right on the spot. ”NLDC LIES CONTINUE: a.s.sociated Press Report Impeaches NLDC Claims That Moratorium Promise Now Only Applies to New Takings.” As if writing a criminal indictment, Kramer doc.u.mented one conflicting statement after another by Joplin, attaching dates and putting the most glaring inaccuracies in boldface.

He read the release back to Bullock. Then Bullock dictated a quote for the end. ”The NLDC's claim that the moratorium on eminent domain applied only to new cases and not to the homes in New London is a blatant lie,” Bullock said. ”Now the NLDC is not only breaking its word and defying both Governor M. Jodi Rell and the Connecticut legislature, but it is outright lying to the media and the public.”

”Got it,” Kramer said. He hung up and sent off the press release, copying the governor's staff.

When NLDC attorney Mathew Greene learned that the governor's chief counsel, Kevin Rasch, was on his way to New London to meet with NLDC officials he figured heads would roll. Greene had weathered many public-relations storms during his seven-year stint as the agency's in-house counsel, but none of them seemed as threatening as this one. The inst.i.tute was applying intense public pressure on Goebel and Joplin, and the city council had upped its plans from a no-confidence vote to a demand that the NLDC's senior leaders.h.i.+p resign. In a matter of forty-eight hours, the city's plans had gone from merely publicly slapping the NLDC's wrist to cutting off its head.

When Rasch arrived at the NLDC's office, he did not mince words. He said that the governor had lost confidence in the agency and that Goebel and Joplin were on thin ice. The governor wanted the eviction notices rescinded immediately.

Goebel and Joplin agreed to comply. Greene also agreed with the decision to rescind.