A Cheshire town clerk paid a $5,000 fine after admitting to repeatedly hiring her daughter and granddaughter to perform town work, according to state officials.
For nine years between 2008 and 2020, Town Clerk Christine Emerson hired her daughter to help with town census mailings, and for seven elections between 2014 and 2020, Emerson hired her granddaughter to help set up a polling location on Election Day.
The granddaughter was also hired for 70 hours in 2020 to help out with early voting and setup the extra precautions that were needed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the state. The granddaughter was hired again in 2021 to compile mailings for the town census.
“After Emerson was warned not to hire family members, she hired a voter registrar in 2022 to assist with compiling town census mailings,” the State Ethics Commission said. “She set the voter registrar’s hourly rate of pay at $14.25, which was the state minimum wage. The voter registrar was paid a total of $92.63 for the census work.”
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But when Emerson hired her daughter and granddaughter to compile mailings, the state said they were paid “per envelope.”
“Each year, they were paid between $693 and $911.13 for census work. Had they been paid the same hourly wage as the voter registrar, they each would have instead been paid approximately $330,” the State Ethics Commission said.
The State Ethics Commission said Emerson signed a document admitting to the violations and waived her right to a hearing.
Emerson violated the conflict of interest law’s prohibition against municipal employees officially participating in matters where their immediate family members have a financial interest by hiring her daughter, setting the rate of pay, and completing the pay vouchers, according to the commission.
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The law also bars public employees from “acting in a manner that would cause a reasonable person to believe they would unduly favor another person when performing an official act,” according to the commission.
“Emerson violated this prohibition when she hired her granddaughter, set her pay, and completed her pay vouchers,” the commission said.
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And the law does not allow public employees to use their official position to “obtain valuable unwarranted benefits not available to others in similar situations,” the commission said.
“Emerson violated this prohibition by setting her daughter’s and granddaughter’s census pay structure as a per-envelope rate that was not properly available to other town employees,” according to the commission.