By John Schwing and Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Three members of the town’s new Civilian Public Safety Departments Review Board were officially endorsed this week, but the board still awaits two appointees by First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker.

All three of the appointees currently are members of the Civilian Review Panel, which will be supplanted by the ordinance-codified review board once a full complement of its members is named.

Teresa Fabi and Michael Guthman were named to the board Tuesday by the Representative Town Meeting, and Harold Bailey Jr. was appointed Thursday by TEAM Westport.

It is unclear when Tooker will make her two appointments to the new board. They will take seats previously held by the two other selectpersons.

Established by an ordinance approved by the RTM last November, the new board is set to replace the five-member Civilian Review Panel established in 2020 to handle citizens’ complaints against the town’s emergency-services personnel. But as an advisory committee, that panel serves at the pleasure of the first selectperson.

The new five-member review board, codified by ordinance, will operate independently from the first selectperson’s office. Its creation followed several years of sometimes-heated debate — and revisions — over its authority and the process of reviewing complaints against personnel in the Police and Fire departments and the Volunteer Emergency Medical Service.

The RTM, which under the ordinance has the power to name two members to the board, on Tuesday appointed Fabi, a former New York City prosecutor, and Guthman, a former RTM member. 

Both Fabi and Guthman were appointed by the RTM to the Civilian Review Panel in 2022, after the RTM’s Public Protection Committee had interviewed candidates from the public interested in serving on the panel.

Jimmy Izzo, the committee’s chairman, on Tuesday told the RTM that the committee recently convened and agreed to recommend the full legislative body endorse the appointment of Fabi and Guthman to four-year terms on the new board.

Committee members felt Fabi and Guthman should be the RTM’s appointees to ensure “continuation for the good of the board,” according to Izzo, rather than conducting another wide-ranging interview process for prospective candidates.

Speaking from the Town Hall podium, Izzo also criticized the headline* of a Westport Journal article published last month, which he said gave the impression there is “no place for anyone to go file a complaint” while the new board has yet to be activated. The article itself, which he said was accurate, updated the new board’s status, which at the time still had no members despite having been established more than seven months earlier.

Harris Falk, a former RTM member, addressed Tuesday’s meeting to criticize the RTM’s appointment process. He said that since the Civilian Public Safety Departments Review Board is a new entity, the RTM in this case should not act as though it was simply appointing members to an already-existing body. The selection process for members of the new board, he said, should have been reopened.

Bailey, who has been serving as the Civilian Review Panel’s chairman, won unanimous endorsement Thursday from TEAM Westport members to take the multi-cultural advocacy committee’s designated seat on the new review board.

Bailey, whose name was the only one put forward for consideration, told Thursday’s meeting he had sent a note to all TEAM members asking if anyone would like to be considered for the appointment. No one responded with any interest, the longtime TEAM Westport chairman said.

His endorsement was greeted with a round of applause by those in attendance at TEAM’s meeting.

* Editor’s note: The Westport Journal headline that provoked Jimmy Izzo’s public criticism at Tuesday’s RTM session — “With no members, Civilian Review Board can’t act on complaint” — accompanied a June 7 article updating the status of the new Civilian Public Safety Departments Review Board. The Journal stands by the accuracy of the headline, and article, because as of that date the new board could not function even though it had been created more than seven months earlier. Not a single member had been appointed to the new board in the interim, so there were no board members who could act — in any capacity. And, prominently displayed on the Journal homepage, directly beneath the headline, was the added explanation that, in the meantime, there indeed remains a place for a citizen to file a complaint, which read: “Recently filed grievance against an emergency-services employee will be handled by Civilian Review Panel, the body the CRB is to replace.” — J. Schwing