RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — The latest in a series of political rifts between  the City Council and Mayor Susan D. Menard has surfaced over allegations that a former aide to the mayor improperly received a longevity bonus of nearly $2,600 in 2005 and that records may have been altered to make the payment seem legitimate.

City Council President Leo T. Fontaine, a possible mayoral contender who has been hammering away at the issue, said he attempted to question administration officials about the payment to former Personnel Director Robert T. Kulik at a meeting last week. But his efforts were stymied when City Solicitor Robert Iuliano and Finance Director Ted Przybyla stormed out after Iuliano asserted the session should have been held behind closed doors.
“When I asked him to cite which section of the Open Meetings Act under which I should close the meeting to the public, he told he me didn’t know,” said Fontaine. “He said he didn’t have the law in front of him.”
A former personnel director whom Menard appointed to head up the Woonsocket Housing Authority in 2006, Kulik, meanwhile,  says  he is contemplating a lawsuit to seek redress for the harm to his reputation that Fontaine’s remarks have caused him.
At issue are some rather arcane salary perks available for certain municipal employees.
Among other things, the contract for members of Local 670 of Council 94 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — the contract that governed Kulik’s benefits while he was personnel director — entitles workers to a “longevity” payment after five years of employment.
Longevity is a stipend of sorts based on total years of service, calculated as a percentage of base pay.
Kulik’s employment history is a little more complicated than most, however, because he didn’t work for five years in a row before he received the disputed payment in 2005. Kulik first began working as Menard’s director of human services on Jan. 8, 1996, and held the job until May 29, 1998.
Then he left the city’s employment and moved with his family for a time to Maine. He was rehired by the city on Feb. 17, 2003, as personnel director and held that position until May 5, 2006.
Fontaine readily concedes that the sum of Kulik’s city employment history exceeds five years, normally the minimum required for longevity to kick in. In Kulik’s case, however, the minimum had not yet been achieved at the time the payment was made because of Kulik’s hiatus from city service, he says.
Employees are allowed to “bridge” their time in such cases, but they need at least three years of consecutive service after they return to the city payroll in order to do so, says Fontaine. Kulik had just a little over two years and eight months.
Fontaine says his review of employee lists from City Hall show the date of Kulik's  appointment as personnel director as Oct. 17, 2000. That hiring date would be early enough for him to bridge his time, but there’s just one thing wrong with it, says Fontaine.
“He was in Maine in 2000.”
Most disturbingly, says Fontaine, that record was contained in a seniority list dated Jan. 1, 2004, which also lists Kulik’s time as bridged.  An earlier copy of the same records, which Fontaine has been routinely collecting since the late 1990s, shows Kulik’s hiring date as Feb. 17, 2003, and does not indicate that his time was bridged.
Copies of the documents obtained by The Call clearly suggest there are two different sets of records.
 Fontaine says he wants to know why the discrepancies exist, whether the records were altered and, if so, whether doing so was proper.
“I’m asking a question as to the policy that’s in place and why it doesn’t appear that it wasn’t applied consistently in this case,” says Fontaine. “I’m not leveling an accusation. I’m just asking a question. If they can explain what happened, that’s what I'd like to see.”
But Menard said in a phone interview Monday that Fontaine’s analysis of Kulik’s employment history is flawed. The union contract requires only that Kulik work a total of five years — and not necessarily in a row — to warrant the longevity payment, she said.
The contract is silent on bridging, Menard said. Bridging requirements are spelled out elsewhere in city regulations — namely, in the personnel code — but they only apply to seniority. The concept of bridging was invented only for the purpose of keeping track of seniority in an orderly fashion in the event of layoffs, and it has nothing to do with longevity, Menard said.
Seniority was irrelevant with respect to Kulik because he was a department head. And, while he was not a member of Local 670, the city treated him as if he were one, just as it does other department heads with regard to benefits, Menard said. 
“Mr. Fontaine is mixing apples and oranges, that’s our legal opinion,” the mayor said. “If they want seniority and longevity to  be linked, they need to pass legislation to amend the personnel code.”
As for the discrepancies in seniority lists, Menard said she could not explain why Fontaine has lists with conflicting hiring information for Kulik. But she said the lists are informal records that are disseminated internally only for informational purposes and are not considered official personnel records.
The city apprised Fontaine of its position in a two-page letter on Dec. 2 that was signed by three officials — Iuliano, Przybyla and Personnel Director Owen Bebeau. In the letter, the officials hotly denied that “someone in (the) personnel (department) altered records to make Mr. Kulik eligible for longevity.
“That allegation is totally untrue,” they said. “At no time were records altered.”
But Fontaine said there are at least a half a dozen other employees that he knows of whose service met the same criteria a Kulik’s, with a break in service, yet their longevity bonuses were received only after they bridged their time with three years of return service. When it came to Kulik, the policy was somehow overlooked.
Fontaine is also questioning why Kulik is getting lifetime health care benefits paid for by the city, which considers him a “retiree” because he now works for the WHA, a federal agency. Fontaine said retiree health benefits are reserved for employees with at least 10 years of service.
But officials declined to address the issue in their letter to Fontaine, citing continuing litigation over a similar issue involving John R. Dionne, also one of Menard’s former human services directors and a former manager of the Board of Canvassers. The city filed suit in Superior Court to counter Dionne’s claim that he is entitled to those benefits. A decision is pending.
Reached at work for comment, Kulik said allegations that he received the longevity payment improperly are false, citing the response officials had already sent to Fontaine.
“I was absolutely entitled to it,” said Kulik.