02/25/10 More Greenwich Post Breaking News About GMEA

Covering the news of Greenwich, Connecticut Breaking News Greenwich Post Ace Reporter Ken Borsuk Keeps Hammering Away At The GEMA Union Scandal Union members call for criminal probe of GEMA .....Additionally, Ms. Evans said there was a total of $2,250 in American Express Gift Checks purchased with union dues and that she couldn’t find any indication of what they were used for except that they were given to “members going through a hardship.” “The board apparently took it upon itself to give gift cards to those people,” Ms. Evans said. “It was a completely arbitrary decision made in a vacuum with just the [union’s executive board]. This is a violation of our bylaws. They never came to the membership with this. My personal feeling is that this is something the majority of the entire membership would have to be comfortable with and if they were going to do this, they should have sent a letter out to everyone and gotten feedback on it. Now that this has come out, people are coming up to me and asking, ‘What about when I went through a hard time? The union didn’t help me.’” Ms. Evans also said there is a lack of transparency around distribution of money from the union’s “sunshine fund,” which was created by the executive board out of union dues to provide gifts, flowers and other morale boosters for union members sick, injured or in the hospital for surgery. Ms. Evans said some union members have gotten lavish gift baskets and others haven’t even gotten cards, leading her and others to wonder why it’s so arbitrary. Under union bylaws, GMEA dues may only be used for “operation and administration” of the union...... .....The use of union attorney Mark Santagada is also being challenged. Ms. Evans told the Post that the union owes close to $96,000, which is more than the GMEA says it has in the bank. “The entire board has been complicit in one way or another by allowing the attorney to, what I perceive to be, milking the union for every last penny,” Ms. Evans said. “There is nothing in our bylaws that says they have to call the attorney for every single question that comes up. What it looks like to me is that the board has so painted itself into a corner with this situation that they don’t want to answer any questions without calling him first. The board avoided what were innocent questions for so long and its snowballed.”..... ....On March 3, GMEA members will vote on whether to retain the current leadership or instead bring the union under the umbrella of Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA). This is not the first time union members have had this vote, but previous attempts to have GMEA join with LIUNA have failed. However this time the election is expected to be a close one. Ms. Evans has been a vocal proponent of having GMEA become a part of LIUNA and also accuses the current union leadership of improperly using dues money to fund mailings speaking out against LIUNA..... Yesterday Greenwich Roundup Filed This Report 02/23/10 Wheres The Greenwich Time? Greenwich Post Breaking News - The Greenwich Police Department Det. Mark Marino Is Investigating GEMA .....It Looks Like Greenwich Time Reporter Niel Vigdor Got "Nervous In The Service" Vigdor Is Once Again Asleep At The Switch He Hasn't Reported On GEMA For Over Two Weeks Maybe Hearst Newspapers Should Turn The Story Back Over To Reporter Frank MacEachern Well When Greenwich Roundup Types The Greenwich Time Listens And Comes Out With This Story Today GMEA members claim union is broke By Neil Vigdor, Staff Writer A week away from a critical vote on the future of the largest town employee union, a group of its members claims the bargaining unit is drowning in a sea of debt. In a Feb. 18 letter to fellow members of the Greenwich Municipal Employees Association, Jenny Colucci, Melissa Evans, Kari Fuscaldo and Lisa Willis allege that the union has $96,000 in outstanding legal bills and only $65,000 in the bank. Dubbing themselves "GMEA Members for a Change," the letter writers are trying to sway a majority of the group's 429 administrative assistants clerks and public service workers to join the ranks of the Laborers' International Union of North America Local 136. A vote on whether to keep GMEA intact or disband the union, an all-or-nothing proposition, is scheduled for next Wednesday. "The bottom line is, WE ARE BROKE!" the letter said..... Rosalie Mastropaolo, GMEA's President Of Five Years Is Afraid To Talk To Hard Hitting Ace Greenwich Time Reporter Ken Borsuk, But She Will Blab On And On To Lightweight Greenwich Time Reporter Niel Vigdor, Notice How Vigdor Never Challenges The Union Boss With Tough Questions ...."I think it's deplorable that it has been taken to this level," Mastropaolo said.... ....Among the expenditures called into question by GMEA members to police and in the recent letter is a July 2007 check in the amount of $1,392 for Mastropaolo to attend a class at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. Mastropaolo defended the expenditure, saying that she went to a two-night-per-week business law course for six weeks that summer to prepare herself for labor disputes. "I took it because we were between lawyers," Mastropaolo said. "I checked with the board and they thought it would be a good idea if I took it." Mastropaolo characterized her attendance as a personal sacrifice. "I gave up my party time," she said..... .....Mastropaolo insisted that she has done nothing wrong. "We didn't steal any money," she said. .... .....While she has no plans to resign, Mastropaolo said it has long been her intention not to seek re-election as president. "We can reshape the union," she said. "Apparently, the members, they want to be more a part of it. They want the board to be more transparent, and that's possible. (But) we never hid anything from anyone."...

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2/12/09 The Raw Greenwich News Feed

Photo: Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook 'paid out $65m' to end lawsuit claiming idea for website was stolen

Daily Mail

Facebook paid out $65 million to two former classmates to end a lawsuit claiming the idea for the massively successful social networking site was stolen, it has been revealed.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg has been accused in the past of having stolen the idea for the website from his two college room mates who then set up ConnectU, a smaller social network.

Now the law firm that represented ConnectU have included the settlement amount Facebook purportedly paid ConnectU's founders in a newsletter.

Lawyers from law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges represented ConnectU in a lawsuit that ended in a settlement in June last year.

In the law suit ConnectU's three founders claimed that Mark Zuckerberg agreed to finish computer code for their site while all three were studying at Harvard in 2003.

But they claimed that Zuckerberg repeatedly stalled before eventually created Facebook using their ideas.

Under their settlement, Facebook agreed to pay ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock.

The stock was worth $45 million, based on the Microsoft valuation, but only $11 million under Facebook's own appraisal.

That means ConnectU received anywhere from $31 million and $65 million for settling the suit, depending on which stock valuation is used.

Facebook started in 2004, a few months before ConnectU went online, and now has 31 million users, compared with about 70,000 users for ConnectU, based in Greenwich, Connecticut.

This Weekend
The Wilton Bulletin
... Lincoln week As part of a week of Lincoln activities, the Bush-Holley Historic Site in Greenwich will present From Railsplitter to President, a performance by Lou Del Bianco as Abraham Lincoln .........

Cutting UConn funding does more harm than good
Daily Campus
... than any other in the state. Yet, Fairfield County is heavily dependent on hedge funds in Westport, Stamford and Greenwich, investment agencies and financial services; these are precisely the things that have been, perhaps deservedly, hit hardest by ...

Students look at options at job fair
Connecticut Post
... "I think the activity has been greater" at his booth this year, he said. Patrick Cannon, of Interactive Brokers in Greenwich, was on the other side of the table only a few years ago. The online trading firm is looking for entry-level accountants and ...

WWE Professional Wrestling Executive Approved: Capitol Watch
The Hartford Courant
... Classy Freddie Blassie, Ernie "The Big Cat'' Ladd, and George "The Animal'' Steele. A longtime resident of Greenwich's affluent "backcountry'' section, McMahon, 60, serves as the chief executive officer of the Stamford-based WWE, which is a widely ...

Fairfield County Calendar
Stamford Times

Music


Cole Auditorium, Greenwich Library, Greenwich. Sunday, Feb. 15: The Musicians from Marlboro; the touring extension of the renowned Marlboro Music ...

Year of the Bootstrapper
US News & World Report
... gift sales at Whole Foods, surpassing $2 million in sales in 2008. For Theresa Rogers, 53, whose 1989 purchase of Greenwich, Connecticut-based Horseneck Wine and Liquors came during the worst recession since the Great Depression, growing the ...

Mead Johnson rallies in first IPO since November
MarketWatch
... ... and it has very high cash flow," said Kathleen Smith, a principal at IPO research firm Renaissance Capital in Greenwich, Conn. Mead Johnson was expected to headline four initial public offerings worth more than $940 million this week, breaking a ...

Blood And Money
CBS News
... 18, 2006. It was updated July 12, 2007. Forty-six-year-old Andrew Kissel hoped to make his name in real estate in Greenwich, Conn., but instead, as correspondent Erin Moriarty reports, he earned the dubious distinction as the town's first murder ...

Weeden & Co. Introduces Energy Outlook & Focus List of Most Compelling Energy Investment Ideas
Business Wire
... suggests the market expects a trend reversal shortly. We explore an alternative view.

About Weeden & Co., LP:

Greenwich, Conn.-based Weeden & Co., LP is a full-service Institutional broker specializing in domestic and International equity trading, ...

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