Three months after the Stratford town attorney was authorized to negotiate a lease-type agreement with the Mighty Quinn Foundation that would allow the group to operate a summer academic and theatrical program for college students on the Shakespeare Theatre property, the foundation’s president has made public a major reason for the lack of agreement so far.
Susan Wright, president of the Quinn foundation, a Stratford resident and herself a lawyer, told the Town Council at its public forum on Feb. 10 that a clause in the agreement proposed by the town is “unconstitutional.”
According to Wright, the clause stipulates that the foundation “shall not … permit any of its officers, employees, representatives, volunteers or participants to issue any communication which would cause embarrassment or humiliation” to the town.
In her address to the council that ultimately has the power to accept or deny the negotiated agreement, Wright quotes Town Attorney Tim Bishop as telling her that the provision is in the agreement “to allow [the Town] to terminate agreements with people who make them look bad. … You have to agree that in return for giving you the property, etc., you will not make them look bad for entrusting it to you.”
Bishop was unavailable for direct comment.
Wright told the council that this is “‘prior restraint’ of free speech because it restrains an individual from even exercising his or her right to free speech for fear of being penalized.”
She asked the council members to overrule Bishop and have him remove the clause from the proposed agreement.
In her written arguments to Bishop, Wright cites other agreements where Stratford has not included the clause about not permitting communication that is embarrassing to the town. Her primary argument, however, is that the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from banning free speech. Stratford is a government entity.
Bishop’s responses to Wright, which she released, are not about a constitutional issue but are concerned with the town’s wish to protect by way of a contract what it considers its interests. Bishop did mention in his response to Wright that the Quinn foundation would “by its very nature … work with people you know nothing about,” and that the foundation would be “restricting drug use and a variety of other activities.”
Assistant Town Attorney John Florek attended the council meeting on behalf of Bishop, who was out of town. Bishop has been the negotiator of the Quinn agreement for Stratford. Florek told The Star on Feb. 11 that he himself had not researched the specifics of the case, but in his opinion “this type of situation does not fit into the areas of prior restraint of free speech.”
“This is a negotiated contract that the town is offering with conditions,” Florek said. The town is not duty-bound to make the offer of the lease-type agreement, he said, and the foundation is not duty-bound to accept it.
Wright’s message to the council also said, “I do not want to do anything to either jeopardize the program’s success or interfere with our ability to work out an agreement with the town.
On Jan. 30, the Mighty Quinn Foundation introduced its just-hired summer program director and an outline of how the education and theater production academy will operate specifically on the town’s theater property.
When asked a couple of weeks ago to explain what was holding up an agreement with the Quinn foundation, Bishop declined, saying, “I usually never discuss the specifics while we’re still negotiating.”