BOF Looks for Answers from Boucher on CFO Mess

The Board of Finance tried to get further answers from First Selectman Toni Boucher about the drama surrounding CFO Dawn Norton‘s sudden departure, but Wilton’s top administrator avoided providing some important details, citing fears of litigation.

Last Monday, Aug. 4, GOOD Morning Wilton was first to report that Norton, who spent a number of months living in Wyoming and working virtually for Wilton, had taken a second full-time job serving as the town administrator/finance director for the town of Greybull, WY, apparently without Wilton officials realizing it. 

Appearing at the BOF meeting on Tuesday night, Aug. 12, to answer questions at the request of BOF Chair Matt Raimondi, Boucher repeatedly cited the advice of town counsel to not discuss details on the matter. 

Instead, Boucher reread a previously published statement put out by her office, and redirected the topic of this latest controversy back to what she said were the many burdens she has faced since accepting the job of first selectman.

“I think this is the first time I’m really able to take a look back at the last year-and-a-half and give a lay of the land,” Boucher said. “I understand from some of my board members this position was supposed to be a part-time position. That’s why they hired a town administrator and I found that, in fact, it is more than a full-time position. It’s seven days a week.”

Boucher told the BOF members that when she took office at the end of 2023 she found some “surprises.” Her list included a delay in the property revaluation, problems with the Gilbert & Bennett building, a stalled police headquarters construction project, an estimated $130 million in school and town facility repairs and renovations, and IT issues at Town Hall.

“You now have a sense of some of the H.R. issues,” she said, with inadequate staffing in the Finance Department supposedly one of the big concerns in relation to audit issues and other mistakes that have occurred in Town Hall during her tenure.

Boucher then read aloud a public statement that her office had put out the day before, one she said she wrote at 2 a.m. early Monday morning, Aug. 11.

“I want to read this to you because often times media will not print the entire statement. They’ll pick and choose pieces of it that’s their particular story or what they want to write,” Boucher said in criticism of local media, even though GOOD Morning Wilton printed the statement in its entirety on Tuesday, Aug. 12.

Boucher’s statement makes claims about the chain of events leading to Norton submitting her resignation, but BOF members asked about a couple of inconsistencies in the narrative.

“There is some evidence that Dawn told somebody, written or otherwise, that she was going to resign in advance of the August 4th date,” BOF member Tim Birch said.

After a pause, Boucher responded, “I can’t comment on that because it would not be advisable legally,” stating that they could continue such a conversation in executive session if Birch wished.

Birch asked other details.

“There seemed to be, if you read all the junk, a lack of clear communication among a number of people, and that seems to be a source of some discontent,” Birch said. “Can you comment on that, because there were letters and there were things that were misdated, quite frankly, and so disagreement on who received what and when they received it and the like.”

Boucher responded, “That’s my concern as well. We provided, even the media, and our board, with every single document that went back and forth, so they have it in hand. Some documentation may not be valid and I can’t comment on that because, again, I’m veering into an area that could be potential litigation, but everything that we have that was date-stamped and was real has been provided to the media and to the board members.”

[Editor’s note: At least two of the documents provided by town officials are not date-stamped as received, and there are variations noted between documents that have been purported to be the same.]

Boucher told the BOF that Norton’s departure began with the town granting her permission in February of 2025 to work remotely from Wyoming “at her request, due to personal hardship,” Boucher said. 

“You should know that she did take advantage of the medical family leave, which in Connecticut is very, very expansive — 12 weeks — and put in the paperwork and got a doctor’s note to verify it,” Boucher said.

Birch pointed out that taking part in the state’s Family and Medical Leave meant that an employee was not supposed to be working at all.

“Actually, if you’re on FMLA you’re actually not supposed to be working,” Birch said. “That’s the statute. You’re not supposed to be working and if you’re working and you’re out on FMLA, you have a conflict. Sort of it’s like sick time. You’re not supposed to be working on sick time.”

Boucher maintained that she first became aware of Norton’s other job “first thing Monday morning.”

“We didn’t learn it through media,” Boucher said. “We learned it through H.R., who had discovery of this through an email, so we then had to confirm it, if this in fact was true, which we did on Monday.”

“And then, I think, that was right before I was coming into a big Board of Selectmen meeting that night [at 7 p.m.] so I really couldn’t comment on it until the next morning and, as I said, we took immediate action because we felt this was totally unacceptable,” Boucher said.

Birch asked if Boucher had told the BOS about the situation in executive session at the beginning of that meeting, but Boucher claimed she would not have been allowed to.

“We could not have an executive session about personnel, about an individual personnel,” Boucher said, “unless you inform them and they can be there and make it public, so all we could talk about was the legal litigation matters.”

Birch pointed out that Norton was in attendance at that meeting, but Boucher said she wasn’t.

“No, not at all,” Boucher said.

“The August 4th meeting?” Birch repeated, and Boucher again said, “No.”

Raimondi disagreed, citing the photograph that appeared in GOOD Morning Wilton that showed Norton was clearly in virtual attendance at the Aug. 4 BOS meeting through Zoom.

Boucher then changed her story.

“Oh no … okay, she was — Remember, I was just going into a Board of Selectmen meeting when learning about it, okay, so I couldn’t comment because again there’s legal issues around that, okay, so she was on Zoom but did not comment and didn’t respond to anything, and at that point I was just learning about it as things were being disclosed by the media,” Boucher said.

Citing claims made by Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker in an interview with GOOD Morning Wilton that Norton was, supposedly, asked to resign on Aug. 4, the day of the BOS meeting, Raimondi followed up on the question.

“Did he ask for her resignation prior to the Board of Selectmen meeting?” Raimondi said.

“He asked for it on Aug. 4,” Birch said, “or at least that’s what he says.”

Boucher didn’t provide a clear answer.

“We have emails that went back and forth that you can look at, okay,” Boucher said. “I haven’t looked at them. No, I have a whole folder on it which I don’t have with me this evening … The first email was asking her to resign, but there was not as much information disclosed to the full extent of what was happening.”

“Don’t quote me. I don’t have it in front of me,” Boucher said, noting that Norton originally offered to keep working for a time and then later sent in a resignation.

Raimondi said that residents have sought answers through the BOF on this issue.

“I’ve gotten a lot of emails from people with questions … The Board of Finance, to be clear, we had no idea about this at all until GOOD Morning Wilton did excellent reporting,” Raimondi said.

Speaking during public comment, resident Sara Curtis asked the BOF members to reconsider separating oversight of the Board of Education finances from that of the Town, as the two responsibilities had been combined under the Town’s CFO, starting in 2017.

At last Friday’s special meeting of the BOS, the selectmen revised the job description for a new CFO to only cover the Town’s Finance Department (but now adding supervision of the town assessor and tax collector).

Curtis said that before the roles were combined, there had been years of “inability to get accurate financial information” from the BOE, and rancor between town and school board officials. Instead, she said, the dual position brought “operational, financial and qualitative benefits.”

“Please consider, are we going to return to a model that didn’t serve us well, that caused far more angst, delays of information, than maybe what we had now?” she said, adding, “Does this one incident [with Norton] indicate that all of the good work that went into that and all the thoughtful minds who were part of putting that together were for naught?”

Editor’s note: the story has been updated to clarify that resident Sara Curtis spoke in support of keeping both the school and town financial responsibilities under one CFO. In addition, an update made clearer that comments quoted in the article were not necessarily included in the order in which they were made in the meeting.