Selectmen Confront Boucher Over Undisclosed Moody’s Review, Challenge Her Accountability

First Selectman Toni Boucher faced sustained criticism from three fellow selectmen Monday night, Oct. 5, over her decision not to share important information about the Town audit and Moody’s review of Wilton’s prized Aaa credit rating with either members of the Board of Selectmen or the public.

At their regular meeting Monday, three selectmen expressed disappointment and a loss of trust as they repeatedly pressed Boucher on why she had not informed them that Moody’s had placed Wilton on a list of municipalities with ratings under review after she learned about the development in July. They challenged her judgment and her explanations for keeping the matter from the board.

Moody’s announced in a press release on June 30 that it had placed Wilton’s ratings under review because it lacked sufficient current financial information from the Town, warning that it could withdraw the ratings if that information was not provided. After the Town posted an unfinished FY2025 financial report to the municipal bond market’s disclosure system and provided updated information to Moody’s, the agency confirmed Wilton’s Aaa ratings Sept. 25, and announced it publicly again.

GOOD Morning Wilton broke the story on Monday, Sept. 28 about the Moody’s review, and several Town officials later said that they learned about the matter for the first time from GMW‘s story.

The Oct. 5 meeting was the first time the BOS has met since the story broke. Selectmen Matt Raimondi, David Tatkow and Rich McCarty told Boucher that the lack of disclosure undermined their trust in her and impacted their ability to oversee Town affairs. Boucher repeatedly said that while the matter was “in process,” she didn’t feel she needed to say anything to her own board or the Board of Finance.

Boucher argued that other Town officials were to blame for asking too many questions of the Finance Department and, she said, creating a “hostile environment” that made people apprehensive about communicating or attending board meetings.

Later during the discussion, Boucher twice said “the buck stops here” and acknowledged failures in supervising former Town personnel. But she also said the volume of questions from certain board members burdened staff and impeded them from completing the overdue audit and doing their daily work.

Second Selectman Ross Tartell’s role also came into focus. Boucher initially pointed to a conversation with him when asked how she learned about the situation. Tartell acknowledged discussing the matter with Chief Financial Officer Dawn Savo, while qualifying how fully he understood it. He also said he had not shared the later confirmation of Wilton’s ratings after being told it should remain confidential.

The selectmen welcomed that outcome but said it did not excuse the failure to keep them and the public informed.

“Why Didn’t You Inform the Board?”

The mood at the BOS table felt something like a courtroom inquiry as questions centered on when Boucher first learned of Moody’s request for more information and its June 30 public announcement that Wilton was among 120 local government issuers placed under review.

“I didn’t know about it until we received an email from GOOD Morning Wilton,” Raimondi told Boucher, “so it was a complete surprise. I was surprised that we didn’t hear about it in July, August.”

Likewise, McCarty and Tatkow did not appear to have been aware of the situation, though apparently Tartell was aware of it and did not share the information with the board.

Asked when she had first heard about it, Boucher said that it was brought to her attention after she returned from vacation at the beginning of July. She said that Tartell, who was covering some of her duties in her absence, told her about it then.

“Toni, you’re the CEO of the Town,” Raimondi said. “When did you know about this? I’m asking you.”

A clearly uncomfortable Boucher answered, “When I came back from being away.”

“So in July?” Raimondi said. “And why, at that point, didn’t you inform the Board of Selectmen?”

Boucher said, “Because I believed that it was still in process and the process hadn’t been completed [so] we’d get to know what would transpire.”

Raimondi said, “So, if I’m understanding that, this Town of Wilton had a rating under review. It could mean that we would lose our bond rating.”

Savo disputed that characterization of what the Town was told.

“Well, they didn’t say it was under a review at that point,” Savo said of Moody’s.

Savo said that at the beginning of July Moody’s notified the Town “confidentially” by email requesting information.

Savo said she notified Tartell in Boucher’s absence, and contacted the Town’s bond advisor about how to respond.

She said the Town provided information, then received a request for a draft with notes because its earlier submission was insufficient.

“They asked for a draft with notes, which we provided at the end of August,” Savo said, repeating that Moody’s contact with her office was “a confidential email” asking for information.

The unsigned, unfinished draft of Wilton’s FY2025 financial report was posted Sept. 1 to EMMA (Electronic Municipal Market Access), the public municipal bond disclosure system. In a previously reported written response, Savo said the posting was made on the bond advisor’s recommendation “to accommodate Moody’s.”

Raimondi pointed out again, however, that Moody’s had issued a public press release June 30 naming Wilton as being under review because of a lack of sufficient information.

“This is very important,” said Raimondi, who multiple times asked Boucher to let him finish his questions without interruption. “Why didn’t you notify the Board of Selectmen?”

Boucher again cited the ongoing process.

“Because I believed that it was still in process,” she said, “and there was nothing yet to report, because we had not — it had not been decided yet.” 

Tatkow joined in the concern.

“Just because it is in process might be something to report,” he said.

“I mean, with all the concerns about the draft with the audit, we probably raised the issue in the spring,” Tatkow said, “You know, is this going to affect our credit rating? We kept getting told over and over that, ‘No, no, no, we were fine.’ It turned out that there was a risk.”

Boucher said she had not been certain the Town was at risk and had expected the forthcoming audit information to resolve the matter.

Raimondi questioned what she would consider important enough to bring to the board if not a review of the Town’s credit ratings.

Documented Risk: “We Should Have Known Sooner”

Tatkow pointed out that, even though this was a documented risk to the Town, Boucher and Savo did not discuss it with the board throughout the summer.

Through months of questions about the long-delayed audit, accounting consultant Joseph Centofanti‘s reconciliation work and billing in excess of $270,000, and whether additional help was needed to complete the audit, Boucher and Savo provided reassurances that the audit process was moving ahead and no additional help was warranted to get the audit completed.

The BOS had sought on several occasions to speak with Centofanti at its meetings. Boucher and Savo maintained that the consultant was not required to appear before the BOS or BOF.

Projected completion dates continued to slip, and the Town ultimately missed its June 30 audit deadline with the state. Savo had downplayed the significance of that deadline, saying other municipalities have also missed it.

McCarty spoke of the Moody’s event as a missed opportunity for the BOS and Town Hall administration to demonstrate transparency.

“This board works best when we clearly see — see, know and contribute to — how decisions are made,” McCarty said. “We should have known sooner.”

He noted that the Town has struggled with finance-related challenges since August 2025.

“Throughout that process, I’ll say there has been a distinct lack of transparency that we hear from the people on the street about how that has been handled,” McCarty said, calling this particular episode “a very explainable story” that Boucher could have simply shared.

“It was such an easy story to transparently tell and yet we didn’t hear about it,” he said.

What Tartell Knew

While Tartell acknowledged being involved in discussions during Boucher’s absence at the beginning of July, his account left questions about how much he knew and why he did not inform the other selectmen.

“Dawn and I did have a discussion but it wasn’t specific to communicate out,” Tartell said, citing the “funny role” of the second selectman.

“I won’t say I fully knew about it,” he said of the Moody’s inquiry. “I won’t say anything like that. But I will say that what was in our conversations, it was not to necessarily inform you guys. It was to— Sometimes I signed a document. I had to do that. But beyond that, no.”

Savo said she contacted Tartell after receiving Moody’s request, and Boucher recalled learning about the situation through a conversation with him after returning in July.

Tartell said Boucher and Savo’s effort to move things forward without creating “turmoil” had instead produced more turmoil, and created what he called “well-intentioned but bad consequences.”

He also said that Boucher notified him after Moody’s had informed the Town that it would maintain its Aaa rating — at least for the time being — but said he was told that this too should be kept confidential, so he did not share it, although the information was public.

Tartell again described the handling as “well-intentioned.”

Discussing the EMMA posting, Tartell said he knew information had been posted online but had not understood that it should have been with the Board of Finance’s knowledge. He said his experience on the BOS had generally been to hear the results of meetings with Moody’s rather than participate in the audit process.

“I have not been involved in six or seven years,” Tartell said.

Raimondi said the board and public should have been informed regardless of the outcome. He also pointed to opportunities to disclose the EMMA posting when he and Tatkow asked about it at a subsequent meeting.

Boucher’s Defense: A “Hostile Environment”

In response to McCarty’s call for earlier disclosure, Boucher turned the criticism back at elected board members, saying the environment on the BOF and BOS made reporting to those boards very difficult.

“It makes perfect sense if the environment here on our boards were such that information like that can be delivered without a hostile environment to report under,” Boucher said, “to the point that it makes people be risk-adverse in coming forward.”

She said that positive information and reports of progress that had been met by negativity put people in a defensive position.

“It makes a person risk-adverse to even attend a meeting,” Boucher said.

McCarty pushed back, saying openness would have helped the board support the Finance Department and manage the situation. 

“This was a manageable situation, and the way you build that trust, and the way you build that understanding, is to be transparent and open about what’s going on,” McCarty said. “Not have someone find it on the Internet, come to a meeting and say, ‘Look what I found,'” he said, referencing the public discovery of the EMMA posting raised by resident Joshua Kopac during public comment at a BOS meeting last month.

Raimondi also called Boucher out on this line of defense.

“You’re speaking about a hostile environment … I have noticed, Toni, that whenever people ask hard questions that you may not know the answers to, that’s always the response,” he said.

“And at the end of the day, this board and others boards need to be asking these questions,” Raimondi said. “And that doesn’t make it a hostile environment. That means that we’re asking questions.”

“And to be honest with you, going back to August there have been a lot of instances of lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and we’re told one thing and [then] something else, and that’s going to lead to more questions, and that is not hostile, that is simply exercising our duty.”

Boucher continued to argue that the number and frequency of questions created a burden and impeded progress on the audit. She said staff and outside professionals were working through unfamiliar circumstances while trying to resolve the problems and meet deadlines.

She also acknowledged a failure of leadership that went “all the way to the top,” then referred to former personnel whom she said had not been forthcoming about the financial problems.

“The buck stops here absolutely, and I take full responsibility,” she said.

Boucher said former personnel should have been supervised more closely and that she may have placed too much trust in those responsible for Town departments. She also defended her administration’s work to resolve the problems.

Tatkow described the disclosure failure as an “unforced error that unfortunately breaches trust,” and reminded Boucher that selectmen had offered more resources earlier in the year.

Boucher said additional help had been offered internally and to outside consultants, but bringing new people into work already underway could have delayed the process further.

The discussion ended without agreement on Boucher’s explanations.

“It’s not the last conversation,” Tartell said.