When did Trumbull become Bridgeport? The Park City is notorious for feuds, bickering and dysfunctional politics. But in the past few months, the suburban enclave to its north is arguably matching it in terms of snippy-ness.

Here’s a list of incidents that have made noise since 2010 began: New First Selectman Timothy Herbst found that non-union municipal employees (most of them high-ranking) had been paying a $1 premium for health insurance, much to the shock of union employees. A Town Council member alleged that a meeting between Herbst and a Town Council committee, held on a holiday and without any posted agenda and not taped for public access, was illegal. Police and nearby residents objected to plans to build a cell phone tower on the police station. And a member of the Nature Center Commission objected to plans to move the center and give up the open space it now occupies to a private developer.

Last week brought a new one. Town Clerk Suzanne Burr Monaco filed a complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Division, charging that advertisements for David Pia’s appliance store are actually illegal campaign ads for Pia’s run for the 22nd District of the State Senate (all of Trumbull and parts of Bridgeport and Monroe) and a campaign sign placed on a store van is also not kosher.

The town clerk says that similar-looking promotional material for Pia’s campaign and newspaper ads for his Associated Appliance in Monroe (which have the same head shot) are meant to “work on a subliminal level” — you apparently see Pia’s face in an ad, with the store slogan, “Servicing Fairfield County for 35 Years with Honesty & Integrity,” and you are nudged towards voting for him. “You are not supposed to use your business to get elected,” says Burr Monaco, who, like Pia, is a Republican.

Pia says the complaint has “zero validity.” Though he did hitch a campaign sign to an Associated Appliance van, he says as long as his campaign pays the business for its use, it’s okay under state law.

He says the whole thing goes back to last year when he was running for Town Council and all of Trumbull’s Republican candidates made an error in some elections paperwork and had to pay a fine. Many in the town GOP blamed the then-town clerk, a Democrat against whom Burr Monaco was running. Pia told news outlets his own filing mistakes were his own fault and the town clerk had been professional and polite. Burr Monaco, says Pia, “has a deep hatred of [the former town clerk] and has a vendetta against me because I came to her defense” and is trying to help his primary opponent. “It’s childish, petty and unfortunate,” says Pia, “and it’s reasons like this so many people are leaving the town Republican Party.”

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