WESTCHESTER & FAIRFIELD COUNTY
BUSINESS JOURNALS
JULY 25, 2016 | VOL. 52, No. 30
4 | MARTIME STRATEGY
21 | 3-D INITIATIVE
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Tourism bureau gutted ZERO ALLOCATION DOOMS WESTERN CONN. OFFICE BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
BUSINESS A BREWIN' ▶ SEE PAGES 6 AND 22
B
The agency, at 12 N. Division St. in Peekskill, provided basic personal care services such as bathing, dressing and preparing food to elderly, sick, infirm and disabled clients. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman depicts Anyah as a businessman who callously and criminally exploited his employees. Despite his guilty plea, Anyah presents himself as a small businessman who wasn’t given a fair chance to compete and who got trapped in debt when insurers and government agencies delayed payments for his services.
udget cutting is one thing at the state level these days, but for Dan Bolognani, chairman of the Western Connecticut Convention and Visitors Bureau, it’s beyond ridiculous. “We were certain that we would be in for additional cuts to our budget, just like every other state agency and program,” he said. “But to wake up on July 1 and find out we were losing 100 percent of our budget … we just weren’t ready for that.” Gone is the bureau’s $420,000 allocation from the state, leaving it with the roughly $80,000 it makes from donations and, primarily, from selling ads in its “Unwind” brochure and on its website. “There’s no way that’s enough for us to sustain ourselves,” he said. Gone too are the bureau’s four employees, laid off as of July 15. While the bureau is still eking out an existence by providing marketing and advertising promoting tourism around the region using data accumulated through the spring, there is no manpower left to provide updates and list new events, much less provide the assistance to the small businesses “that are not big enough to be players on a statewide or even regional basis,” Bolognani said. “Those are the lodging establishments, restaurants and smaller attractions that rely on the bureau to be their marketing department,” he explained. “We assist them in a number of ways, including serving as an intermediary to the State Office of Tourism. We’re here to provide the sort of local ‘boots on the ground’ services that the Connecticut Office of Tourism doesn’t have the manpower for — it’s not their job and it shouldn’t be their job.” That the elimination of funds coincides
» ANYAH, page 8
» TOURISM, page 8
Top: Co-owner John Barrett and brewmaster Jeff Browning at the Brewport taps in Bridgeport (see page 22). Photograph by Kevin Zimmerman. Inset: Brad Nagy and Angelo Viscoso have added a new concept to their Mamaroneck eatery: a self-pour beer dispensing system (see page 6). Photograph by Aleesia Forni.
Home health care business owner faces jail over stiffing employees BY BILL HELTZEL bheltzel@westfairinc.com
ARTHUR ANYAH SAYS HE PLEADED guilty to wage theft to stay out of jail, but if he does not pay more than $200,000 in back wages and
unemployment insurance fees by December he could end up behind bars anyway. He pleaded guilty on July 14 to defrauding 67 workers out of $135,000 and creating false tax documents, as owner of Mical Home Health Care Agency Inc.