By Anne W. Semmes
At age 54, Stephen “Steve” Walko, as lawyer and legislator, has made a considerable impact in the governance of his hometown of Greenwich, and in his home state. A third generation townee, he began investing in his community at age 16 as a volunteer firefighter (just before they upped the age to 18, he tells). And it was while still in law school that he ran for the Representative Town Meeting (RTM), that would lead him to chair the Greenwich Board of Estimate and Taxation (BET), then to represent his Byram home District 150 as a State Representative, then become a managing partner of law firm Ivey, Barnum and O’Mara, with his status now in its ninth year chosen as a Super Lawyer of Connecticut.
“Steve Walko has shown the dedication and energy to make Greenwich a better place in which to live. His leadership roles on the Board of Estimate and Taxation, first as chair of the Budget Committee and then as Chair of the Board have led to thoughtful budgets which met the community needs while keeping taxes low. He struck a perfect balance while presiding over a harmonious Board.” Larry Simon, Community Leader.
So, what drives this markedly mannerly man Walko? He’s been quoted, “I do it because my parents instilled in me a sense of duty to my town.” Certainly true, but Walko has had formative influences along his way. With his mother, Beatrice Walko, a valued presence in his Greenwich High School years as head of Student Activities, often coaching field hockey players, her son would discover the newly arrived sport of rugby. “We were only a club,” he relates. “We could not even wear red and white. We wore blue and white. We could not practice on any of the high school fields. We had to practice at Western Middle School.” But Walko would develop that club into a winning varsity team.
Rugby exhibited for Walko a “sense of community,” he says. “Unlike a lot of other sports, you play both offense and defense.” Walko “wanted to be around people who were able to find new skills and find new adventures, but with the sense of community.” Add to that the inspiration in his senior year of English and Humanities teacher, the late Elinor Carr. “She taught ‘Shapers of the World,’ an amazing class that combined English, Social Studies, and Art. It discussed those people in antiquity that helped define society as we know it today.” And that class would take Walko to Greece. He would walk away with the awareness of “how individuals shape the world as the Greeks did. It was a person who started something, and how that worked out from there.” [Elinor Carr believed, “Every human being is capable of noble thought.”]
Walko’s college choice of Trinity University located in San Antonio, Texas was also formative. “It’s almost like a small New England college,” he tells, “And I just wanted to get a different feel for what else was out there. And it was the right fit…the state of Texas has a great sense of pride in their state. And people have a great sense of pride in their smaller communities, their family, and their church. And that’s what I try to emulate.”
Walko had chosen political science as his major on his path to a legal career, and why?
“I enjoyed what was going around in my world with true politics.” But a good friend had opined, “You like governance, not politics.” “And he was right about that,” says Walko, who appreciates “that we have democracy and all of the warts that go along with democracy and debates. But at the end of the day, the goal is to make life better. And the way to do that is through governance, with less, but still some guardrails.”
With Walko’s maternal grandmother having arrived from Slovakia, Walko and family would travel to the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in his young years, “when the Iron Curtain was in place. I must have been eight or 10. I didn’t like that feeling of government watching over you…where people are being told by their government what to do, what to buy.” A sense of community was missing for him. He would be drawn in a legal profession to “advocating on someone’s behalf,” he tells. “That’s what I wanted to do.” Hence his decision while still in law school to run for that legislative body in town, the RTM.
What spurred that run to the RTM was something illogical he was observing in town. “The Parks and Recreation Department were mowing the fields, the outfields, the playgrounds on Board of Education property” when simultaneously, “the Board of Education maintenance workers were taking care of the outfield where the supposed students played.” “Well, that’s just crazy,” he thought, “You had two separate departments in the town maintaining the exact same field.”
Wouldn’t a more efficient process be “to combine those two and have them both do the infield and outfield,” he says, “but it took more than one year to convince the BET to go ahead and make that change.”
“I wasn’t playing politics. I was simply trying to suggest that there was a better way to do things. And ultimately the BET agreed, but it took so much time and energy, that it made me then become a member of the BET and then go on from there.”
“Stephen Walko has dedicated his adult life to serving his community on the RTM, BET as Chairman, State Representative 150th District and the Herculean effort to rebuild New Lebanon School. He is prideful of his roots in the Byram community and endeavored to advocate for its residents and their needs. He is presently Chairing the Building Committee for the Greenwich High School entryway. Steve is a devoted son, husband and father. I am blessed to call him a friend and fortunate to have served with him on the BET. Congratulations Steve!” Peter Tesei, Executive Director of Pathways Inc.
In upcoming Part II of the “Winning Ways of Sentinel Awardee Stephen Walko, we’ll share what Walko learned from taking on leadership roles in town government, serving as a state representative, engaging himself as lawyer in civil and commercial litigations and real estate, while investing himself in worthy volunteer organizations, while enjoying his family of wife Alexandra and growing up daughter Nicole and son Christopher.
