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The Department of Administrative Services (DAS) released not long before 4 p.m. Friday a limited number of copies of a school construction grant program audit. The release many months after Commissioner Michelle Gilman pledged regular updates would be provided to legislators. 

The multi-billion dollar program has been the subject of a federal criminal investigation. Audit updates were not provided last year, protecting Governor Ned Lamont from having sunshine cast on an embarrassing failure of oversight by his administration during his and Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz’s re-election campaign.

The limited release of the interim report comes three days before the legislature’s School Construction Project Priority Review Committee meets Monday afternoon. The status of the audit is likely to be a top interest of legislators. 

Calls to Gilman’s office went to voicemail Friday afternoon. Its website continues to list Lora Rae Anderson as the head of communications. She’s now the chief of staff at Department of Transportation. The most recent press release on the department’s website was posted in May of last year.

Gilman’s predecessor at DAS, Josh Geballe, entered into a memorandum of understanding early in the Lamont administration that transferred the school construction office from DAS to the state budget office. That move accommodated then-school construction office head Kostantinos Diamantis’ move to the budget office to serve as deputy to his close friend Melissa McCaw. The Geballe/McCaw agreement violated state law and was terminated when scandal struck the Lamont administration and the school construction program.

Published January 20, 2023.

There will be many meetings and some excuse-making at the Connecticut Hospital Association. Healthgrades, the respected hospital rating service, included no Connecticut hospital on its national list of the top 50 hospitals in the nation for 2023.

The Healthgrades “ratings and awards are based on the mortality and complication rates, adjusted for risk, of nearly 4,500 hospitals and 33 of the most common procedures nationally, according to its latest methodology document. The goal of Healthgrades is to provide ‘trusted, actionable information about the care delivered at our nation’s hospitals,'” Fierce Healthcare noted on its website when the ratings were released last year.

The best 100 list includes Middlesex Hospital and Norwalk Hospital. Here are Healthgrades’ Connecticut hospitals on its top 250 hospitals.

Published January 17, 2023.

State Representative Quentin “Q” Williams was killed last night in a motor vehicle collision on Route 9. Williams, a Middletown Democrat, was sworn into office Wednesday for his third term and had been appointed to serve as co-chair of the legislature’s labor committee. He was 39 years old.

Early indications are that Williams was struck by a vehicle traveling in the wrong direction.

The Legislative Office Building will close today. All committee meetings are cancelled.

Published January 5, 2023.

It took the Connecticut House of Representatives just one ballot to upend the established order and oust incumbent Speaker of the House Irving Stolberg on January 4, 1989.

The plan was unveiled to House Republicans the afternoon before the new session of the legislature was to begin. Members of the Republican caucus agreed to join disaffected Democrats to oust Democrat Irving Stolberg, on the verge of a historic third term, and replace him with Newington Democrat Richard Balducci.

All 63 House Republicans joined 31 of the House’s 88 Democrats to replace Stolberg with Balducci on the first ballot–after defeating a motion to recess so the Democrats could knock some heads together. The plan to defeat Stolberg came together when a handful of Democrats, considered moderates at the time, met at a private office and realized their might be enough of them to form a majority with the House Republicans, who had chafed under Stolberg’s leadership during this two terms as speaker.

The ideological divide between House Republicans and Democrats was neither as rigid nor as broad then as it is today. Two extraordinary elements of the coup, as it was labeled by some, were that it remained secret until the night before it occurred and the Republicans asked for nothing in return for their votes–and received nothing. Years of tax increases and fiscal indiscipline followed–something the moderate Democrats who rebelled that morning 34 years ago might have resisted if they had not made one of their own speaker.

Later that day, Governor William O’Neill addressed a joint session of the legislature and noted, as a former Democratic House majority leader would, that the action was always in the House.

Published January 3, 2022.

Hartford Democrat Arunan Arulampalm will announce his candidacy for mayor Thursday afternoon. Arulampalam will address supporters at the Parkville Market at an hourlong event beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Arulampalam becomes the third Democrat to enter the race to succeed incumbent Democrat Luke Bronin, who is not seeking a third four-year term. Arulampalam sought the Democratic nomination for state treasurer in 2018. He won enough votes at the state party nominating convention to qualify to participate in a primary but declined to enter the next round against endorsed candidate Shawn Wooden and challenger Dita Bhargava.

Arulampalam served as a deputy commissioner of the Department of Consumer Protection in the Lamont administration until joining the Hartford Land Bank last year.

Eric Coleman, a former state senator and retired Superior Court judge, was the first Democrat to enter the contest for mayor. He was followed by Nick Lebron, a city council member. State Senator John Fonfara is considering entering the race and would bring four decades of experience and winning campaigns into the arena.

Members of the Democratic town committee will meet this summer to select an endorsed slate. A primary will likely follow in September.

Published January 3, 2023.

State Representative Rosa Rebimbas chose not to seek re-election to her safe Naugatuck seat. Instead, she took on fellow Republican and five-term incumbent Probate Judge Peter Mariano as he sought four more years in office. Some of the race was chronicled here and in my Hartford Courant column. WTNH also reported on the August primary contest between the two Republicans.

Rebimbas won the party endorsement, the primary and the general election against Mariano. Though Mariano began May by serving a short sentence for drunk driving and reckless endangerment, he received enough votes at the Republican nominating convention from Middlebury delegates to qualify for a primary. Mariano also won the endorsement of the Democratic delegates in the four-town district to their enduring shame.

The Naugatuck Valley delights in its reputation for a tough brand of politics. Mariano’s jackals did their worst but misjudged Rebimbas. She ran a disciplined campaign, drawing the stark contrast between herself and Mariano. Rebimbas defeated Mariano by a wide margin on November 8th–and then silence. The traditional conversations between an outgoing judge and an incoming one on the state of the court never occurred.

On Wednesday, Rebimbas’s fortitude was subtly recognized. Chief Justice Richard Robinson administered the oath of office to Rebimbas. Mariano’s tenure in office had become a significant embarrassment to the administration of justice in Connecticut. Chief Justice Robinson added his considerable prestige to an important moment.

On Thursday, Donald Deneen, who has been admitted to practice in Connecticut for more than 60 years, administered the oath of office to his granddaughter, Mary Deneen, as the new judge in the Greater Windsor Probate District. Her father, Michael Deneen, is also a lawyer.

Mary Deneen succeeds fellow Democrat Marianne Lassman Fisher, who chose not to seek re-election after 18 years of service. Mary Deneen won the party’s endorsement in May, the primary in August–with nearly 80% of the vote–and the general election by a wide margin.

Voters elected 14 new probate judges in November, the largest class of first term judges since the probate courts were consolidated in 2010. Only three of the new judges are women, Rebimbas, Deneen and Gabrielle Labonte. Labonte defeated incumbent Democrat Leah Schad in the 26th Probate District in northeastern Connecticut.

Published December 30, 2022.

State Senator Matthew Lesser (D-Middletown) has his eye on some lobbyist money–again. Lesser collected enough in small contributions to qualify for public financing of his race for secretary of the state in the spring. Lesser retreated from that contest when he fell far short of winning the party endorsement at May’s nominating convention. He made have made his crucial error when he ceded the party nomination for comptroller to Sean Scanlon.

Lesser declined to primary Stephanie Thomas, the party endorsed candidate for secretary of the state, after she made short work of him. Thomas and her sharp floor operation administered a final humiliation that day by giving Lesser some mercy delegates to insure she’d face him in the convention’s final ballot.

The campaign calendar allowed Lesser to find refuge at his state Senate convention and seek re-election from the four-town district. He defeated a Republican challenger in November.

Lesser’s Middlesex Area Team for Tomorrow (MATT PAC) is offering lobbyists the chance to “Ring in the New Year With Senator Matt Lesser.” The event is January 2nd at the Red Rock Tavern at the edge of the Capitol village. Lesser, who left Wesleyan University before graduating to work on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, is workin’ the same old corner. A lobbyist ducat goes for $100. Other PACs can give up to $2,000 to attend. Businesses can buy an ad in a program book for $250.00.

Lesser held a similar event in pre-pandemic 2019. Much of the money for his PAC came from lobbyists. The organization’s connection to its name has grown tenuous with Lesser’s ambitious. In the fall, it made contributions to Democratic town committees in Ansonia, East Windsor and Vernon. It also gave some of the green stuff that folds to the Working Families Party.

There was a time when a plague of PACs was deemed contrary to the public interest by people much like Lesser. They were seen as an instrument for lobbyists to purchase a disproportionate amount of influence over elected officials. Now, the public finances campaigns and legislators establish slush funds filled with money from lobbyists and their clients. That seems worse than what came before.

Published December 29, 2022.

WTIC’s Brian Shactman raised a topic on many minds when he interviewed Governor Ned Lamont Wednesday morning. “Rates are going to double in a matter of days. Is there anything you can do or is there anything to be done to ease this?” the popular host asked. Shactman pointed out the burden of the increase in electricity costs will place on people with fixed and low incomes. The segment is posted above.

“Doubling this cost is brutal,” Shactman added. “First of all it’s not doubling,” the Greenwich Democrat replied, “but it is going to go up dramatically. Probably 45, 50% for some people.” Lamont rattled through some of the subsidies available to eligible residents and pointed out, as he has done in the past, that the hikes are higher in neighboring states, adding, “but who cares?”

Shactman pointed out that the rate increase that will begin punishing customers in January is from $0.12 to $0.24 per kilowatt hour for the first half of 2023. That’s double. The cost of electricity is doubling for most Connecticut customers. The distribution charge from Eversource and United Illuminating, a separate part of a utility bill, is not doubling.

This is not how any governor wants to begin a second term. Connecticut customers continue to pay the highest electricity rates in the continental United States. Connecticut and Massachusetts utility regulators will hold a joint hearing on January 3rd to discuss the hikes by Eversource, which does business in both states. The issue continues to flummox state officials. They acknowledge Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has roiled world energy markets. They also need a local target to blame for rates in New England rising higher than in other parts of the country.

The most important player will not be participating in Tuesday’s hearing: New York Governor Kathy Hochul. She could expand the natural gas pipelines that run through her state into New England, but will not. New Hampshire residents stopped a proposal to build transmission lines that would have carried hydro-electric energy into the New England grid.

Connecticut’s energy policy has been expensive and laden with crossed fingers. It has failed and in the winter crunch the blame will fall on our leaders.

Posted December 29, 2022.

Never a note wrong.

Published December 21, 2022.

Governor Ned Lamont’s inaugural committee eliminated its top $50,000 sponsorship after a Hartford Courant column revealed the committee’s solicitation of state contractors and lobbyists. The top sponsorship package can be purchased for $25,000. Sponsorships will be acknowledged throughout the inaugural ball venue.

State law, according to the state’s ethics agency, allows state contractors and lobbyists, prohibited in other instances from making contributions to state officials, to make unlimited “gifts to the state” to underwrite the inaugural ball. The inaugural committee sent sponsorship packages to lobbyists, seeking to have members of the permanent government put the touch on their clients to finance the January 4th event.

While the inaugural ball can be a highlight for elected officials, it is a dreary obligation for lobbyists. Two registered lobbyists have found a way to score points with the honored politicians of the evening. Lobbyists Brian Durand and Steve Kinney are two of three volunteers helming the inaugural ball committee.

Tickets are $200 for anyone over 30 years old, $100 for those 30 years old and under.

Published December 20, 2022.