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Beleaguered public defenders face an ordeal of struggle sessions as a for-profit three-person firm set forth its proposal in a September 11th document to the Division of Public Defender Services (DPDS).
Thought Partner Solutions pledges to align with DPDS’s “commitment to a more equitable and inclusive workplace.

The two-phase plan begins with an “Organizational Assessment ‘Acknowledgement.'” The implication is that members of the agency will be acknowledging bad things within it. The first phase will include a “Racial Equity Organizational Profile.” The agency is headed by a Black woman, TaShun Bowden-Lewis. Her failure to hire fill more than a dozen vacancies in the agency in more than a year as its leader will fit neatly in the accountability category.

Phase two will feature exploring cultural competence and “building resilience through emotional acknowledgement.” It will also include “operationalizing equity, managing organizational conflict, sharing power, implementing new practices, and sustaining the initiative.” An advance course in jargon is not included but appears essential.

The estimated cost “falls within the range of $50,000 to $150,000, subject to further refinement as we engage in detailed discussions about the project’s scale.” Thought Partner Solutions estimates its duration at 1-3 years. “Further refinement” may lead to an escalating price tag.

The proposal makes no mention of the agency’s mission: providing legal representation for people of little means who have been charged with a crime.

DPDS employs a $146,000 a year Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Daryl McGraw. The thicket of tasks Thought Partner Solutions sets out in its proposal sound like what he was hired to do.

The Thought Partner Solutions expenditure may have to wait until the Public Defender Services Commission determines if the agency’s growing swag budget can make room for other costs unrelated to achieving the best results for clients. Spending has become another minefield of conflict in the agency, as The Courant’s Ed Mahony reported in an alarming story of accusations of racism by Bowden-Lewis against commission chair, Richard Palmer.

The Bridgeport Democratic organization is living up to its reputation as the state’s most prodigious generator of absentee ballots. As of Friday, 4,363 Bridgeport Democrats had requested an absentee ballot for Tuesday’s municipal primary. As of Monday morning, 1,179 Hartford Democrats had applied for an absentee ballot, 625 ballots had been returned.

New Haven’s Democratic primary for mayor has prompted only 571 absentee ballot requests.

In three Republican primary contests, 27 party members in Derby, 64 in Brookfield and 125 in West Haven had applied for absentee ballots.

Absentee ballots provided the margin of victory in Bridgeports mayoral primary four years ago when state Senator Marilyn Moore won the machine votes, only to lose the race to incumbent Joseph Ganim when the absentee ballots were counted. Moore unsuccessfully disputed the result and failed to secure a the number of signatures necessary to secure a spot on the ballot for the fall contest that year. This year, the Democrat fell short of the number of signatures necessary for a primary challenge.

The State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) recently referred the results of its investigation into the 2019 Bridgeport Democratic primary to the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney.

Published September 11, 2023.

The closing of Stone Academy on February 15th of this year has brought attention to the erratic regulation of for-profit nursing programs by the Office of Higher Education (OHE) and the Department of Public Health (DPH). The crisis, now in its seventh month, has seen OHE offer little or no assistance to more than 1,000 abandoned students.

Statistics complied by DPH show that Stone Academy was not alone in graduating students who failed to pass the national nursing exam on the first first time they took it. Porter and Chester campuses showed dramatic fluctuations in exam success. Only Stone closed, though Porter and Chester also had a 43% pass rate at its Waterbury and and now closed Stratford campus.

The numbers suggest systemic issues that OHE and DPH have declined to address in anything but an ad hoc manner, allowing more striving students to become saddled with debts they are unable to pay.

Published September 11, 2023.

For something completely different, read and Subscribe to Now You Know–The Cultural Lives of Others. This week’s guest is Hartford’s Mayor Luke Bronin, who completes two terms in office on December 31st.

Luke Bronin’s parents got value for money when their son went to Yale. The Hartford mayor tells Now You Know he retreats from the world by reading War and Peace. The world would be a better place if more leaders followed that example.

Willie Nelson, Grateful Dead, Derry Girls, a dobro, Sonia Sotomayor, General Douglas MacArthur and Colin McEnroe. All of that and more in this week’s addition of Now You Know, a Substack newsletter on the Cultural Lives of Others.

Published September 11, 2023.

Governor Ned Lamont’s spokesman has emerged as the likely choice to fill the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) new vice chancellorship position. Adam Joseph, a veteran Democratic government communications hand, worked for Senate Democrats and Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz before landing in Lamont’s office. Joseph did two tours with Bysiewicz, the first when she filled her calendar with visits to Democratic town committees as secretary of the state for three fruitless terms.

The title grows more preposterous with each day. The position is an ordinary lobby-the-governor-and legislature sinecure with communications duties soldered to it. The jumped up name is one more misstep as Terrence Cheng, whose title was changed from President to Chancellor, continues to struggle in addressing the troubled higher education system.

The popular Joseph’s experience in the legislative and executive branches of state government may help Cheng find his footing after a calamitous beginning this year. The legislature added tens of millions to Lamont’s CSCU budget proposal.

Legislative leaders were astonished at Cheng’s public displays of ingratitude at their advocacy for the state’s largest education system. It has not been forgotten.

And now these ridiculous titles. Do Cheng and the members of the Board of Regents not know who was history’s most infamous chancellor? Yes, him. Ninety years ago. Changing a some titles will do nothing to address Connecticut’s demographic decline. It is no strategy for filling expensive empty classrooms around the state.

Published September 8, 2023.

Thomas G. Moukawsher has resigned as a judge of the Superior Court after ten years. In this fractious age, most can agree that a decade was enough.

Moukawsher, an active Democrat and a one-term state representative, presided over the state education funding case that went on and on and on. Moukawsher may be remembered for the substance of his decision–overturned by the Supreme Court. Few in the court system will forget that he summoned parties to his courtroom to read the decision to the long-suffering lawyers and litigants.

The opinion attracted particular attention for Moukawsher’s decision included giving school administrators the power to block the schoolhouse door to some disabled children. One commentator called it a “dark poison.” Moukawsher responded to criticism of his heartless pronouncement with an op-ed in The Courant claiming he was not an enemy of the disabled, he was one of them. He had, after all, stabbed himself with a pen while studying in college.

Serious judges customarily explain their decisions in their opinions, not the opinion pages of newspapers.

In a letter to Governor Ned Lamont, Moukawsher announced his resignation is effective at the end of the business day on October 16, 2023.

Published September 5, 2023.

You will want to read the second edition of Now You Know–The Cultural Lives of Others, featuring Connecticut favorite Diane Smith.

The veteran reporter, anchor and radio host reveals what she reads, watches and listens to, as well as her most memorable reporting assignments. And then there was the night she anchored election results coverage with two broken bones.

Published September 5, 2023.

Welcome to Southward Park in Middlebury. It’s a 77 acre in a zone that permits warehouses. And the parcel includes fewer than five acres of wetlands.

A proposal earlier this year on a larger lot in the same spot to build a warehouse caused considerable local engagement–in a way that only local zoning does. The developers’ application meets the requirements of its designated zone so requires only a site plan approval, a routine special permit when more than 1000 cubic feet of dirt is moved (which is most projects) and a text amendment on building height.

Legislative leaders and Governor Ned Lamont diminished themselves in June when they agreed to include a House Republican provision in the state budget that prohibited Middlebury from approving the original warehouse proposal. The budget section applied to towns with a population between 6,000 and 8,000. It specified warehouse or distribution facilities of more than 100,000 square feet on a site with less than 150 acres that contains more than five acres of wetlands and is not more than two miles from an elementary school. The scheme was first reported in Daily Ructions.

Developers have reconfigured the parcel, reducing the area designated as wetlands to below that lethal five acres standard. You can read more about the proposal here.

The zoning process will proceed.

Published September 1, 2023.

Welcome to launch day for Now You Know–The Cultural Lives of Others on Substack. Each issue will provide a look at a guest’s cultural life. You will learn what they read, watch and listen to. Also what they have meant to read but never get around to it. There will be guest lists of fantasy dinner parties.

First guest is State Treasurer Erick Russell. He discloses his cultural interests, enters the ice cream wars and has something to say about the Dallas Cowboys.

Published August 28, 2023.

Return to Daily Ructions Monday morning, August 28th when the curtain rises on something new.

Published August 25, 2023.