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The Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system is shedding frontline employees while seeking to fill a new high level position of Vice Chancellor of External Affairs. Unions are objecting to what appears to be a serious misallocation of resources.

The job posting appeared online last week. The winner of search will report “directly to the CSCU Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor is responsible for providing strategic direction and oversight to the Government Relations and External Affairs team as well as the Communications team in the CSCU System Office.”

The deadline to submit an application is August 2nd. The job posting indicates the winning applicant will start working in September. This is a short time to accept applications, review them, interview promising candidates and make a decision. The compressed schedule suggests to the skeptical that a candidate has been chosen and the hiring process is being observed because it must be.

CSCU has a grim history of conducting faux searches for high level positions–or no search at all–to benefit well-connected insiders in need of a job, sometimes one that boosts pension prospects.

Six union leaders objected to filling the new position in a message Thursday to Chancellor Terrence Cheng. “Faculty and Staff have long decried the expansion of the CSCU System Office, particularly at the expense of resources for our constituent universities and colleges during a decade of chronic underfunding,” they wrote in an email distributed by Seth Freedman, a professor of computer information systems at Capital Community College .

“In our community colleges campus managers have already begun cutting [part-time] and [full-time] staff who work in our Advising offices, Libraries, Tutoring Centers, English as a Second Language departments, and Workforce Development offices,” Freedman continued. He concluded by asking Cheng not to fill the new position while cutting student-facing services on our college and university campuses….”

CCSU’s central office saw finance director and former state budge chief Benjamin Barnes depart last week. General Counsel Ernestine Weaver was announced as Senior Fellow Advisor the next day.

The adumbrated search for a Vice Chancellor will add to growing concern among state leaders that Cheng is about to make some serious missteps at a time when regents and others require confidence in the system’s leader as the iron laws of demographics bear down on Connecticut’s colleges and universities.

Published July 20, 2023.

More upheaval at the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system. Veteran General Counsel Ernestine Weaver is out. She will be replaced for now by Vita Litvin, who has been associate general counsel.

On Thursday, Daily Ructions reported that Benjamin Barnes, the system’s chief financial officer since 2018, has also left CSCU.

Terrence Cheng, now called the 43,000 student system’s chancellor, made the Weaver announcement and conceded there have been many high level changes but no one should worry. No one but Cheng. He earned many detractors at the legislators with his ham fisted attempt to strong arm them into increasing the amount of money in Governor Lamont’s February budget proposal. Legislative leaders were surprised Cheng offered little appreciation for the $50 million they added to the CSCU budget as the schools continue to be flummoxed by falling enrollment.

The CSCU Board of Regents and Governor Ned Lamont may want to shed some sunlight on what is beginning to look like a crisis. They could begin by engaging in frank exchanges of views with Barnes and Weaver.

Published July 17, 2023.

Angelo Mozilo’s Countrywide Financial was a central actor in the 2007 mortgage meltdown and the wider 2008 crisis that it caused. There was another side to the mortgage maestro. In the competitive and often furtive world of subprime mortgages, Mozilo created an accommodating niche for the powerful and privileged: Friends of Angelo.

Mozilo’s foundation announced that he has died at age 84.

Former Senator Christopher Dodd was a prominent member of the Friends of Angelo club, as first reported in a blockbuster Conde Nast Portfolio June 2008 expose. Dodd maintained he knew nothing about sweetheart deals from the doomed mortgage maestro. Former Countrywide loan officer Robert Feinberg told a different story to Portfolio’s Dan Golden.

The Friends of Angelo story and much that followed from it caused Dodd to draw a bitter end his 2010 campaign for a sixth term. The mortgage meltdown and the bundling of subprime mortgages was a complicated, technical story. That a central actor in the global calamity had curried the goodwill of the powerful with special attention and better terms than others similarly situated could get when they borrowed money was easy to understand.

What’s the good of all that influent and power if you can’t get a mortgage with the fees reduced or the interest shaved? Angelo understood.

Published July 17, 2023.

Rising star Gretchen Whitmer will be the draw for state Democrats’ annual fundraising dinner. The annual Bailey dinner will take place on September 22nd at a venue to be announced.

Whitmer won a second term as governor last November by a decisive margin against a Republican, Tudor Dixon who raised little money. The former horror movie actress was a favorite of Donald Trump. Whitmer’s margin of victory over Dixon, fueled by the Democrat’s support for women’s right to access to abortion services, helped Michigan Democrats win control of both houses of the state legislature.

A September trip to Connecticut will give Whitmer time to assist her sister, Liz Gereghty, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives in New York’s 17th congressional district. That Hudson Valley seat was snagged from Democrats by Republican Mike Lawler last November as New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s campaign collapsed in large swathes of the state. Lawler defeated incumbent Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the DCCC. Gereghty is expected to face former Representative Mondaire Jones, who Maloney big-footed out of the 2022 race in the reapportioned district.

Whitmer is co-chair of President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.

Published July 14, 2023.

Benjamin Barnes, one of former Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s loyalist during eight dark years, is leaving his post as finance director for the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU), Daily Ructions can report. An announcement is imminent.

Barnes, who served with Malloy in Stamford, was the surly Democrat’s budget director for nearly all of his two terms. As the end drew near in 2010, Malloy parachuted Barnes into CSCU.

Malloy often used higher education as a comfortable retreat for his top aides–even if they knew little about life in the academy. Malloy lived his philosophy when he snagged the top job at the University of Maine system–controversy has followed him.

Barnes earned notoriety when he–not Malloy–announced generous raises for 200 Malloy appointees in December 2014, seven weeks after Malloy won a narrow race for a second term. Barnes himself was award a 12% increase to $209,000 a year. The raises took effect the day after Christmas, of course. They came a month after Barnes declared Connecticut was in a “permanent fiscal crisis,” refuting the claims Malloy had made to win re-election. Barnes had considerable trouble balancing the state’s budget until a bipartisan coalition intervened in 2017 and began to restore the state’s finances.

Barnes received a salary of $213,600 when he moved to CSCU, though the position came with far fewer responsibilities than he was entrusted with as the head of the Office of Police and Management (OPM) for eight years.

Barnes is not expected to be the only top official at CSCU to depart from the state agency.

Published July 13, 2023.

The co-chairs of the legislature’s energy committee object to your electric bill. Not the amounts, mind you, just the explanation of its component parts. State Senator Norm Needleman (D- Essex) and state Representative Jonathan Steinberg (D-Westport) wrote a letter to Marissa Paslick Gillet, the head of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) criticizing the description of the fourth of four categories of costs that the agency requires on electric bills.

Needleman and Steinberg do not cavil with the supply, delivery and transmission summaries. It’s the two-sentence “Public Policy” description that rankles the Democrats. It states, “Cost to support energy related programs authorized by the Legislature. Not regulated by PURA.” That brief explanation cuts too close to the truth.

Instead, Needleman and Steinberg want those two sentences removed and replaced by “Investments to support reliability, emissions reductions, and affordability. Not originated by PURA. Charge dependent on usage.” Politicians continue to strain to wedge their favorite euphemism into explanations for government spending. You are not paying a monthly “public policy” fee, you are making an investment to pave the road to a sunlit uplands imagined by the legislature. One must not mention these include costs imposed on consumers by legislators. To the consumer paying electric rates that are among the highest in the nation, that public policy charge is just one more cost.

The public policy charges on bills are allocated to conservation programs, conservation adjustments, the Green Bank, system benefits and, claiming the largest chunk, other energy programs. Needleman and Steinberg contend in their June 28th letter that their Orwellian dance “will preserve the intent of the Authority’s Decision (to explain bills) while more accurately describing the costs as investments that yield system benefits that cannot be fully captured by the confines of a consumer’s monthly electric bill.”

They conclude by urging PURA to adopt the changes they have submitted.

Published July 13, 2023.

A candidate lending great big chunks of change to his campaign is a sign of confidence or a signal that fundraising has disappointed.

Democrat Eric Coleman, a former state senator and retired Superior Court judge, made a an $80,000 loan to his campaign on June 28th as a thin campaign finance period was two days from closing. Coleman raised just $23,615 from supporters. Including the $80,000 loan, Coleman had $146,873 in cash-on-hand when the period ended on June 30th.

Former Eddie Perez top aide Matthew Hennessy began his late bid for city treasurer with a $50,000 loan. Hennessy defended Perez and was critical of the state’s prosecution of the disgraced mayor for corruption. Perez plead guilty to accepting a bribe and attempted extortion in 2017. Hennessy was one of Perez’s dyslexia explainers in the Democrat’s 2010 criminal trial.

Hennessy and his wife were plaintiffs in a much-commented on lawsuit against Hartford Golf Club and one its members. According to one document in the dispute, “The complaint stems from an alleged argument and physical altercation which occurred at a members’ holiday party in December 2016. Following the events at the party, the club took disciplinary action, suspending Fairbanks for a four-month period, during the winter months.” Hennessy was in a twist over the winter suspension (when there’s not much golf played in West Hartford).

In addition to his own $50,000, Hennessy received $250 from former Connecticut resident Joseph I. Lieberman, who served four terms in the U.S. Senate. Lieberman was elected to his fourth term in 2006 as an independent. (The same people who hailed the late Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., for winning election as governor in 1990 as a petitioning candidate took a different view of Lieberman’s bid 16 years later.) Lieberman was famously supportive of Senator John McCain’s 2008 bid for president against then-Senator Barack Obama.

Lieberman is listed in Hennessy’s report as a lawyer employed by KBT–that would be Kasowitz Benson Torres. That firm and its lead partner long represented loathsome demagogue Donald Trump, including $1.6 million from the campaign from November 4, 2020 to the end of the year. The firm also represented the risible Trump University in a fraud investigation that ended with a $25 million settlement to students traduced by Chancellor Trump and his minions.

Democrat Adam Wood, a lobbyist, contributed $250 to Hennessy and has also made fundraising calls. Hennessy must be a tough sell. The campaign reports just $6,800 in individual contributions.

Incumbent Democrat Carmen Sierra has raised $43,156 in individual contributions. Sierra became treasurer when controversial treasurer Adam Cloud resigned in 2022 after a decade in office.

Published July 11, 2023.

Monday’s funeral of former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., featured a variety of tributes that highlighted some of the memorable events of his political career. Speakers were spoiled for choice as they prepared their remarks.

The former Greenwich Republican-turned-A Connecticut Party leader was hailed for his willingness to take on issues others ducked or ignored. Weicker’s independence included his taste for taking a poke at fellow Republicans when he was in the Senate–and after. (It was a surprise to hear references to a house on fire and “the big bear who loves to get out of the cave and roar.“)

The tributes prompted a thought about an urgent contemporary issue. What would Lowell Weicker have done when he was governor if more than a thousand nursing students, nearly all of them women of color, had been locked out of their school? The Lowell Weicker who was eulogized Monday would not have allowed them to languish in a frustrating and expensive limbo for five months–so far.

Lowell Weicker would not have been indifferent to his administration’s failure to find meaningful solutions for dispossessed students trying to improve their career prospects in Connecticut. He would not have given those students a long, silent shrug.

Eulogies mark an end but they can also point the way forward.

Published July 11, 2023.

James Wade, a discreet, shrewd political adviser, as well as one of Connecticut’s top lawyers, has died at 86 after a long illness.

Decades of Democratic governors, senators and other political notables sought Wade’s advice and, often, his help in a dodgy moment. They came and went; Wade endured, a leading member of the informal government or the government-in-waiting, always consequential.

The Robinson & Cole law firm partner began counseling governors in his 30s with John Dempsey, who served from 1961 until 1971. Ella Grasso recognized Wade’s value during her historic five years leading the state. Her successor, Bill O’Neill, often relied on Wade during his under-appreciated decade as governor.

After O’Neill left office in 1991, a Democrat did not win the governorship for 20 years—a long stretch in the wilderness. Wade sustained his influence and reputation as a savvy force. A mention of James Wade signaled something of note was happening—or was about to be buried.

Wade’s talent for steering the powerful away from or out of trouble overshadowed his lifelong work as a lawyer. He long enjoyed a place among the state’s most respected lawyers, a man to see.

He left this world with many secrets.

Published July 3, 2023.

Municipal control over traditional democratic decisions of local government rules were dramatically altered in the state’s annual bond package. Not content with authorizing billions in spending in the final hours of its regular session, the legislature grabbed power from local charter revision commissions.

The provision was the work of Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons. The first-term Democrat has seen her authority slipping as she engages in a ceaseless public and private battle with the progressive wing of the local party. Seen as a force-in-formation in state Democratic politics, Simmons could be derailed if she continues to face opposition in Stamford from disaffected Democrats. The heavy-handed charter intervention may enflame the former state representatives growing number of detractors.

A charter revision commission has been toiling for more than a year developing and debating changes to the foundation document. Their efforts would go before voters but that may have become moot with the legislature’s pre-emption of local decision-making. The city council—not a center of goodwill for the Greenwich-raised Simmons—will be dismayed to see it is restricted from having its own legal counsel.

The danger with a vanity show of force like this one is that the legislation is broad and affects other towns. Simmons has managed to dismay plenty of Democratic activists nearly three years before the first delegate to the 2026 Democratic state convention is selected.

The requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act will be flying from Stamford to Hartford to assemble the threads of Simmons’s anti-democratic gambit.

Published June 22, 2023.