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The MDC—again. The first agenda for the regional water and sewer authority’s August meeting included a significant item: “Consideration and potential, action re: drafting of new ordinance to provide the MDC the ability to expand the stormwater system capacity in Hartford specifically for future development projects through ad valorem.”

The item raises the prospect of tagging seven of the member towns with the cost of development in the eighth, Hartford. The ad valorem tax formula for sewer services requires West Hartford to pay a disproportionate share of costs. Agenda item 11 for Monday’s meeting would open a new front in the battle for fairness at the relentlessly political agency.

And then a change. A revised agenda for Monday’s meeting appeared on the MDC’s website. The ad valorem tax has disappeared. The stealth tax increase may be the subject of comment—-and the evasive discussions that are the hallmark of the agency’s meetings.

Item 11 on the revised agenda is ”Opportunity for general public comments.” The changing agenda and plans to burden other town’s with Hartford’s development costs may be discussed there. some participants may want to suggest actions on what plotters can do with their plans.

Published August 5, 2023.

The Connecticut Lottery Corporation made an extraordinary public admission of failure Wednesday. It issued a warning to customers not to trust its retail terminals when checking tickets. New technology, launched in May, has featured ticket readers providing inaccurate responses. Winning tickets are not always properly read by the expensive new equipment.

This is a significant blunder for the quasi-public agency that has a history of them. The CT Lottery wrote that it “is advising players that if they have any lottery tickets purchased since May 21, 2023 and believe the lottery terminal response was incorrect when checking if the ticket had won or not, to hold on to their ticket and contact the CT Lottery at (860) 713-2700 or CTLotterySecurity@ctlottery.org.”

The statement ignores the purpose of the terminals that read tickets after a drawing. Many customers rely on the terminals for an accurate reading of their tickets and do not check them themselves. They would be unlikely to detect a winning ticket read as a losing one. The terminals should be disabled from reading tickets if they are not accurate.

Governor Ned Lamont chose to ignore innovation when he agreed to give the state’s two federally recognized tribes and the Connecticut Lottery Corporation to run sports betting in the state. More than ever, this added responsibility looks far beyond the capability of the often-troubled CT Lottery.

Published August 3, 2023.

If past is prologue, Derby election officials are in for a rough year. Derby Republican Town Committee members nominated an unrepentant election denier and insurrectionist, their chair, Gino DiGiovanni, as their candidate for mayor. DiGiovanni is a member of the local of the Board of Alderman from the Second Ward.

NBC CT broke the story last October when it identified DiGiovanni in video of the January 6, 2021, insurrection in the nation’s Capitol. “Open source surveillance video indicated DiGiovanni entered the Upper West Terrace door of the Capitol around 2:38 p.m., shortly after people inside the Capitol walked out that door, and people held it open for others,” NBC CT’s Len Bestoff reported. The mob was at the Capitol to impose by violence Donald Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 presidential election.

Mayor Richard Dziekan skipped the town committee endorsement contest and will meet DiGiovanni in a September 12th primary. Dziekan needs the signatures of 5% of Derby’s 1,249 registered Republicans.

DiGiovanni has claimed he was swept into the Capitol by the mob he joined on that infamous day of violence. He would, wouldn’t he. DiGiovanni has not said if he heard the chants of “Kill Mike Pence” that rang through the air. DiGiovanni joined the riot as his wife was home in Derby undergoing chemotherapy.

The winner of the Republican primary will face  former Alderman Joseph DiMartino, who lost to Dziekan by 48 votes out of the 2,812 votes cast in 2021.

Published August 3, 2023.

Hunter Biden told Judge Maryellen Noreika during his short circuited guilty plea appearance on Wednesday that he is admitted to the practice of law in the District of Columbia and Connecticut. Biden has been suspended from practice in Connecticut since 2021, according to State of Connecticut Judicial Branch records, for repeated failure to pay a mandatory fee. He has not been reinstated.

Biden, according to Judicial Branch spokesperson Melissa Farley in a Friday morning statement, “is currently not in good standing due to Attorney Biden’s failure to register or comply with the Statewide Grievance Committee’s [Minimum Continuing Legal Education] requirement since 2018…and to pay the Client Security Fund fee for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022….” No disciplinary action has been taken.

Robert Hunter Biden, a Yale Law School graduate, was admitted to practice in Connecticut in 1997. Like other lawyers admitted in the state, Biden is required to make an annual $75.00 payment to the Client Security Fund. The fund is “established by the rules of the Connecticut Superior Court to provide reimbursement to individuals who have lost money or property as a result of the dishonest conduct of an attorney practicing law in the State of Connecticut, in the course of the attorney-client relationship.”  

Unlike other Connecticut lawyer-related fees, the Client Security Fund fee is imposed on “each judge, judge trial referee, state referee, family support magistrate, family support referee and administrative law judge.” According to the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch website, “An attorney is not exempt from the fee because he or she practices out of state, or because he or she does not actively practice law. Only those attorneys who have retired, resigned, who have served on active duty in the armed forces of the United States for a period of more than six months during the calendar year, or who have been disbarred, are exempt from payment of the fee.”

The fee may be paid online. The Judicial Branch provides at least one email reminder to lawyers that the $75.00 fee is due each year on or before June 15th.

Biden, who has suffered from a widely known addiction to drugs, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to failing to pay $100,000 in taxes on $1.5 million of income in 2017 and 2018. The lawyer and businessman has become a notably successful artist in the last several years, commanding hundreds of thousands of dollars for his paintings, according to The New York Times.

Published July 28, 2023.

In September, Governor Ned Lamont criticized his Republican opponent, Bob Stefanowski, for doing business in Saudi Arabia. “I can see why somebody running for office would want to hide that from the public. Signing a deal with the Saudis right after the assassination of Khashoggi raises questions about judgment.” Stefanowski’s entanglement in the Desert Kingdom was first reported by Daily Ructions on the eve of the first debate of the campaign.

Readers may have seen raw screenshots on social media indicating that Oak HC/FT, the venture capital firm co-founded by Ann Huntress Lamont, the governor’s wife and most influential advisor, has become a partner of Sanabil Investments. Sanabil manages Saudi Arabia’s $600 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund. It made a $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner’s new Affinity Fund, created months after the end of the Trump administration. The Saudis know something about the power of money to influence others who worry nothing at all about their reputations.

Sanabil includes Oak HC/FT on its list of “our partners” in its portfolio. Asked about Sanibel’s investment in Oak HC/FT on Tuesday, Lamont spokesman Adam Joseph replied in a written statement Thursday, “The Governor became aware of Sanabil’s investment in Oak HC/FT last week. Annie Lamont is one of the most respected venture capitalists in the country. Oak HC/FT makes independent investment decisions. The Governor is not involved in the business, including in what investments to accept or make.”

Lamont, who has opinions on most things, declined to say what sort of judgment the investment revealed. Nor did he respond to other questions, including:

How much is the investment? How does this reflect on Oak HC/FT’s judgment? Is Governor Lamont concerned that the Sanabil investment will compromise his own independence? Is Governor Lamont uncomfortable with the prospect of his family profiting by doing business with a fund controlled by a government with an appalling record on human rights? As a former newspaper editor, does Governor Lamont feel a moral imperative to avoid all entanglements with the government that carried out the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the regime whose columns for The Washington Post enraged Saudi autocrat Mohammed bid Salman?

Anyone who pays attention to Connecticut politics knows that Mrs. Lamont is a spectacularly successful investment wizard. As a woman, she has been a trailblazer in a notably tough business. That the trail she chooses to follow leads to a financial partnership with a murderous regime that continues to imprison women for supporting dissidents seems to be of no consequence in her world. It is not getting better for Saudi Arabia’s bravest women. Saudi Arabia’s executions continue to alarm and appall much of the world. All that gold can blind one to the basic aspirations of a wealthy nation’s oppressed. Or to the pain of 9/11 families.

None of it matters. Money makes money and the money money makes makes more money. That is what counts. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns, but the Saudis must be confident that the firm Mrs. Lamont founded will make money for them–and for her.

President Barack Obama made an observation for the ages when he said of the rich, “I mean, I do think you’ve made enough money.” He was wrong. It is never enough.

I’ve seen the emails. Mrs. Lamont is her husband’s most influential advisor. He’s free to choose whose advice he seeks and acts upon. The most persuasive voice belongs to Saudi partner Ann Huntress Lamont.

Building a family fortune often brings its founder into lucrative alliances with disreputable people. A century ago, J.P. Morgan Bank financier Thomas Lamont (Governor Lamont’s great grandfather) was a fan of the fascist regime that brought misery and death to Italy 100 years ago. Thomas Lamont, according to historian Ron Chernow, was dictator Benito Mussolini’s accomplice in destroying Italian democracy. Thomas Lamont also had a dalliance with the Japanese government, assisting it in creating a pretext for its brutal invasion and occupation of Manchuria.

And now Saudi Arabia takes its place in the Lamont family tradition because it is never enough.

Published July 27, 2023.

It was not close. New Canaan Republicans have a tradition of high-turnout caucuses to nominate municipal offices. Tuesday’s festival of democracy saw 1,200 party members gather to dump incumbent First Selectman Kevin Moynihan in a contest without mercy.

Challenger Dionna Carlson won the party endorsement with 724 votes to Moynihan’s 266. A third candidate, Kimberly Norton received 217 votes. Carlson, a former chair of the Board of Education, announced her candidacy in May. Moynihan was seeking a fourth term.

Carlson’s margin of victory–with nearly 60% of the vote–indicates that Moynihan would struggle to convert his 22% of the vote into a September primary victory. A 24% turnout of party members at a July caucus is likely an accurate indication of a primary result.

New Canaan Democrats nominated Board of Education member Amy Murphy Carroll for the town’s top job.

New Canaan was one of Connecticut’s most reliably Republican towns until 2016. Hillary Clinton won the New York suburb that year. The Biden-Harris ticket took it by thousands of votes over Donald Trump in 2020. Last year, Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, received 500 more votes than Republican Bob Stefanowski. Lamont was so pleased by his New Canaan win that he made a curious reference to it in his inauguration address to the General Assembly in January. Governors have traditionally declined to recite election returns on a day reserved for looking ahead. That is the power of a tony Fairfield County town over a Greenwich Democrat.

Published July 26, 2023.

Friends, dark times have descended on lower Fairfield County. Former state Representative Gail Lavielle (R-Versailles) announced Thursday in a rare Facebook post that her move to New Canaan from Wilton has been marred by the discovery that her new town’s stately homes include no libraries.

The Texas native and dual American and French citizen decried having to put bookshelves up in her new house. “I am not very pleased by this,” Lavielle moans. Adding to her burdens, “The painters are STILL here, but that will soon be over.”

It gets worse, Lavielle and her husband Jean-Pierre own two houses, their new one in New Canaan and they one they left in Wilton. This is July, so property taxes are due on both homes. Such troubles.

The former public relations professional has taken the measure of her neighbors and found them wanting. That lack of libraries has driven Lavielle to an inescapable conclusion. “I seriously don’t think people here read.”

Not to be disputatious but this may be an ill-considered pronouncement by Lavielle. You would think a town that spends $25,000 a year per public school pupil and boasts a 98% graduation rate would boast some readers within its boundaries. The town library’s summer writing program for children must be a trial for the instructors explaining a sentence to the les miserables moppets. No Proust for them.

National treasure Fran Lebowitz is said to have long owned a home in New Canaan. She not only writes but also reads books. The social commentator has spoken at amusing length about the expense she bears to move her beloved books.

New Canaanites, wonderful discoveries are daily features at your local library. Here’s how a library was celebrated on Broadway. (Broadway is busy area on the West Side of Manhattan that is home to dozens of theaters where eight times a week productions of all sorts delight audiences.) Jane Karkowski explains in less that two minutes.

Won’t someone in the tony town invite Lavielle into their book club? She would no doubt be an unforgettable addition.

Published July 20, 2023.

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.