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Legislation authorizing the Connecticut Green Bank to create and administer the Public Schools Solar Power Systems and Energy Efficiency Financing Fund advanced through the Senate Wednesday. The Office of Fiscal Analysis concluded in a fiscal note that the new program will have a significant impact on state finances. The legislation includes a $425 million bond authorization to finance energy efficiency projects.

The Green Bank was created to finance projects the private sector declined. The private sector has not been ignoring financing energy efficiency projects. The Green Bank is showing the traditional inclinations of government bureaucrats the world over: grasp, grow and intrude.

The bill provides an opportunity to address the woeful oversight of the state’s school construction grant program. The General Assembly’s loose rules for amending legislation ought to be engaged to force some sunshine on the Department of Administrative Services’s (DAS) expensive dodging of proper oversight.

After much secrecy and many delays, DAS revealed its audit of the school construction program last year. DAS’s terms of the Office of School Construction Grants & Review audit conducted by Marcum, LLP, precluded the auditors from speaking to municipalities and contractors who dealt with the program that has spent billions on financing the renovation and construction of public schools. It was a farcical exercise intended to shroud in secrecy the scandals that came to light during Governor Ned Lamont’s first term. It was, like the trial in “Bananas”, “It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham!” 

The Green Bank bill creates, in legislative parlance, a vehicle to right some wrongs. The legislation ought to be amended in the House to withhold all funds until an independent audit of the school construction grant program is conducted by a firm chosen by the legislature’s State Auditors of Public Accounts.

The audit of the DAS hazardous materials program was worse. The CT Mirror reported last month that “that more than a year’s worth of documentation was unavailable to auditors.” The DAS and Office of Policy and Management’s version of Rosemary Wood’s 18 1/2 minute gap on a White House tape recording. While federal criminal investigators may still be looking into the two programs, the legislature ought not shrug at these woulds inflicted on public confidence. Legislators should hand the hazardous material investigation to the state auditors and fund an investigation that is independent and is given a wide brief.

A collective crossing of fingers to conceal mismanagement is a betrayal of the public’s trust at a time when confidence in our institutions remains under constant attack. This is a moment to redress mistakes in school construction and related programs before authorizing hundreds of millions for a new program with no proper oversight and no urgent purpose.

Published May 25, 2023.

State Comptroller Sean Scanlon travels to New Britain. today Scanlon “will convene a roundtable to discuss mental health challenges and access to resources throughout Connecticut. The panel will also cover a broad range of topics, from child and adolescent mental health to addiction and recovery.”

Many roundtables are gabfests that recite what participants already know–with a few helpings of tut-tutting added at regular intervals. Today’s could be different if participants address one potential solution to the shortage of mental health and addiction beds in Connecticut: convert UConn Health to a mental health and addiction facility.

UConn Health continues to be a burden for the state, as Scanlon knows. Making a success of the hospital continues to confound UConn’s leadership. The search for a healthcare conglomerate to take the hospital off the state’s hands has failed. The pension costs and work rules will always be significant impediments.

Massachusetts provides a way forward. The Massachusetts Department of Mental Health Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital opened in 2012 and provides 320 beds for 260 adults and 60 adolescents. The UConn facility in Farmington, which is new enough to require modest alterations, could serve an essential public purpose.

Published May 24, 2023.

Michael Cicchetti, former undersecretary at the Office of Policy and Management (OPM), has joined the Senate Republicans as their lead lawyer. He takes the position vacated by Jason Welch for a seat on the Superior Court. Welch was a member of the Senate Republican caucus from 2011 to 2015.

At OPM, Cicchetti served as  Chairman of the Waterbury Financial Planning and Assistance Board, helping to lead the restoration of that city’s parlous finances. Cicchetti arrives at Senate Republican Office after nearly eight years leading the Connecticut government affairs office of Frontier Communications.

Another top staff member of the caucus, Brian Cafferelli, resigned to become Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Protection in the Lamont administration.

Published May 23, 2023.

Bob Stefanowski forgot to block his Twitter location feature. The two-time Republican nominee for governor commented Saturday on Connecticut’s policing laws—from the United Arab Emirates. Stefanowski, who spent much of the 2022 campaign declining to reveal Saudi Arabian interests were paying millions to his one-man LLC.

The former payday loan executive chose to unleash his dismay with Connecticut laws from one of the world’s most oppressed nations Saturday. Stefanowski was prompted to share his views with a free people by shootings in Hamden. Stefanowski’s 2022 rematch against Democrat Ned Lamont saw the Madison Republican highlight support from police unions unhappy with Lamont for signing 2020 police accountability legislation. Lamont defeated Stefanowski by 153,000 votes, more than three times the Democrat’s 2018 margin of victory.

The UAE, Freedom House reports, subjects “the the civil liberties of both citizens and noncitizens, who make up an overwhelming majority of the population, are subject to significant restrictions.” The Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index ranked the UAE ranked 153rd worldwide for personal freedom. Torture is not unknown in UAE interrogations and prisons.

Stefanowski was likely not in the UAE to urge the authoritarian government to release human rights Ahmed Mansoor, who the regime has held in prison since 2017. Mansoor previously offended the government with his blogging, a pursuit Stefanowski as a candidate both disdained and cultivated.

Stefanowski’s location was no longer included on his tweet late Saturday afternoon in EDT.

Published May 21, 2023.

James Sullivan, former Norwich utilities commission chairman and former chairman of the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative (CMEEC) board of directors , was sentenced sentenced Wednesday to six months in prison for misusing rate ratepayer funds for a notorious 2015 trip to the Kentucky Derby and trips to the deluxe Greenbriar resort in West Virginia.

The government’s sentencing memorandum includes a glimpse of Connecticut’s profitable and furtive political system of debts and favors. “Sullivan used his position,” the memorandum states, to authorize the expenditure of CMEEC funds for spa treatments for the spouse of William DiBella of the Metropolitan District Counsel [sic] (MDC). More specifically, in June 2015, while he was chairman of the CMEEC Board, Defendant Sullivan Sullivan approved $340 of spa charges for DiBella’s wife [Donna DiBella] at the Norwich Inn and Spa to the CMEEC master account, despite the fact that [CMEEC manager Ellen] Kachmar had specifically given instructions to the spa not to charge those expenses to CMEEC’s account.”

“Mrs. DiBella had not even an arguable business connection with CMEEC,” the government’s memorandum states. But in March 2016, Defendant Sullivan entered into a consulting contract with William DiBella and MDC for $150,000 annually commencing as of January 2016…This pattern of providing personal favors to business partners, and then later profiting from the relationship with them, demonstrated Sullivan’s utter disregard for the appropriate use of CMEEC funds when it came to benefits for himself, his friends, and his associates, and it belies the assertion that he was serving on the Commission and the Board almost completely on a volunteer basis.”

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, The Day newspaper reported, told Sullivan at his sentencing, “you lost your way.” That was an act of kindness by Judge Meyer, who appeared to give considerable thought to the appropriate penalty. Sullivan had been on a lucrative political path for decades. His profession was influence and he immersed himself in it.

That $340 spa treatment for William DiBella’s wife compliments of the municipal ratepayers tells the tale in a vivid stroke.

Is it ever enough? That you are asking the questions, one student of Connecticut’s political traditions observed Friday, provides the sordid answer.

Published May 19, 2023.

Career federal prosecutor Sandra Slack Glover faced serious headwinds during a marathon confirmation hearing Monday. Glover struggled to provide a convincing explanation of her effusive 2017 letter in support of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The letter was first reported by Daily Ructions on April 25th, the day Governor Ned Lamont nominated Glover to the high court.

Members met in closed party caucuses after more than six hours—with a break for lunch—of questioning. The members emerged shortly before 7 p.m. to begin a committee meeting that included a vote on Glover on its agenda. House co-chair Steven Stafstrom announced the vote on Glover’s nomination was postponed.

Getting the Glover nomination across the finish line may become a test of Lamont’s new team.

Published May 15, 2023.

The Rules Committee of the Superior Court holds a public hearing Monday at 10 a.m. on a proposed change to bail rules. The proposal reduces the amount a defendant may post for a cash bail from 10% to 7% and raises the bail amounts the new rule applies to from $20,000 to $50,000.

The Practice Book changes under consideration are here. The hearing will be carried on the Judicial Branch’s YouTube channel.

Published May 8, 2023.

Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz is raising money for state Democrats by sounding the alarm over “extreme MAGA judges.” The Middletown Democrat and three-time gubernatorial hopeful warns in a Wednesday email, “One month ago, an extreme, right-wing judge single-handedly overturned the FDA’s decades-old approval of the abortion pill. This unprecedented judicial overreach threatens all Americans’ access to legal and safe medication, even in states like our where abortion is legal.”

Bysiewicz warns before asking for a contribution to state Democrats, “Even though Connecticut protects access to abortion, extreme MAGA judges could upend everything.”

The second-term lieutenant governor might want to have a word with Governor Ned Lamont. He stated his intention to nominate Assistant United States Attorney Sandra Glover to the open seat on the state Supreme Court. Lamont’s announcement was made before the Judicial Selection Commission had approved Glover for the high court. That is said to have been remedied at an April 28th meeting of the commission in which the hurried Glover nomination was once more a write-in on the secret agenda.

Glover was an enthusiastic supporter of Amy Coney Barrett when she was nominated to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals by Donald Trump in 2017. Glover joined other lawyers who had served as Supreme Court clerks with Barrett in a letter proclaiming the conservative then-law professor in the high court bullpen possessed many virtues.

The former clerks wrote,

“We worked closely with Professor Barrett during our year clerking at the Court. We had the opportunity to observe her approach to the law and her interactions with others during our intense and challenging joint endeavor supporting the work of the Court. Based on our observations, we came to respect Professor Barrett’s conscientious work ethic, her respect for the law, and her remarkable legal abilities. She conducted herself with professionalism, grace, and integrity. But perhaps as importantly, she treated with courtesy everyone who worked at the Court and she was able to work collaboratively with her colleagues (even those with whom she disagreed) on challenging legal questions. She is smart, honorable, and fair-minded; all good qualities for a Circuit Court Judge.”

Because Barrett was dubbed long ago as a conservative favorite one day to win a Supreme Court nomination, her views were widely examined and commented upon before her 2017 nomination–and Glover’s letter. Susan Glasser and Peter Baker write in their book on the Trump administration, “The Divider”, that Barrett was “a hero of anti-abortion conservatives” in 2018 when Trump had his second Supreme Court vacancy to fill. He chose Brett Kavanaugh, Glasser and Baker report, and told Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, “I’m going to save Barrett for Ginsburg,” in the event the ailing justice left the Court before his term ended.

Bysiewicz, who made a famously short-circuited bid for attorney general in 2010, by now ought to know about Glover’s enthusiastic support of Barrett–and that Barrett was long a conservative favorite. None of this was a secret in 2017–and events have confirmed them.

Published May 3, 2012.

Faculty and other members employees of the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities (CSCU) system were urged to attend today’s Day of Action budget protest at the Capitol. CSCU was providing transportation and more–salaries.

“If you choose to attend,” Naugatuck Valley Community College Chief Executive Officer Lisa Dresden wrote, “I have been informed that you can code this time as REGULAR time and not code it as accrued time in CODE.” (Translation: You will be paid to lobby legislators.)

“Bottom line: If we want CSCU to continue to be the state’s primary engine of workforce development, upward mobility, and opportunity for all our residents, we need to fully find our operation,” Dresden continued.

On Tuesday, William (Terry) Brown, CEO of Gateway Community College, provided a similar note of reassurance to faculty on that campus. “Given that this is a CSCU-sponsored activity, employees are not required to use accrued time,” Brown wrote. “Employees should discuss their plans with their supervisor to ensure that we maintain department operations and services, adequate coverage, staffing, etc.” Brown noted the college was providing transportation.

In an email the day before, Brown included a line that suggests the campus leaders were receiving scripts for their dire warning.

“Bottom line: If we want CSCU to continue to be the state’s primary engine of workforce development, upward mobility, and opportunity for all our residents, we need to fully fund our operations,” Brown emphasized in italics.

The pay-to-lobby message undermines the CSCU theme that its resources continue to grow more precarious. Governor Ned Lamont’s administration has continued to refute claims from the state’s higher education institutions that his budget proposal is inadequate to meet their needs. A crisp argument continues to get lost in the haze of competing claims of how much has been spent, where it came from and how much should be appropriated in this year’s budget.

Published April 28, 2023.

Governor Ned Lamont’s nominee for the Supreme Court hailed Amy Coney Barrett’s 2017 nomination to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Sandra Slack Glover joined other Supreme Court clerks to Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s ranking member, in a letter attesting to Barrett’s “conscientious work ethic, her respect for the law, and her remark legal abilities.”

The letter came from the Supreme Court clerks who served with Barrett in the October 1998 term. Glover and the other signatories assured Grassley and Feinstein that Barrett “is smart, honorable, and fair-minded….” Many will disagree with that judgment in view of her record on the Supreme Court, to which she was elevated at the end of the Trump administration.

Glover has more immediate issues before she is asked to explain her public assessment of Barrett. The secretive Judicial Selection Commission met on March 31st to act on Glover’s application for approval to the bench. It did—but only to the Superior Court, according to the commission’s minutes. The failure to approve Glover’s application for the high court—a write-in on the meeting agenda—is an embarrassment for Lamont and the commission.

The commission will write-in Glover again at Friday’s closed-to-the-public meeting.

Published April 25, 2023.