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More Notes on Surviving a Scandal.
The state contracting scandal continues to engulf Governor Ned Lamont’s administration. Lamont’s strategy appears to be a series of shrugs and dismissals of each new revelation. We know that federal criminal investigators are casting a wide net to gather evidence on how and why state contracts for construction, demolition and hazardous abatement were steered to favored businesses.
A corruption scandal of this reach always touches more than the central figures. It may ensnare the culpable and the innocent. Daily Ructions offered advice for surviving a scandal on February 6th. Recent events prompt more.
As day follows night, home improvements are a constant in Connecticut corruption scandals. They are closing in on you if you see any of the following on a subpoena: kitchen, basement, estimates, contracts, and receipts.
If you failed to obtain building permits for home improvements, do not slither into your local town hall now to apply for them while explaining you forgot all about the application and the fees in the rush of construction.
If investigators start poking around a delightful Farmington restaurant for records and recollections of who paid for meals there with contractors, start hunting for receipts and ethics disclosures.
As you assess your situation with the assistance of competent counsel, learn what a proffer is. Criminal defense lawyers refer to it as a Queen for a Day Letter. Learn more about it here.
Read documents. Governor Lamont continues to appear hopelessly muddled as he struggles to explain why he knew nothing and saw nothing, absolutely nothing, about the scandal that is staining his administration. The Twardy report is 42 pages of narrative. The sorry tale flows in the telling, even with some omissions. A document compiled in the summer of 2020 by building trades unions association and given to Lamont’s office is two and a half pages. In his befuddled explanation of why he did not see the document, Lamont said last week that the union representatives wanted most to talk about project labor agreements, PLAs. They never got to warnings about Kostaninos Diamantis’s abuse of the school construction grants program. The Yale business school graduate seemed not to remember that the union complaints about PLAs centered solely on Diamantis. It’s right there in that concise memo. Read the documents before commenting on them with misplaced confidence.
If an element of your defense is that you have been mistreated by the powerful, you’d better not have berated, embarrassed or made subordinates cry. If you required those who worked for to get your coffee or lunch, your bid for victimhood will be undermined. A directive to deliver documents to the boss at home is in no public employee’s job description.
Criminal investigations and the subsequent prosecutions can disrupt domestic harmony. Understand the complexities of the doctrines of spousal communications and spousal privilege in criminal prosecutions. As an example of its complexities, the smartest lawyer I know pointed out that it is intended to protect the sanctity of marriage–where it has not already been shredded by the acts of one or both spouses.
If you are sure you deserve to keep or be reinstated to your state job, insist the state labor panel hearing your claim open your hearing to the public. If you are confident of your case, let in the light.
It is imprudent to declare how talented and accomplished you are while also claiming you saw nothing, you knew nothing. Prosecutors are not persuaded by people who insist they are smart about everything but what went on in front of them.
Published on February 22, 2022.
February 22, 2022 Comments Off on More Notes on Surviving a Scandal.
Federal Investigators Examining Hartford School Construction Project.
Federal criminal investigators have discussed state school construction issues with Hartford officials, Daily Ructions has learned.
The Courant’s Ed Mahony reported Thursday that Hartford fired Construction Advocacy Professionals (CAP) last month–after learning that the state would no longer reimburse costs of CAP’s contract with Hartford. CAP was providing construction oversight services to Hartford in its extensive $149 million renovation project.
Federal subpoenas suggest that Kostantinos Diamantis, a former top adviser to Governor Ned Lamont, is one focus of the investigation. Diamantis, a former Democratic legislator from Bristol, was Lamont’s deputy budget director while also continuing to head the state’s school construction program. Diamantis has denied any wrongdoing.
Tolland’s superintendent of school’s said last week that Diamantis required the town to hire CAP, which is owned by Antonietta Roy, also formerly of Bristol, in the construction of the Birch Grove Primary School. The state approved $530,000 in payments to CAP by the town for work on the project.
Hartford officials have pledged to cooperate with federal investigators. The Bulkeley High School project was featured on CAP’s website Thursday.
The story continues.
Published February 18, 2022.
February 18, 2022 Comments Off on Federal Investigators Examining Hartford School Construction Project.
West Haven Again. Credit Card Abuse and More Handwringing.
A measure of the failure of the state’s financial oversight in West Haven. You remember West Haven. When last heard from, former state Representative Michael DiMassa, a city employee, was charged with embezzling $635,000 of Covid relief funds from the coffers of the city that has been under the state’s financial control since 2017.
Monday night’s city council meeting revealed abuse of the city’s credit card. The use of the city’s credit card far exceeds the receipts in the municipal government’s possession.
How bad is it? The state’s budget director, Melissa McCaw, had to get out her sickbed (she’s suffering from COVID and missed a budget presentation today) to address the latest crisis in West Haven. After learning of the council meeting revelations, McCaw told OPM’s municipal oversight board, ” Immediate action in West Haven has been taken at the direction of OPM. A follow-up correspondence from me to the MARB will be forthcoming to update you accordingly. Please stay tuned.”
The long Monday meeting is preserved on YouTube. February 16, 2022 Comments Off on West Haven Again. Credit Card Abuse and More Handwringing.
The 2020 Warning Of Abuse in the State’s School Construction Program.
By the summer of 2020, contractors and labor organizations were alarmed at abuses they were witnessing in the state’s school construction program. They were frustrated by “a shroud of secrecy over this Trade Labor List or State Contract List.” They had specific concerns and solutions. The association leaders were fluent in the substance of state construction contracting issues and, remarkably, unafraid to criticize two of Governor Ned Lamont’s most favored advisers, Kostantinos Diamantis and Josh Geballe.
The document above was prepared for the July 22, 2020, meeting with Lamont. It subsequently made its way to other state agencies. The document confirms that Governor Lamont was warned that he needed to make changes in his administration. In November 2019, the school construction program was moved from the Department of Administrative Services, where a state statute required it to be administered, to the Office of Policy Management. Diamantis, who had been running school construction, became deputy budget director that month at McCaw’s ferocious insistence. Lamont married that terrible decision to a worse one: allowing Diamantis to take school construction with him to OPM. Anyone familiar with state government at that time knew that Secretary Melissa McCaw was the person in the Lamont administration least likely to subject her close friend Diamantis to rigorous supervision.
Lamont failed to act and now faces the humiliation of a federal criminal investigation into the highest levels of his administration.
The governor can continue to avert his gaze, claim he knew nothing, and hope he gets to Election Day before lawyers the U.S. Attorney’s office begin marching defendants before judges to enter guilty pleas. There is another way. Lamont can tell the public what he knew and what he did about the warnings brave people delivered to his administration. As bad as knowing and doing nothing was, the governor not knowing that a rising tide of corruption was flooding his administration while people around him were eyeing the lifeboats is as alarming.
Published February 15, 2022.
February 15, 2022 Comments Off on The 2020 Warning Of Abuse in the State’s School Construction Program.
A Valentine From Ella Fitzgerald and Something Big.
And a joyful reminder that you never know what’s next:
Published February 14, 2022.
February 14, 2022 Comments Off on A Valentine From Ella Fitzgerald and Something Big.
Supreme Court to Consider Suspension or Removal of Judge Alice Bruno.
Judge Alice Bruno has been summoned to a place she has not been in more than two years–a courthouse. The absent judge left her Waterbury court chambers in November 14, 2019 and has not returned. She has been paid over $400,000 since walking off the job. Judge Bruno will have an opportunity to persuade members of the state’s highest court why she should not be removed the bench.
The Bruno story and the extended failure of frustrated the state’s frustrated court administration to take action was first reported in this Hartford Courant column. On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a summons to Bruno, ordering her to appear before it on April 5th to show cause why it should not remove her for violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct.
“Specifically, Judge Bruno shall show cause why her failure to perform judicial functions for at least the last two years,” the Order to Show Cause states, “is not a violation of the following Rules contained in the Code of Judicial Conduct: 1.2 (Promoting Confidence in the Judiciary); 2.1 (Giving Precedence to the Duties of Judicial Office); 2.5 (Competence, Diligence, and Cooperation). Judge Bruno may be accompanied by counsel if she chooses.”
Published February 11, 2022.
February 11, 2022 Comments Off on Supreme Court to Consider Suspension or Removal of Judge Alice Bruno.
Miner Will Not Seek Fourth Term in State Senate.
State Senator Craig Miner (R-Litchfield) announced Thursday he will not run for a fourth term in the 30th State Senate District. Miner was elected to serve the 14-town district in the northwest region of the state in 2016.
Before serving in the Senate, Miner was a member of the House of Representatives for 16 years. He was Litchfield’s first selectman for a decade. He points out in his announcement that he has spent more than half of his adult life in public office.
The seat was held for many years by the late and beloved Dell Eads, the last Republican to serve as the President Pro Tem of the Senate.
Published February 10, 2022.
February 10, 2022 Comments Off on Miner Will Not Seek Fourth Term in State Senate.
Scandal Watch: What We Must Know From Melissa McCaw’s Thursday Budget Meeting.
Two programs in OPM Secretary Melissa McCaw’s agency, school construction and the state pier project, are the subject of a federal criminal investigation. School construction has been taken from her after her deputy, Kostantinos Diamantis, was suspended in October. He retired but is seeking to return to his job as the head of the school construction program. The state pier project remains under her jurisdiction. This is unprecedented in a state that has endured frequent corruption scandals. Thursday’s Appropriations Committee meeting with McCaw provides a rare opportunity to pose questions and hear answers in public on matters of urgent public interest.
Here are some essential questions for McCaw:
Have federal criminal investigators contacted you about their investigation of the school construction grants program and the state pier project? Have you retained legal counsel to represent you in the investigation? Do your interests diverge from those of the state? Will you tell the public immediately if you are questioned or served an individual subpoena for documents?
Have you participated in complying with the subpoena served on the state?
How did you supervise Mr. Diamantis’s management of the school construction grants program?
Did you have any concerns that a Bristol company that had never built a school was hired without the benefit of competitive bidding to build a school in Tolland? Have you met Antoinette DiBenedetto-Roy of Construction Advocacy Professionals (CAP)? When did you learn that CAP was working on school construction projects and had hired your deputy’s daughter?
In a November 2019 memorandum of understanding, you and former DAS commissioner Josh Geballe extolled the advantages of moving the school construction grants program from DAS to OPM. Why was the school construction program returned to DAS after Mr. Diamantis was suspended and then retired? Why were the advantages you included in a memorandum of understanding no longer relevant to the effective administration of the program?
Did you participate in the decision to suspend Mr. Diamantis? Do you agree with Governor Lamont’s decision to suspend Mr. Diamantis?
Published February 9, 2022.
February 9, 2022 Comments Off on Scandal Watch: What We Must Know From Melissa McCaw’s Thursday Budget Meeting.
A Ned Lamont Moment to Remember: Kosta’s Got to Deliver the Goods.
Whatever Governor Ned Lamont says while delivering his annual budget address Wednesday at noon, it is not likely to be remembered or repeated as often as his State Pier declaration that he made the speeches but “Kosta’s gotta deliver the goods.”
The State Pier project and the state’s school construction grants program are the subject of a federal criminal investigation. Kostantinos Diamantis, a top adviser to Lamont, exercised authority over both programs.
Published February 9, 2022.
February 9, 2022 Comments Off on A Ned Lamont Moment to Remember: Kosta’s Got to Deliver the Goods.
Wishes Come True, Not Free.
The hiring scandal that has claimed former Lamont administration deputy budget director Kostantinos Diamantis will see others leave state government. The federal criminal investigation into the Lamont administration’s handing of the school construction grants program and state pier project will bring sorrowful headlines in the months ahead.
Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s bitter departure from his office is imminent. Budget director Melissa McCaw may follow soon after, according to residents of the Capitol village.
In this interlude, Daily Ructions readers will enjoy a 1992 performance of the Boys Choir of Harlem and Betty Buckley as they join on two Stephen Sondheim gems, Our Time, from Merrily We Roll Along, and the eternal Children Will Listen, from the finale of Into the Woods. Sondheim died at his home in Roxbury in December. He was 91.
Sondheims’s wisdom endures. Careful the tale you tell, indeed.
“Careful the spell you cast
Not just on children
Sometimes the spell may last
Past what you can see
And turn against you
Careful the tale you tell
That is the spell
Children will listen.”
February 8, 2022 Comments Off on Wishes Come True, Not Free.