Get Ready for More of This. Senate Dems’ Slap Planted in UConn Foundation Job.

State Senate Democrats’ chief of staff Derek Slap will become a vice president at the murky University of Connecticut Foundation. Slap’s new job begins September 2nd. The Democratic operative has been with the Senate Democrats for seven years. He departs only a few months before retiring caucus leader Donald Williams (who also tried to get a job in higher education) leaves the legislature.

Slap will oversee “external relations” for the foundation. That job will largely entail keeping state officials and the public from getting a close view of what goes on in the organization. Though it received millions in public funds each year, the foundation is not subject to freedom of information laws or oversight by the state’s auditors. An August 1st email foundation head Josh Newton to foundation employees, its board of directors, and UConn’s “President’s Cabinet”, lays it on thick. Newton writes of Slap, who can be abrasive, “He is dynamic, energetic, extremely focused and will be a great fit into our organization’s culture.” What a nationwide search to fill the job it must have been. Newton told recipients of his message that Slap is an expert in crisis communications. Translation: blocking any bits of sunlight that might make their way into the foundation’s operation.

Slap is not expected to be the only Democratic state official to land in UConn land. Watch for at least one high ranking Malloy official to snag a big job at the university before the first snow falls. A job at UConn is not subject to the same public integrity protections against political hires that apply to the rest of state government. A new governor would not have the same authority to undo late term (after a November defeat, for example) appointments at UConn that he would have over the state bureaucracy.