Katz Top Aides Fixated on the Color of Fasano’s Skin.

Former Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz fostered an atmosphere of contempt for legislators during her catastrophic eight-year tenure. Katz’s chief of staff, Elizabeth Duryea, delighted in this dark-face photoshop of Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano as a Willy Wonka character. Fasano was a critic of the department under Katz. Duryea sent the photos to Katz and were discovered on the former judge’s cell phone earlier this year. The malice toward critics, and sometimes others in the department, is a frequent theme in hundreds of pages of text messages obtained by Daily Ructions under the Freedom of Information Act.

Duryea was moved into a high-paying protected civil service job at DCF before the Malloy administration ended in January. This is part of their legacy.

Katz now practices law at the Hartford firm Shipman & Goodwin.