Legislators face test in Tuesday’s Gilman confirmation hearing. Balance of power between branches at stake.

Members of the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee will be batting for their colleagues on Tuesday. The committee takes up the renomination of Michelle Gilman to serve as Commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) at its 10 a.m. meeting.

The meeting will be streamed on the committee’s YouTube channel.

Gilman is the most elusive and nonsense-generating Lamont nominee the committee will face this term. She has shown herself heedless in refusing to respond with meaningful answers to questions posed by legislators of both parties. The confirmation hearing provides a crucial occasion for institutional integrity to overcome blind party partisanship.

Gilman parachuted into the job last year as waves from the school construction scandal continued to lap at the Governor Ned Lamont’s office after Josh Geballe resigned. Some of what appeared to be the subject of a federal criminal investigation occurred while Geballe’s agency was home to the Office of School Construction Grants & Review (OSCG&R). Gilman shutdown all inquiries by pledging an audit of the program.

When the finance committee held a meeting on the school construction grants program, Senate co-chairman John Fonfara served as Gilman’s blocker in preventing questions about specific school construction progress. Gilman pledged to commission an audit of the program that would include periodic updates for legislators. The barebones audit was released late in the day on Friday, January 21st. Gilman served the legislature one heaping helping of whitewash.

Tuesday provides legislators to remind Lamont, Gilman and themselves that they are members of an equal branch of government at a critical moment. Holding one of the governor’s nominations on the House calendar at the behest of two lobbyists makes a point, but not the one House leaders believe they did. Members will diminish themselves and the institution they serve if they allow Gilman to execute her wordy dodge in answer to reasonable inquiries about the people’s business.

Members of the nominations committee ought to ask Gilman on Tuesday why auditors spoke to no local officials in performing the audit of the school construction grant program. Who imposed that severe limitation and why? Who decided to discard Gilman’s promise and provide no updates on the progress of the audit?

The CT Mirror reported last week that DAS has terminated a contract with hazardous waste remediation company AAIS. The Mirror reported last year that the company had received most of the purchase orders under the state’s contracts for emergency services. DAS announced it terminated the AAIS contract “in the best interest of the state.” What criteria did it use to decide what was in the best interest of the state? What did DAS officials learn recently about AAIS that they did not know months ago? How was it in the best interest of the state to commission an audit of the school construction grant program by precluding auditors from speaking with local officials?

Has Gilman asked employees who work in OSCG&R if they were aware of the unusual course the no-bid construction of Tolland’s Birch Grove Primary School took? Did they raise any concerns about alleged threats to withhold project funding if Tolland officials did not hire contractors former program director Kostantinos Diamantis may have favored? If not, why were they silent? Isn’t it in the public interest to know?

Did any DAS employees know that Construction Advocacy Professionals (CAP) received half a million dollars on the Tolland project while employing Diamantis’s daughter–who had a full-time state job? Did Gilman ask what did they know and when did they know it? When did they know that CAP was hired on a Hartford school construction to perform the same jobs as another owner advocate? Has Gilman asked? Isn’t it in the public’s interest to know?

The portable classrooms at Birch Grove cost $9 million. What happened to them? Isn’t it in the public interest to know?

The DAS website did not post a press release from May of last year until a week ago. Does the agency do nothing in those months that it wanted the public to know?

Is Gilman aware of any DAS employees receiving subpoenas to testify before a grand jury about any DAS program? Isn’t it in the public interest to know?

Published January 30, 2023.