Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter’s boys’ club convened in Puerto Rico for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. The gathering included Ritter, two top staff members and some favored male lobbyists.

It’s the inclusion of lobbyists that causes consternation in the Capitol village. It’s only men and at least one of the participants often drops Ritter’s name as a buddy. The weekend in Caribbean adds to the impression that at the top of the House Democratic Office the game is fixed, rigged to benefit a handful of the boys who travel with Ritter.

Excursions for a chosen few cozying up to and carousing with Ritter and his top staff members less than a month before the regular session of the legislature opens are anti-democratic and elitist. They also provide evidence that misogyny continues to flourish at the highest levels of state government. Veteran women lobbyists have long felt they are excluded from certain powerful circles at the Capitol. Women enduring male condescension remains a fact of life in the 21st century Connecticut legislature.

Despite weeks of public hearings, decisions on the content and course of legislation are often made in the Speaker’s office as the legislative session nears adjournment. The lobbyist who vacations with the Speaker and his aides is going to be able to get the attention of the right people.

None of this is news to lobbyists, legislators, staff members and administration officials. Last weekend’s trip was not a secret. Some participants highlighted it on social media. For some it’s an exclusive marketing tool. They want people who may be looking to purchase some influence in the next few months to know that there are ways of buying an advantage.

And Ritter puts his thumb on the scale in an open, obvious and notorious annual weekend away.

Published January 18, 2024.

Top photo: ID 69426758 © Yarruta

Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas has issued an urgent call for “attorneys, judges and others in the legal profession (active or retired)” to serve as volunteer monitors during Bridgeport’s January 23rd Democratic mayoral primary.

The request from Thomas’s Outreach and Engagement Manager Annie Black was sent by email late Wednesday afternoon.

Lawyers and judges would likely find this more interesting than they expect.

A link to the initial inquiry form is included in Annie Black’s message below.

Good afternoon,

Thank you for your past participation in the Secretary’s Legal Assistance Project. On behalf of Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas, I am reaching out with an urgent request for in-person assistance during the upcoming Special Democratic Primary Election in Bridgeport on January 23, 2024.

Given the nature of this election, we are making every effort to ensure that all Bridgeport electors are able to vote securely on January 23. To that end, we are seeking attorneys, judges, and others in the legal profession (active or retired) to serve as election volunteers on Election Day. Election volunteers will be our eyes and ears on the ground in Bridgeport and will contact our office with questions and concerns as needed.  

Training will be provided by the Secretary of the State’s office in advance of the election for anyone who is new to this role and not familiar with the basics of election law. This training with be virtual and approximately two hours in length. 

If you are interested and available to assist in Bridgeport on January 23, please fill out this form and we will contact you with additional details:  https://forms.office.com/g/PtcM8bm5HS.

Please feel free to share this email with contacts in your professional network who may be interested and qualified to assist.

Thank you for your commitment to a fair and safe democratic process.

Sincerely,

Annie Black

Published January 11, 2023.

Shouting down a speaker is one of the blunt instruments of protest. Ill-informed protesters tried and failed to silence Governor Ned Lamont Wednesday morning by accusing him of supporting genocide. The handful of protesters appeared not to understand that Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists.

The protesters, vexed about the supply of water in Gaza, seem not to understand that the residents who live there would have plenty of water if Hamas terrorists had not used pipes provided by the international community to launch missiles at Israel instead of putting them in the ground to create a proper water distribution infrastructure.

Note to bystanders at these interruptions. You would send a powerful message if you stood up and expressed your solidarity with Israel, a diverse democratic nation that is held to standards imposed on no other countries in the world.

“’They have a right to protest’ Lamont told the crowd. ‘But I’ll tell you something else. Nobody’s going to listen to them unless they lead off with the fact that they acknowledge and condemn the brutal sadistic genocidal attack of Oct. 7 and what it did to all those innocent’ civilians,” The New Haven Independent reported.

Published January 10, 2024.

Quinnipiac law professor Sarah French Russell’s nomination to a seat on the District of Connecticut bench was revived Monday when President Biden resubmitted her nomination to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Russell created some stiff headwinds for herself when she failed to submit and could not remember signing a 2020 letter to Governor Ned Lamont condemning the state’s criminal justice system and calling for the release of inmates at the start of the COVID-19 panic.

Russell added to her troubles with committee Republicans with written responses to post-hearing questions. The Yale law graduate sought to distance herself from letters she signed criticizing the nomination of then Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018 and the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to serve as Attorney General the year before. Russell responded that she neither wrote nor edited any of the three letters and they no longer reflected her views. A lifetime nomination to the federal bench will do that in a closely divided Senate.

Russell is one of eighteen nominees resubmitted Monday after failing to win Senate confirmation in 2023. Five nominees whose nominations were returned to the White House in December were not resubmitted.

Published January 10, 2024.

The private dining room at the Legislative Office Building will be the scene of legislative employees coloring and making overnight oats this afternoon and Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m.

Adult coloring and making overnight oats will add to a busy day at the LOB as the legislative branch prepares for the February 7th opening of the start of the short regular legislative session.

Legislative employees should use lunch of personal time if attending this adult coloring and overnight oats event.

Published January 8, 2024.

William DiBella, the Hartford and Old Saybrook Democrat, will not seek re-election as the chairperson of the MDC when regional water and sewage authority meets this week for its biennial election of officers, Daily Ructions has learned. DiBella’s current stint as chair of the MDC board began in 2002. He also held the job from 1977 to 1981.

The MDC is one of the last outposts of significant public agency patronage for MDC board members and other officials. DiBella, 80, has long been the master of increasing and wielding the agency’s influence. With its diffuse system of appointing commissioners, the MDC answers to no one–and that’s how they like it.

There have been challenges to DiBella’s authority by commissioners but they have not been able to muster the votes to oust DiBella.

DiBella’s departure from the top job would in most organizations be a moment to pass the leadership to a new generation. The MDC being what it is will likely ignore that opportunity and elect East Hartford Democrat Donald Currey to succeed DiBella.

No one will be surprised if DiBella’s departure as chairperson is followed by him seeking a another position at Wednesday’s election of officers, vice chair.

Wednesday’s meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. and will be available to watch on Webex.

Published January 8, 2024.

Quinnipiac University Law professor Sarah French Russell was one of four judicial nominees the Senate returned to President Biden to begin again in 2024, according to law.com. She was nominated for a seat on the Judicial District of Connecticut bench.

Russell had a car crash of an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 1st, notable for her failure to recall a letter she signed at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The letter condemned the nation’s justice system and called for the release of most inmates. Russell had neglected to provide the letter to the committee as part of the confirmation process. in post-hearing written responses to the committee, Russell sought to distance herself from the content of that and two other letters by writing that she neither wrote nor edited the missives.

Russell also backed away from a 2018 letter opposing the nomination of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Russell, who was a federal public defender for a brief time early in her career, may be one of the only federal judicial nominees to include a state small claims court case as one of the ten most significant litigation matters she has handled in her career.

The White House will have to decide if there is any reason to think the Senate will confirm Russell in 2024 if it resubmits her nomination.

Published December 29, 2023.

It is a letter better suited to be sent to Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis rather than aimed at the members of the Public Defenders Services Commission by her lawyer. The December 19th missive from Madsen, Prestley & Parenteau to the Commission reminds members what they know–discrimination is illegal.

“As you are aware, federal and state laws prohibit discrimination based on race and sex, as well as retaliation against employees because they complain about, resist or oppose, discriminatory practices,” the letter states. The letter arrived 18 days after a devastating investigative report found “that Ms. Bowden-Lewis would often bully or marginalize employees who she did not favor or who questioned her in any way. Indeed, on several occasions, we determined that if an employee was viewed as ‘disloyal’ or on her ‘bad side,’ Ms. Bowden-Lewis would take steps to ensure that the employee remained that way.”

All but one of the members of the commissioners resigned in the aftermath of a similar letter from Bowden-Lewis’s lawyer last winter. Those members were alarmed, Daily Ructions has learned, at the unhelpful response they received from the Office of the Attorney General in the immediate aftermath of the Bowden-Lewis attack. The current members were chosen, in part, based on their resolute determination to straighten out the mess at the public defenders agency.

Among its extraordinary accusations, the letter includes one that raises identity politics into the realm of madness. “In March of 2023, this office wrote to the Commission to address the Chief Public Defender’s concerns about discrimination. Then, in August of 2023, the Chief Public Defender expressed questions and concerns to the Commission’s current Chairman regarding the appearances and implications of his actions that accorded heightened status and trust to information that he sought from a white male subordinate employee of the Chief Public Defender instead of the Chief Public Defender herself, or instead of another employee who had more responsibility for the issue and who is an Asian male.”

That chilling sentence reveals that Bowden-Lewis believes the agency’s employees are her employees. They are not. They are state employees with rights and responsibilities that do not emanate from Bowden-Lewis. The wild accusation describes Bowden-Lewis’s vision of a state agency. All information must come from her and every act will be viewed from a poisonous prism of gender and race.

And then the letter takes cover on the disreputable claim of public information reaching the public. This time it was through The Courant’s Ed Mahony. Curiously, after completing a splenetic attack on The Courant, Bowden-Lewis’s lawyer concludes with a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

Expect the New Year to begin with a reckoning.

Published December 21, 2023.

Introduce someone you know to these cultural gems that fill this special edition of Now You Know–The Cultural Lives of Others. They will thank you far into the future.

Published December 21, 2023.

Public defenders wishing for some relief for Christmas had their hopes raised with agenda of the Public Defender Commission’s December 19th special meeting. The commission consider only personnel matters. That ominous item will likely be discussed by a commission increasingly dismayed by Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis’s leadership.

The one-item agenda means there will be no time reserved for public participation, which has become an acrimonious curtain raiser for monthly meetings.

Published December 18, 2023.

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