Introducing Stone Academy students to National Guard recruiters at an emergency career fair was not enough. More than 800 students who were locked out of the for-profit school regulated by the Office of Higher Education (OHE) want a fair deal and some help. OHE Executive Director has provided neither.

Nursing and health aide students with vivid signs took to the street Tuesday to protest Larson’s dithering. The former East Hartford mayor, airport administrator and state senator is looting the fund limited to reimbursing students who lose tuition when a school regulated by OHE closes. The 27-employee agency is paying an accounting firm $200,000 to audit student records, an unprecedented action that has historically been performed within OHE.

The students–mostly minority women–were locked out of their classes when Larson failed to reach an agreement for a teach-out that would have allowed then to complete the academic period. The Stone closing has generated heated accusations and performative press conferences, but no immediate relief for students trying to grab a rung on the ladder of advancement.

Stone has waited for a restive calm to return before beginning its fightback. That has begun.

Published March 30. 2023.

Chief Justice Richard Robinson has filled the two vacancies created by the mysterious mass resignation of members of the Public Defender Services Commission. He appointed Judge Shelia Prats and retired Justice Richard Palmer to restore confidence in a vital state agency that has been racked with fear and vengeance since the appointment of Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis last year.

The appointment of Prats will be be widely hailed as adding a resolute member who will not buckle in the face of intimidation in upholding the rule of law. Public defenders should begin to feel that they are no longer bereft of a protector.

Palmer’s route to the Supreme Court was paved with tennis courts. A former prosecutor, Palmer was a tennis partner of then-Governor Lowell P. Weicker, when the one-term A Connecticut Party governor appointed him to the high court. Palmer served on it until he turned the mandatory retirement age of 70.

Published March 29, 2023.

Four members of the Public Defender Services Commission resigned before resolving a complaint from the agency’s former human resources complaint against Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis. Erin Ryan’s eight-page February 13th letter to the Commission reveals a poisonous atmosphere at the state agency that represents indigent criminal defendants. She describes instances of “bullying,” “continuous and inappropriate belittling.” “aggressive,” “rude” and “abusive behavior.”

Ryan’s letter alleges that Bowden-Lewis told her not to disclose to the Commission that a “senior attorney in the Division” was facing “a multi-day suspension following an investigation completed by the Judicial Branch….” Bowden-Lewis suggested that [Ryan would] be undermining her authority and would be insubordinate if I said anything to the Commission about this personnel matter.” Ryan wrote that Bowden-Lewis told her that if she did disclose the matter to the Commission at its meeting she would “deal with those consequences tomorrow.”

Ryan concluded that she understood a claim by Bowden-Lewis that Ryan believed a colleague but not her was “a suggestion that I am a racist.” Bowden-Lewis is Black. Ryan is White. Ryan replied that her comments had “nothing to do with believing her and that I would follow her directive, but that stylistically, I disagreed with the approach and would prefer to be more transparent.”

The Commission, according to Ryan, had not been informed of the disciplinary matter at the time she submitted her comprehensive complaint.

Ryan, who has left the agency, concluded with a warning. “A handful of the remaining veteran employees have spoken to me about their desire to leave the agency, and I fear how decimated offices will be if the remaining veteran staff are to leave. Morale is incredibly and dangerously low and people feel disillusioned; work performed by the employees of the Division is very difficult, and the current environment is only making the work more challenging, if not downright unbearable.”

Two of the four recent vacancies will be filled by judges, but not the other two. One of them ought to go to Ryan, who has demonstrated courage while others have indulged only in silence or cryptic explanations. This is what a member of the Commission, with its duty to oversee the operation of an important state agency, should be willing to state: “I felt it was my duty to bring these matters to the Commission’s attention, trusting they will be addressed and remediated.”

Ryan is one of two public defender employees to have filed formal complaints about Bowden-Lewis’s conduct. The thick atmosphere of fear will not be lifted until the vacancies on the Commission are filled with resolute members who will not buckle in the face of intimidation. Members who understand their duties and are committed to honoring them and the more that 400 employees of the agency who perform a vital service .

Published March 28, 2023.

Members of the state public defenders union will face a disorienting truth when they meet on Thursday to confront a crisis in leadership at their $60 million agency. They are on their own as they seek to maintain the rules that govern the more than 400 lawyers in their division. Four of the six members of the Public Defenders Services Commission resigned last week after receiving a menacing March 6th letter from a lawyer retained by Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis.

The Commission had been exercising its authority and performing its oversight obligations. Bowden-Lewis’s lawyer accused the members of using disagreements with her client as creating a “pretext for discrimination.” Four members of the Commission, including Chair Allison Near, resigned. The letter is consistent with The Courant’s Ed Mahony’s reporting in his essential Sunday story on the turmoil at the agency. “Bowden-Lewis sees everything through the lens of racism,” a public defender told Mahony. “The problem is that anyone who pushes back on her is a racist. And that is what she has done to the commission. And that’s what she has done to many other people.” This appears to be the cost of taking a stand in opposition to Bowden-Lewis.

The two judges who quit the oversight board provided only cryptic explanations in their letters of resignation to Chief Justice Richard Robinson. Near told Governor Lamont, who appointed her to the position, that she was finding the demands on her time were intruding on her obligations to her clients.

None of the four has explained the mass resignation. Public defenders have lost their guarantee that rules will be followed. They must act.

When the frontline criminal lawyers for the indigent meet in two days they will need to set their course. The new members of the Commission will be chosen soon. It’s essential that those members are committed to facing down attempts to intimidate them as they oversee the agency of more than 400 lawyers and support staff. Union members must impress upon Chief Justice Robinson, Governor Lamont and Senate President Martin Looney that public defenders are working in a growing atmosphere of intimidation and retribution, as Mahony reported.

The public defenders need to bring their courtroom skills to this critical moment by presenting specific instances of abuse of norms to Robinson, Lamont and Looney as they consider their appointments. They should make it clear that, as Daryl McGraw, the agency’s Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion wrote in a prophetic email to the agency’s staff, “Some behaviors are long overdue for being addressed, and it’s time to completely rid the Division of them.”

Public defenders know how to make their own case and dismantle an opposing one. On Thursday, they will decide if they are willing to take the risks required to preserve the integrity of their agency. They can summon the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt, who told the 1940 Democratic National Convention, “This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything except what we can do best for the country as a whole, and that responsibility rests on each and every one of us as individuals.”

The stakes are highest for the agency’s thousands of clients. They depend on the state’s merit system to provide them with the most qualified lawyers who have access to essential resources. It’s their fight too.

Published March 28, 2023.

Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis hired employment law firm Madsen, Prestley & Parenteau to accuse the Public Defender Services Commission of “hyper-scrutiny and undermining her decisions is a pretext for discrimination.” The bombshell accusations in the March 6th letterwere leveled against the Commission that appointed Bowden-Lewis to the top position in the state agency last year.

The letter, posted above, sets forth Bowden-Lewis’s grievances at the Commission’s oversight, as authorized by statute. Howard complains, “There has also been no movement on the Chief Public Defender’s expressed desire to create an External Affairs Unit to heighten visibility and support for public defenders.” The Commission, in the exercise of its authority, has declined to create a public relations unit for a public law firm that represents indigent defendants. The Commission and others believe the idea is an imprudent and unnecessary use of limited resources. Policy disagreements in government happen all the time and have nothing to do with discrimination.

Howard’s letter concludes with the information “that two separate investigations have been initiated against the Chief Public Defender, without any information provided to her, we ask that you share all documents concerning Ms. [Erin] Ryan’s complaint [against Bowden-Lewis], the investigation into Ms. Ryan’s complaint; the investigation into Leonie Campbell’s complaint; and preserve all evidence concerning these investigations.”

On Friday afternoon, Bowden-Lewis took a distinctly different tone in a statement sent to Daily Ructions by email. “Recent news stories have reported on the Division of Public Defender Services, including recent resignations from the Public Defender Services Commission,” she wrote. “I thank those former members for their service, and I am pleased that the Governor’s office intends to work with the other appointing authorities to ensure that the positions are filled.”

New members of the Commission may want to obtain written clarification of who will defend them in the event that Bowden-Lewis continues to make claims of normal policy decisions are a “pretext for discrimination.” Recollections may differ but members of the Commission were alarmed at the lack of support they received from other state agencies in response to the Howard letter, Daily Ructions has learned.

Published March 24, 2023.

The Racial Justice and Cultural Competency Committee Executive Team of the Division of Public Defender Services used a private email account (with the name Malcolm Little–Malcolm X’s birth name) in January to accuse the Public Defender Services Commission of undermining Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis and “her choices for who she wants to run the Division.” The message–included below–also makes the risible claim that “Silence is violence.” A strange tenet for lawyers who often stress the value of the Constitutional right to remain silent.

Bowden-Lewis cautioned colleagues in a Friday email not to disclose confidential information as the story of turmoil in the state agency grows. That warning may include details of complaints made about a hostile work environment in the Office of the Chief Public Defender.

All but one member of the commission resigned this week.

Here is the January email from the Racial Justice and Cultural Competency Committee Executive Team:

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 6:01 PM Malcolm Little <rjccc1619@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello RJCCC

I hope this message finds you well, and that you are all doing well on this day. I thank you for sharing your emails with the executive and being part of the RJCCC. Your work, your support, and your participation mean the world to us, and we are so thankful for each and every one of you. 

I first and foremost would like to apologize for the subterfuge. The executive team felt it was necessary to take certain aspects of the RJCCC off of the Division’s computers because of some of the things we will say today, and some of the concerns we will begin levying against the Commission itself. Before I get ahead of myself, let me begin by explaining why I am writing this email. I am writing this email because the RJCCC executive team, as well as many of its members, are concerned about the treatment of our former tri-chair and Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis. Treatment that is hampering her ability to lead the Division in the way that is right, treatment that is impacting her decisions and in turn us and our colleagues, and treatment that may have serious racist implications for the Commission.

Now, I am not one to throw out baseless allegations, but one must recognize that when there is smoke there is fire, and I am seeing a lot of damn smoke, so there must be a fire and I believe it is only right that more people know about the same smoke that the RJCCC members are seeing left and right. This past November, the Commission had met to interview two candidates for the Derby Public Defender Supervisor Position. TaShun had chosen two very qualified and experienced attorneys, both people of color, one male and one female, to go to the Commission for an opportunity to interview to become the Derby Public Defender. Both interviewed, interviewed well, but before the Commission rendered a decision they asked to postpone their choice until December of 2022.

December of 2022 comes, and the new Derby Public Defender is chosen, and  the individual chosen is neither of the people of color that were sent to the Commission by TaShun, but instead a white woman from the Derby Public Defender’s Office. Now, while this woman is more than qualified for the position, and will surely do a fine job within the position, there are some concerns that the executive team have with this decision by the Commission. Chiefly, this decision in undermining TaShun and her choices for who she wants to run the Division. 

The decision to choose this other candidate for the Derby Public Defender seems like it was done outside the auspices of TaShun. The Commission interviewed two other candidates for the Derby Public Defender position, both of which were white women, and ultimately chose a white woman over equally or more qualified candidates that were people of color.  Now I mention experience and qualifications because if the Commission felt that their choice represented a more experienced and more qualified individual, then their choice would make sense, however, that is not the case. Both candidates that were chosen by TaShun had as much, if not more experience, including more trial experience, than the candidate that was ultimately chosen to be the Derby Public Defender. So how does a less qualified white woman receive a supervisor position over equally or more qualified candidates that are people of color? I think it is important that the RJCCC finds out that answer, and the reasons for that answer.

Regardless of their intent in their decision, the impact of the Commission is real, and we see a white woman receiving a position over equally and/more qualified candidates that are people of color. Now, I have spoken to many people about this, and it seems like this might be part of a bigger effort to undermine TaShun and the work that she is trying to do within the Division. The work to create more diversity, to encourage lawyerying, and just to change the Division for the better. While  she is well loved by the RJCCC, apparently that same opinion is not held by the rest of the Division, and especially Hartford, and there are people that are actively undermining her and her abilities day in and day out. 

There are people within the Division, within the Commission that want us to just be happy with “giving” us TaShun as a Chief and Daryl as a DEI director. They want us to sit down and shut up and not complain in the face of the racist systems that are impacting and infecting our very own Division. The very things they ask us to combat day in and day out are very well happening within the Division, and this is the biggest cause for concern. How do we stand in the face of these systemic issues that exist within our own job? We do not. We do not abide. We do not remain complicit in silence or otherwise. Silence is violence, and us not talking about these issues will hurt our co-workers, our colleagues, our friends, and our future within this Division.

While no specific plan has been etched out, the executive team is looking to do some things to find out from the Division and the Commission what is going on and to hold them accountable if anything untoward is going on. To make sure that we remove any racist systems that are still infecting our Commission and our Division. To make sure that this never happens again. The only thing we ask of you is to start a conversation. Start asking why our offices don’t always reflect the communities we represent. Start asking why it took so long for the Commissionto hirea black female Chief Public Defender. Start asking the harder questions to make what is going on make sense. And when it does not make sense, and their answers are not up to snuff, you know that is when we have to change. 

I thank you all for reading and taking the time out of your day to go over this. I deliberately did not use names to keep confidence with those who I spoke with. I assure you that this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more stories, more colleagues, more people within the RJCCC and without that have been impacted by the racism, both passive and active, that exist within the Division and within the Commission, and we can no longer leave these stories on deaf ears.  Please, I ask you, open up your hearts and your minds to these stories, and speak up for your colleagues when things are going down, because all we have is each other.

Thank you

Sincerely,

Racial Justice and Cultural Competency Committee Executive Team

Published March 24, 2023.

An update on the astonishing events at the Public Defender Services Commission this week. All but one member of the commission have resigned. Former state Representative William Dyson, appointed by the House Minority Leader, is the only remaining member, Daily Ructions can report.

Exchanges between Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis and commission members have grown from acrimonious to belligerent. Two recent commission meetings, scheduled for March 7th and March 21st (a special meeting) were cancelled amid growing disputes between Bowden-Lewis and the commission that appointed her last year. The last time the commission met, it spent 2 1/2 hours in an executive session. Curiously, the commission voted to table the approval of its January 10th executive session minutes.

Bowden-Lewis, whose office did not return a call from Daily Ructions early Thursday, has been at odds with the commission over the exercise of its oversight authority. Questions about certain expenditures by the Office of the Chief Public Defender have not been happily received or promptly answered. Members who received a harsh letter from counsel for Bowden-Lewis resigned this week.

No one becomes a member of the Public Defender Services Commission, including judges and distinguished professionals who have devoted their careers to criminal justice, to gain an advantage in the Connecticut hackerama of political plums. These are serious people who want indigent criminal defendants to receive the legal services our system of justice guarantees them. For all but one member of the commission to resign and leave the system without supervision means a series of travesties preceded their leave-taking.

Published March 23, 2023.

Members of the Public Defender Services Commission resigned this week and no one wants to provide details. Superior Court Judge Laura F. Baldini provided a suggestion of the turmoil at the state agency in her March 22nd resignation letter. “My decision to resign is made after careful reflection and consideration,” Baldini wrote. “Given present circumstances, if I were to remain as a member of this Commission, I would no longer be able to fulfill my statutory obligations.”

Baldini, who was nominated to the bench by former Governor M. Jodi Rell, concluded her letter to Chief Justice Richard A. Robinson with an offer to provide more details. “Please contact me if you wish to discuss the substance of this letter.” Robinson appointed Baldini and Judge Kevin S. Russo to the commission on September 29, 2021.

Baldini’s resignation came a day after the commission’s chair, New Haven lawyer Alison M. Near, sent her resignation letter to Governor Ned Lamont. Near, who Lamont appointed on July 29, 2021, told the governor, “Over the past several months, I have experienced great difficulty in balancing my obligations to my law practice with the responsibility of ensuring that the rights of indigent defendants–the clients of the Division–are protected. I have needed to devote a substantial portion of my time to the work of the Commission, and that work has taken critical time away from my existing clients.”

Near is a partner at the law firm Jacobs & Dow, LLC.

A message left with the Office of the Chief Public Defender Thursday morning had not elicited a response. TaShun Bowden-Lewis was appointed to the top job at the agency in 2022.

Published March 23, 2023.

State Representative Anne Hughes (D-Easton) was at the Red Rock bar in Hartford Thursday night with state Representative Robin Comey (D-Branford). After leaving the bar around 6:50 p.m., less than an hour after arriving, Comey struck a motor vehicle parked on Capitol, causing her car to flip onto its roof. Comey was assisted out of her car by nearby Good Samaritans.

When police arrived on the scene, they interviewed Comey and found her to be intoxicated. Video from Fox61–first on the scene from its headquarters around the corner–showed Comey unable to execute a field sobriety test. Tests revealed her blood alcohol level at .14, nearly twice the legal limit for the operation of a motor vehicle.

House Democrats acknowledged Friday that state Representatives Hughes, Lucy Dathan (D-New Canaan) and Kerry Wood (D-Newington) were with Comey at Red Rock before she made her to her car a block away. The three have declined to speak publicly about what they observed of Comey’s condition before she began her doomed drive home.

The incident–and the tragedy Comey could have inflicted–has been the subject of perplexed conversations since Thursday night. Especially puzzling is how Comey’s three colleagues could have been in the company of Comey and not have noticed or acted upon her intoxicated state. Hughes, according to her state website biography, is a Licensed Master Social Worker.

Hughes and state Representative Sarah Keitt (D-Fairfield), a public health advocate, have doused any expectations that Thursday night’s frightening crash would sober Capitol denizen drinkers. Instead, the Democratic duo will headline a “Pints & Policy” event this evening at Perfusion Bar in Newtown. The invitation states they will “discuss together what legislation is before the CT General Assembly this session.”

Maybe they will discuss urgent matters, but it’s no accident that “Pints” precedes “Policy” at the top of the invitation.

Published March 21, 2023.

State Representative Robin Comey’s drunk driving crash on Capitol Avenue Thursday evening has raised a host of questions about where and with whom the third-term Branford Democrat was before she flipped her car not far from the Capitol. House Democrats’ spokesman Todd Murphy confirms that three Democratic legislators were also at the Red Rock bar yesterday. They are Lucy Dathan, Anne Hughes and Kerry Wood.

“House Democrats can confirm that Reps. Comey, Dathan, Hughes and Wood were at the Red Rock yesterday,” Murphy told Daily Ructions. Questions about when each of the three legislators were at the popular bar and what they may have observed of Comey were forwarded to their individual caucus press person. No reply has been received from any of the trio.

The collision has stunned legislators, lobbyists and observers. The video of the immediate aftermath of the crash was captured by Fox61, which used nearby Flower Street for access to its newsroom. Footage of Comey unambiguously failing a field sobriety test shows Comey in what appears to be an advanced state of intoxication. That does not happen with a sociable drink or two. How Comey was served to a blood alcohol level of .14 has been the persistent question of St. Patrick’s Day.

Representatives Dathan, Hughes and Wood may be able to provide details on what they may have observed and done to try to prevent Comey from retaining her keys, walking to her car, and driving.

BLM860 posted and then deleted a provocative tweet (a screenshot appears above) about Thursday’s events and the dearth of details on where Comey would get so drunk she could not perform a single step of a field sobriety test. The missing piece appears to be whether one stop on Comey’s drunken Thursday odyssey was state Senator John Fonfara’s shakedown of lobbyists at a $1,000 a ticket fundraiser sponsored by a dozen of his Senate Democrat colleagues.

The Black Lives Matter 860 (Hartford CT) Twitter account expressed dismay at Fonfara’s decision to join the contest for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Hartford.

Updates as they are received.

Published March 17, 2023.