State Senator Matthew Lesser (D-Middletown) has his eye on some lobbyist money–again. Lesser collected enough in small contributions to qualify for public financing of his race for secretary of the state in the spring. Lesser retreated from that contest when he fell far short of winning the party endorsement at May’s nominating convention. He made have made his crucial error when he ceded the party nomination for comptroller to Sean Scanlon.

Lesser declined to primary Stephanie Thomas, the party endorsed candidate for secretary of the state, after she made short work of him. Thomas and her sharp floor operation administered a final humiliation that day by giving Lesser some mercy delegates to insure she’d face him in the convention’s final ballot.

The campaign calendar allowed Lesser to find refuge at his state Senate convention and seek re-election from the four-town district. He defeated a Republican challenger in November.

Lesser’s Middlesex Area Team for Tomorrow (MATT PAC) is offering lobbyists the chance to “Ring in the New Year With Senator Matt Lesser.” The event is January 2nd at the Red Rock Tavern at the edge of the Capitol village. Lesser, who left Wesleyan University before graduating to work on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, is workin’ the same old corner. A lobbyist ducat goes for $100. Other PACs can give up to $2,000 to attend. Businesses can buy an ad in a program book for $250.00.

Lesser held a similar event in pre-pandemic 2019. Much of the money for his PAC came from lobbyists. The organization’s connection to its name has grown tenuous with Lesser’s ambitious. In the fall, it made contributions to Democratic town committees in Ansonia, East Windsor and Vernon. It also gave some of the green stuff that folds to the Working Families Party.

There was a time when a plague of PACs was deemed contrary to the public interest by people much like Lesser. They were seen as an instrument for lobbyists to purchase a disproportionate amount of influence over elected officials. Now, the public finances campaigns and legislators establish slush funds filled with money from lobbyists and their clients. That seems worse than what came before.

Published December 29, 2022.

WTIC’s Brian Shactman raised a topic on many minds when he interviewed Governor Ned Lamont Wednesday morning. “Rates are going to double in a matter of days. Is there anything you can do or is there anything to be done to ease this?” the popular host asked. Shactman pointed out the burden of the increase in electricity costs will place on people with fixed and low incomes. The segment is posted above.

“Doubling this cost is brutal,” Shactman added. “First of all it’s not doubling,” the Greenwich Democrat replied, “but it is going to go up dramatically. Probably 45, 50% for some people.” Lamont rattled through some of the subsidies available to eligible residents and pointed out, as he has done in the past, that the hikes are higher in neighboring states, adding, “but who cares?”

Shactman pointed out that the rate increase that will begin punishing customers in January is from $0.12 to $0.24 per kilowatt hour for the first half of 2023. That’s double. The cost of electricity is doubling for most Connecticut customers. The distribution charge from Eversource and United Illuminating, a separate part of a utility bill, is not doubling.

This is not how any governor wants to begin a second term. Connecticut customers continue to pay the highest electricity rates in the continental United States. Connecticut and Massachusetts utility regulators will hold a joint hearing on January 3rd to discuss the hikes by Eversource, which does business in both states. The issue continues to flummox state officials. They acknowledge Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has roiled world energy markets. They also need a local target to blame for rates in New England rising higher than in other parts of the country.

The most important player will not be participating in Tuesday’s hearing: New York Governor Kathy Hochul. She could expand the natural gas pipelines that run through her state into New England, but will not. New Hampshire residents stopped a proposal to build transmission lines that would have carried hydro-electric energy into the New England grid.

Connecticut’s energy policy has been expensive and laden with crossed fingers. It has failed and in the winter crunch the blame will fall on our leaders.

Posted December 29, 2022.

Never a note wrong.

Published December 21, 2022.

Governor Ned Lamont’s inaugural committee eliminated its top $50,000 sponsorship after a Hartford Courant column revealed the committee’s solicitation of state contractors and lobbyists. The top sponsorship package can be purchased for $25,000. Sponsorships will be acknowledged throughout the inaugural ball venue.

State law, according to the state’s ethics agency, allows state contractors and lobbyists, prohibited in other instances from making contributions to state officials, to make unlimited “gifts to the state” to underwrite the inaugural ball. The inaugural committee sent sponsorship packages to lobbyists, seeking to have members of the permanent government put the touch on their clients to finance the January 4th event.

While the inaugural ball can be a highlight for elected officials, it is a dreary obligation for lobbyists. Two registered lobbyists have found a way to score points with the honored politicians of the evening. Lobbyists Brian Durand and Steve Kinney are two of three volunteers helming the inaugural ball committee.

Tickets are $200 for anyone over 30 years old, $100 for those 30 years old and under.

Published December 20, 2022.

Published December 20, 2022.

Chief Court Administrator Patrick L. Carroll, III, will take senior status on January 30th, Chief Justice Richard Robinson announced Friday afternoon. Popular deputy administrator Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto will become the new leader of the day-to-day administration of the state’s court system.

Judge Anna Ficeto, currently serving as Administrative Judge in Waterbury, moves into Bozzuto’s position. Ficeto served as legal counsel to former Governor M. Jodi Rell. She was nominated to the Superior Court in January 2012 by then-Governor Dannel P. Malloy. Ficeto’s skill moving the state’s informal but influential levers of power should prove useful in setting a new tone in the court’s administration office.

Bozzuto and Ficeto have worked together before. Both had to address and cope with Carroll’s inability to get Judge Alice Bruno to perform her duties. Bruno left her Waterbury chambers in November 2019 and never returned. She complained in a proceeding before the Supreme Court earlier this year that Ficeto would not greet her when they passed in the hallways of the Waterbury courthouse.

Carroll concluded his announcement by noting, “I’m not going anywhere. As long as the Chief Justice and Judge Bozzuto can tolerate me, I will continue to work here in the Office of the Chief Court Administrator, on a somewhat reduced schedule….” Judges on the frontline of the court system will nevertheless look forward to Bozzuto setting a new and courteous tone in her office.

Published December 19, 2022.

Max Reiss, the former local television reporter who served as Governor Ned Lamont’s spokesperson for three years, has announced he is leaving M&T Bank. Reiss joined M&T as a community affairs director last summer, weeks before its catastrophic Labor Day weekend conversion of People’s United Bank’s technology into the Buffalo-based bank’s computer system. M&T purchased the Bridgeport-based People’s United for $8.3 billion.

M&T’s blunders left thousands of Connecticut customers without access to their funds. Customer profiles were provided to strangers who then had access to accounts not their own. Millions in checks were mistakenly dishonored by M&T. The Lamont administration shrugged. Lamont himself hosted an October 5th cordial meeting M&T CEO Rene Jones, who received $6.8 million in compensation in 2021. Lamont offered only muted criticism of the banker, who he referred to by his first name in a post-meeting tweet, as thousands of customer and frontline bank employees endured the consequences of bank executives’s blunders.

Reiss is expected to join a publicly traded company that state law guarantees a profitable rate of return, Daily Ructions has learned. The company so many join eventually, whether in or out of government.

Published December 16, 2022.

State Senator John Fonfara is close to entering the Democratic race for mayor of Hartford, Daily Ructions has learned. The veteran state legislator has been making calls to city Democrats and members of the Capitol village.

Fonfara has represented Hartford’s South End neighborhoods and part of Wethersfield in the Senate since 1996. He served in the House for 10 years before succeeding William DiBella. The Hartford native serves as co-chair of the legislature’s finance committee.

Fonfara, 67, would join his former colleague in the House and Senate, Eric Coleman, in the race to replace Luke Bronin, who announced on November 29th, first reported by Daily Ructions, that he will not seek a third term as mayor. City Council member Nicholas Lebron, also a Democrat, announced his candidacy for the job this week.

State campaign finance laws could provide a significant boost to Fonfara in the early going. Legislators are banned from soliciting lobbyists for contributions for campaigns for state office during the legislative session–which this year will run until early June. The law, does not, however, prohibit legislators from soliciting lobbyists and their clients for contributions for their municipal campaigns during the legislative session. Fonfara knows how to insert himself as facilitator or obstacle in the legislative process. That talent could help him raise a significant amount of money in the first two quarters of the year. Concern that an unhappy Fonfara might lose the September Democratic primary and remain in the Senate would also spur donors.

Decades ago Fonfara enjoyed a reputation as one of the legislature’s most energetic on-the-ground campaigner. He built a loyal personal organization that he could deploy in his own races and also in frequent skirmishes that characterize Hartford Democratic politics.

If Fonfara won next year’s election, Hartford Democratic party committee chairman and Fonfara ally Mark DiBella would lose unhampered access to a key player at the Capitol, potentially diminishing DiBella’s luster as a registered lobbyist. A Fonfara candidacy comes as a tricky time for another Fonfara ally, William DiBella, whose hold on the chairmanship of regional water and sewer authority MDC may be in jeopardy.

Fonfara, who often appears to brood in public, is no stranger to the gaffe. In 2018 he made a well-publized comment about needing an “I stand with White Men pin.” Fonfara pledged to hold a community forum to discuss his comment in April 2018. Three months later, he had not scheduled it and there is no record of it ever taking place.

Published December 16, 2022.

Sophie Tucker was Hartford’s gift to the world for much of the 20th century. A star on several continents, Tucker restrained her bawdy joy on this 1951 appearance on Ed Sullivan’s popular Sunday night variety show. The columnist may have been her biggest fan.

Here she offers some advice on a good life and a few bars of White Christmas.

The Last of the Red-Hot Momma’s returned to Hartford for the last time in February 1966 and is at rest in the Emanuel Synagogue Cemetery in Wethersfield.

Published December 15, 2022.

The prospect of a police K9 drug detection dog discovering cocaine in a Middletown city hall office caused Mayor Benjamin Florsheim to text aides on October 20th that the political implications ”were an important thing to think about” hours before Castle the dog began his tour.

Florsheim texted he ”would not be boxed in politically” if the police dog found illegal drugs in city hall. Middletown resident Anita Ford Saunders tested that belief when she addressed Florsheim at the December 5th meeting of the city’s Common Council. Saunders confronted Florsheim with the disparate treatment of two top administration employees, one white and the other Black. Saunders spoke about the discovery of cocaine residue on a department head’s desk. That employee, who is white, remains in his position. Florsheim fired his chief of staff, Alice Diaz, who is Puerto Rican, after she was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol after work hours in Rocky Hill in October.

The steady-voiced Saunders roiled Middletown government and next year’s municipal election with her statement, which included a quote from Florsheim on the way forward on civil rights in Middletown. “So let us come to know and recognize our own power as a city, to dismantle the systems and power structures whose time is gone, and to continue building the beloved community we all believe in,” Florsheim declared not long ago. Ford Saunders accused the mayor of falling short of his aspirations.

Florsheim responded to Saunders last week, writing that while he believed her to be “genuine in her concerns” about the fair treatment of employees, he is ”certain that she has received information that is intentionally and misleading that, if true, would certainly be cause for alarm.” It was not the driving under the influence charge that caused him to fire Diaz, the mayor wrote, it was that she ”made statements and gave answers to questions to me regarding her arrest that caused me to lose faith in her ability to serve as my Chief of Staff.”

As to the discovery of cocaine in a city hall office, Florsheim told Ford Saunders he is constrained by employment rules from commenting in detail but assures her he “has looked into the matter thoroughly and am confident in how the City has addressed the issue.”

The police investigation at city hall on October 20th is described in a November 11th police report reviewed by police chief Erik Costa. The report states that the department’s drug detection dog pointed an officer to a substance on and in the desk of finance director Carl Erlacher that tested positive for cocaine. No action was taken by the police. Erlacher remains on the job.

Erlacher told Daily Ructions Monday, “I am not going to dispute the police report because I was not present. I did everything [the administration] asked me to do, including drug tests. They were all negative.” Erlacher pointed out that offices in the city hall are often unlocked late into the evening as cleaning crew go through them.

Diaz was arrested on October 28th by Rocky Hill police. Police characterized Diaz as ”uncooperative” during her arrest, which was recorded on police body cameras. The Marine veteran apologized for her behavior in a November 10th statement. “I want to take this opportunity to apologize to the Rocky Hill Police Department,” Diaz wrote, according to the Middletown Press, ”and the people of Middletown for my behavior during the arrest and booking process. The behavior reported that day is not an indication of who I am as a person and the values that I hold. Upon reflection, I have begun to seek resources to further help me address this issue.” 

Florsheim’s demand that Diaz quit as his chief of staff included a harsh choice for his friend and former colleague in Senator Chris Murphy’s office. If she resigned he would not object to her receiving unemployment benefits from the State of Connecticut. But if Diaz defied Florsheim’s request he would fire her and contest her application for unemployment benefits.

Florsheim wrote in a November 15th text to Diaz:

Alice,

As I stated last night over text, I am asking for your resignation in light of your recent arrest, your attempt to avoid arrest by using the power of your position.
If you choose to resign, I offer the following: (1) you will remain on the City payroll through December 1; (2) at that time, you will be paid out for any accrued time at your disposal; (3) you can either get paid out for your pension contributions or they can be rolled over to another retirement account; (4) you will stay on the City’s health insurance until December 31, 2022; (5) you will have access to the City’s EAP program through December 31, 2022; and (5) the City will not contest any unemployment filing. In exchange for the above, you will sign a settlement agreement and release of all claims and liabilities against the City.

If you choose not to resign, then I will have no option but to terminate your employment immediately as an at-will employee for the reasons I already stated above. If I do so, you will be paid out for any accrued time and will have the option of being paid out for your pension contributions or they can be rolled over to another retirement account. If you choose this option, then your health insurance will terminate at the end of November as is our practice and we will contest any unemployment claim.

You have until noon tomorrow, November 16, 2022, to make your decision.

Diaz declined to resign. Florsheim fired her.

Florsheim’s treatment of Diaz may be overshadowed by his handling of the police discovery of cocaine in the office a city official.

Hours before the dog was to begin his tour of city offices, Florsheim and city attorney Brig Smith exchanged texts on what would happen if the police found drugs in Erlacher’s office. ”To the extent that you are thinking of bringing in dogs tonight, you need to consider that this could be front-page-of-the- press kind of stuff. Especially if a positive hit requires or results in an arrest,” Smith told the first-term Democrat. ”Are you boxed in if you don’t proceed with an arrest or termination? Not legally, but politically. Something to consider when deciding between before and after.”

“I appreciate that consideration but I don’t feel like we will be boxed in politically. It is an important thing to think about though,” Florsheim responded.

Saunders’s brief appearance a week ago put on the public record what some members of the council had been muttering about among themselves for weeks. As the details make their way into the public light, council members may find their voices and seek full disclosure from Florsheim.

Published December 12, 2022.

Update: Anita Ford Saunders was referred to as Ford Saunders in the original version of this post. It has been corrected to Saunders. She is the incoming president of the Middlesex County NAACP and will take office later this week. She was speaking on December 5th as a concerned citizen.