State Senator Craig Miner (R-Litchfield) announced Thursday he will not run for a fourth term in the 30th State Senate District. Miner was elected to serve the 14-town district in the northwest region of the state in 2016.

Before serving in the Senate, Miner was a member of the House of Representatives for 16 years. He was Litchfield’s first selectman for a decade. He points out in his announcement that he has spent more than half of his adult life in public office.

The seat was held for many years by the late and beloved Dell Eads, the last Republican to serve as the President Pro Tem of the Senate.

Published February 10, 2022.

Two programs in OPM Secretary Melissa McCaw’s agency, school construction and the state pier project, are the subject of a federal criminal investigation. School construction has been taken from her after her deputy, Kostantinos Diamantis, was suspended in October. He retired but is seeking to return to his job as the head of the school construction program. The state pier project remains under her jurisdiction. This is unprecedented in a state that has endured frequent corruption scandals. Thursday’s Appropriations Committee meeting with McCaw provides a rare opportunity to pose questions and hear answers in public on matters of urgent public interest.

Here are some essential questions for McCaw:

Have federal criminal investigators contacted you about their investigation of the school construction grants program and the state pier project? Have you retained legal counsel to represent you in the investigation? Do your interests diverge from those of the state? Will you tell the public immediately if you are questioned or served an individual subpoena for documents?

Have you participated in complying with the subpoena served on the state?

How did you supervise Mr. Diamantis’s management of the school construction grants program?

Did you have any concerns that a Bristol company that had never built a school was hired without the benefit of competitive bidding to build a school in Tolland? Have you met Antoinette DiBenedetto-Roy of Construction Advocacy Professionals (CAP)? When did you learn that CAP was working on school construction projects and had hired your deputy’s daughter?

In a November 2019 memorandum of understanding, you and former DAS commissioner Josh Geballe extolled the advantages of moving the school construction grants program from DAS to OPM. Why was the school construction program returned to DAS after Mr. Diamantis was suspended and then retired? Why were the advantages you included in a memorandum of understanding no longer relevant to the effective administration of the program?

Did you participate in the decision to suspend Mr. Diamantis? Do you agree with Governor Lamont’s decision to suspend Mr. Diamantis?

Published February 9, 2022.

Whatever Governor Ned Lamont says while delivering his annual budget address Wednesday at noon, it is not likely to be remembered or repeated as often as his State Pier declaration that he made the speeches but “Kosta’s gotta deliver the goods.”

The State Pier project and the state’s school construction grants program are the subject of a federal criminal investigation. Kostantinos Diamantis, a top adviser to Lamont, exercised authority over both programs.

Published February 9, 2022.

The hiring scandal that has claimed former Lamont administration deputy budget director Kostantinos Diamantis will see others leave state government. The federal criminal investigation into the Lamont administration’s handing of the school construction grants program and state pier project will bring sorrowful headlines in the months ahead.

Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s bitter departure from his office is imminent. Budget director Melissa McCaw may follow soon after, according to residents of the Capitol village.

In this interlude, Daily Ructions readers will enjoy a 1992 performance of the Boys Choir of Harlem and Betty Buckley as they join on two Stephen Sondheim gems, Our Time, from Merrily We Roll Along, and the eternal Children Will Listen, from the finale of Into the Woods. Sondheim died at his home in Roxbury in December. He was 91.

Sondheims’s wisdom endures. Careful the tale you tell, indeed.

“Careful the spell you cast

Not just on children

Sometimes the spell may last

Past what you can see

And turn against you

Careful the tale you tell

That is the spell

Children will listen.”

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bob Stefanowski on Tuesday called on Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo. A hiring scandal has engulfed Colangelo since October. A report from former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy issued a report on the investigation he was engaged by Governor Ned Lamont’s office to conduct into Colangelo’s June 2020 hiring of deputy budget director Kostantinos Diamantis’s daughter Anastasia Diamantis as a $99,000-a-year executive assistant.

Stefanowski’s campaign issued this statement late Tuesday morning:

“It has been a week since the independent report was released about the unethical behavior of Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo, said Stefanowski. “Justice Andrew McDonald, Chair of the Connecticut Criminal Justice Commission, the Attorney General and the target of the investigation all indicated they needed time to review the 500 page report in order to proceed,” said Stefanowski. “It’s been a week of Connecticut residents questioning the ethics of the state’s top prosecutor, and that is a week too long. It’s time for Mr. Colangelo to resign immediately.”

Diamantis resigned shortly after being suspended from his job at the end of October. Twardy’s report revealed federal law enforcement authorities are investigating two programs Diamantis oversaw, school construction grants and a state pier project in New London.

Diamantis’s supervisor and close friend, budget director Melissa McCaw, was spared direct criticism in the public portion of Twardy’s report. Her actions are also thought to be under scrutiny. McCaw is scheduled to face legislators Thursday at a budget hearing. The meeting will provide legislators an opportunity to question McCaw on what she knew about the Diamantis’s handling of the school construction grant program and when she knew it.

Published February 8, 2022.

You’ve read the Twardy Report. Now follow the Twardy Rule. 

In the late 1990s, the investigation of a scandal in former Republican State Treasurer Paul Silvester’s office sent once-influential people to jail. Christopher Stack, a Darien financial consultant, paid Silvester bribes in bundles of cash. Silvester went to jail. Stack did not. Stack went to Stanley Twardy, a former U.S. Attorney and well-known criminal defense attorney, at the start of the scandal. Twardy negotiated a plea deal with federal investigators that won his client immunity from prosecution in exchange for cooperation. 

Twardy last week completed a devastating report initiated by Governor Ned Lamont’s office on Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s hiring of the daughter of former deputy state budget director Kostantinos Diamantis while Colangelo was lobbying him for raises for himself and others. Lamont on Thursday called on Colangelo to resign. 

The bombshell report revealed a federal grand jury has been meeting and federal enforcement officials are investigating Connecticut’s financing of school construction and plans to expand New London’s state pier. 

For anyone who may be drawn into the muck, here are four words to live by: Get Stacked, not sentenced.

Navigating a federal corruption scandal is a tricky business. If you have reason to think you can get through it on your own, you are not as smart as you think you are. Seek proper legal advice. That means consulting with a lawyer with experience dealing with federal criminal authorities. The lawyer who handled your divorce can calm your nerves and refer you to someone else.

Tell the truth or say nothing. A false statement to an FBI agent is its own crime. You are ignorant of how much they know. It’s probably more than you think.

Do not destroy or alter records. Assume every document you have is available somewhere else. Emails and texts are documents. 

Assume your colleagues and friends have already spoken to investigators. 

People you once trusted may lie to you, including whether they have been interviewed by investigators.

The Wire is more than television’s greatest crime drama. People in a jam—and some not—do wear them.

You cannot be sure where this will lead. The college cash-for-admissions scandal came from a tip offered during a securities fraud investigation. 

Do not ask anyone to lie for you. 

Do not involve your children. If you already have, make a deal. The most excruciating pain law enforcement officials can inflict is moving against your greatest treasure, your children. Remember New York’s Skelos & Son scandal. A powerful state senator got his son a series of no-show/low-show jobs. Both went to jail.

It’s too late to destroy gifts. They will know. This is not the time to bury gold doubloons in your yard.

Avoid WhatsApp groups and other chat platforms but do not tidy up your Facebook page or Twitter feed.

Resist the temptation to contact the girlfriend or boyfriend you dumped—-after you were indiscreet in sharing details of choices you now regret. 

A federal criminal investigation can put relationships under more pressure than they can endure.

It’s a good time to stop drinking. In vino veritas, too much Blabbitas. 

Paying cash is not a cover for malfeasance. 

Do no favors in the hope someone will not disclose what he or she knows. Finding a job for someone with knowledge of crimes, for example, can be obstruction of justice. 

Federal investigators assume everyone in politics is corrupt. Charm possesses no power to persuade.

If you noticed something unusual in your local school construction project, call (800) CALL-FBI.  (Or e-mail kfr@dailyructions.com.)

Act your age. Side-sitting at a restaurant with a work colleague means you are not working. Side-sitting is an international sign that someone should be home with family. 

Do not have meetings in West Hartford Center. On any night there’s a higher concentration of state employees there than anywhere else in Connecticut.

Remember wisdom of the noble Gloria Burgle in season three of Fargo: You think the world is something and then it turns out to be something else.

Published February 6, 2022.

The small world of Connecticut government will be felt in any deliberations the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) undertakes to determine the fate of beleaguered Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo. CJC member Robert Berke represents New Canaan resident Christopher Paladino in his action against two Norwalk police officers for allegedly arresting him on false charges.

Paladino alleges Norwalk police officers Anthony Del Pino and Ronald Roncinske obtained an arrest warrant for him based on false information arising from a September 30, 2018, incident that involved a small amount of marijuana and a dispute over whether Paladino possessed a valid permit to carry a weapon in a motor vehicle.

The criminal charges against Paladino were dismissed on October 24, 2018. Berke filed Paladino’s lawsuit in February 2020. According to Federal District Court records, two counts have been dismissed. The remaining counts are the subject of the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

The plaintiff has responded to that summary judgment motion with an affidavit. It’s from the state’s attorney in the Stamford Norwalk district at the time of Mr. Paladino’s arrest. He states, “At about 2:46 p.m. on October 23, 2018, I had a telephone conversation with Norwalk Police Department Deputy Chief James Walsh and advised him to have his department ‘stand down’, and not arrest Christopher Paladino because he had a valid CT pistol permit.”

Richard Colangelo continues in his affidavit for the plaintiff, “I was later advised that the Norwalk Police Department ignored my direct order and arrested Christopher Paladino for the unlawful possession of a pistol on his person and in a vehicle.”

Colangelo signed the affidavit under oath in Rocky Hill on January 18, 2022. In addition to serving on the CJC, Berke has served on the Town of Woodbridge Board of Ethics. He will understand better than most that this is an unfortunate intersection of interests and positions at a crucial moment in Connecticut’s public life.

Published February 4, 2022.

A vivid moment from former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy’s report on Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s hiring of then-deputy budget director Kostantinos Diamantis’s daughter as an executive assistant in Colangelo’s office. An official at the Department of Administrative Services (DAS), where Diamantis worked as the head of the state’s school construction grants program, recalled a startling autumn 2018 incident in the men’s restroom at DAS.

The DAS official, according to Twardy’s report, recalled Diamantis saying “in his ear, ‘When are you going to hire my daughter?’ The DAS official described Mr. Diamantis’s persistence and repeated inquiries over a period of a few months about hiring Anastasia [Diamantis] at DAS.”

Colangelo hiring Ms. Diamantis was not enough. Diamantis pere had to spike the ball after his daughter snagged a $40,000 a year raise when Colangelo hired her. “The official described that after the [Criminal Justice] Division hired Anastasia in 2020, Mr. Diamantis made several comments to him along the lines of, ‘you couldn’t get it done, but she’s got a better job anyways.'”

“Mr. Diamantis,” the report notes, “denied pressuring any DAS or other state official to hire Anastasia.”

It’s called a restroom for a reason. It ought to be a no-go zone for that sort of ugly business, especially violating someone’s space by getting in his ear in the narrow confines of a restroom. These are the small universal rules that are required to sustain a civilized society.

Published February 4, 2022.

It is a curious workplace in which people take so many detailed notes of their daily encounters with one another. The Office of the Chief State’s Attorney turns out to be such a place. One office Boswell recorded the reactions in the top tier of the Division of Criminal Justice to the October 1st Hartford Courant column breaking the tawdry tale of a hire-for-influence scandal.

The Dear Diary entry discloses the conversation in an office meeting to discuss that column about Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s hiring of deputy state budget director Kostantinos Diamantis’s daughter Anastasia to a $99,000 a year job of unclear responsibilities in his office. Colangelo was wounded that the raises for himself and his top colleagues that he’d been requesting for months would not be granted. An injustice, according to the handwritten notes provided to investigator Stanley Twardy.

The scrivener reveals he and a colleague say the raises do not “look right” and should be dropped. Colangelo spokesperson Alaine Griffin backed her boss, according to the notes. “Not real news, opinion……” The incident reveals how quickly former reporters and editors can lose their sense of news when they go to work for the establishment.

Or perhaps she was just joking.

On November 24th, Colangelo refers to fireworks of the day before. I had requested emails between Colangelo and Kostantinos Diamantis. “Nothing there,” according to Colangelo. That would depend on your definitions of “nothing” and “there.” A critical email revealed a frantic Colangelo telling Diamantis he needed the raises so the state’s attorneys would not oppose his approaching reappointment. That was more than nothing. That email, however, was not included in the DCJ’s response to that FOI request. It was found elsewhere. So, in the narrowest sense, there was nothing there, but it did exist.

Five months before, a colleague was “raising concerns about Anastasia’s role in grants in an email.” Colangelo, according to the notes, replied, “That job has gotten us a lot of stuff!” There’s more stuff coming, but not what Colangelo anticipated. Our diarist “will attempt to smooth it over w/Gail.” Blessed are the peacemakers, but essential are the notetakers.

Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Kostantinos Diamantis!

Governor Ned Lamont said Thursday he’d fire Colangelo if he could.

The story continues.

Published February 3, 2022.

Litchfield Republican state Representative David Wilson announced Tuesday he will don’t run for a fourth term in the House. Wilson made his announcement and added an endorsement of his preferred successor.

Wilson supports Woodbury Board of Selectman member Karen Reddington-Hughes for the Republican nomination in the district that includes Bethlehem, Litchfield, Morris, Warren and Woodbury.

Reddington-Hughes may face a hometown hurdle on the way to the party’s nomination. Woodbury has become contested turf between establishment Republicans and party members cleaving to Donald Trump’s brand of political nihilism. The establishment wing prevailed in a close-run primary for first selectman last September.

On March 1st, enrolled party members will have the opportunity to vote in a town committee primary that could accelerate divisions. There is nothing like a town committee primary to inflict wounds that last for a generation. The winning town committee candidates will select delegates to the May legislative convention. They may prefer someone other than their own Reddington-Hughes.

The district has traditionally elected Republicans but Litchfield County has seen Democrats gaining strength.

Published February 2, 2022.