Sentencing memo: Sullivan ok’d Norwich Spa bill for William DiBella’s wife Donna, compliments of municipal ratepayers. Had $150,000 consulting fee with MDC overlord.
James Sullivan, former Norwich utilities commission chairman and former chairman of the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative (CMEEC) board of directors , was sentenced sentenced Wednesday to six months in prison for misusing rate ratepayer funds for a notorious 2015 trip to the Kentucky Derby and trips to the deluxe Greenbriar resort in West Virginia.
The government’s sentencing memorandum includes a glimpse of Connecticut’s profitable and furtive political system of debts and favors. “Sullivan used his position,” the memorandum states, to authorize the expenditure of CMEEC funds for spa treatments for the spouse of William DiBella of the Metropolitan District Counsel [sic] (MDC). More specifically, in June 2015, while he was chairman of the CMEEC Board, Defendant Sullivan Sullivan approved $340 of spa charges for DiBella’s wife [Donna DiBella] at the Norwich Inn and Spa to the CMEEC master account, despite the fact that [CMEEC manager Ellen] Kachmar had specifically given instructions to the spa not to charge those expenses to CMEEC’s account.”
“Mrs. DiBella had not even an arguable business connection with CMEEC,” the government’s memorandum states. But in March 2016, Defendant Sullivan entered into a consulting contract with William DiBella and MDC for $150,000 annually commencing as of January 2016…This pattern of providing personal favors to business partners, and then later profiting from the relationship with them, demonstrated Sullivan’s utter disregard for the appropriate use of CMEEC funds when it came to benefits for himself, his friends, and his associates, and it belies the assertion that he was serving on the Commission and the Board almost completely on a volunteer basis.”
U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, The Day newspaper reported, told Sullivan at his sentencing, “you lost your way.” That was an act of kindness by Judge Meyer, who appeared to give considerable thought to the appropriate penalty. Sullivan had been on a lucrative political path for decades. His profession was influence and he immersed himself in it.
That $340 spa treatment for William DiBella’s wife compliments of the municipal ratepayers tells the tale in a vivid stroke.
Is it ever enough? That you are asking the questions, one student of Connecticut’s political traditions observed Friday, provides the sordid answer.
Published May 19, 2023.