Special session will ignore school construction corruption fix.

As President Biden’s father might have said to him, “Joey, you can tell a lot about a man’s priorities by the bills he wants passed in a special session of the legislature.”

Governor Ned Lamont is shining a light on his own sense of urgency with what he does not want the legislature to consider in a special session later this month. The governor has no interest in fixing the appalling invitation to corruption in the school construction bill he signed into law this month. The legislation allows school construction managers to bid on contracts they are overseeing. Lamont says the legislature can get around to fixing the dangerous change in the law next year.

Next year may be months after former top Lamont adviser and school construction financing overlord Kostantinos Diamantis’s trial on corruption charges. Diamantis is accused in a federal indictment of extorting bribes from school construction contractors.

Instead of addressing corruption, Lamont and Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Dan O’Keefe want some changes in the state’s banking laws for Innovation Banks. Who would know more about money than two of the co-hosts of Biden’s high-dollar Greenwich fundraiser earlier this month?

Building public schools free of graft? That’s for other people–who send their children to those schools.

Published June 13, 2024.