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| Lamont and Unions |
Continuing corruption scandals in Connecticut point to the need for an Office of Inspector General, fully staffed, abundantly financed, and completely independent of the state’s executive department.
And if a diminishing opposition to such an office should ask
the question -- Why now? – good government advocates in the media and on both
sides of the partisan party divide should answer -- because every attempt put
forward so far to manage rather than eliminate corruption in the executive
department has conspicuously failed to uproot corruption.
The uprooting has been left in the hands of federal
prosecutors, when the state might have forestalled corrupt activity long ago through
the creation of such an office. Connecticut cannot rely solely on its present
“public watchdogs,” including a vigilant media, to rid the state of the stain
of corruption.
Connecticut’s so called government “watchdog institutions” –
specifically, the Attorney General Office and the State Contracting Standards
Board -- have been designed or remodeled to disregard corruption in the
executive department.
The Attorney General Office, one of the oldest executive
departments in the state, known in colonial days as “the king’s lawyer,” is
required by statute to represent the governor and state agencies in all
judicial matters. The office, designed expressly to represent the state in
civil not criminal matters, therefore cannot represent both “whistleblowers”
and the state agencies under judicial attack. There is in the judicial system
no allowance for any quasi-judicial office to serve both as prosecutor and
defense council.
The State Contracting Standards Board, initially authorized to
oversee the awarding of state contracts, we now understand, has been thoroughly
emasculated by the administration of Governor Ned Lamont. Oversight powers
concerning the awarding of state contracts have been removed from the board and
deposited in the Office of Policy Management, an administrative arm of the
executive department, a too convenient repositioning comparable to the removal
of the rooster and his replacement as guard of the henhouse by a famished fox.
In the flickering lamplight of the state’s latest FBI
corruption investigation, some good government legislators in Connecticut are
beginning to focus on a “final solution” to corrupt state activity that would
not simply punish corruption after it had occurred but also serve
as a corruption preventative.
The idea in preventative legislation is to stop the arsonist
from striking the match, not merely to punish the arsonist after the fire has
been set ablaze in the house. The difference between the two may be of little
importance to police and prosecutors, but householders may value the
distinction.
Is there anyone in the state who doubts that an Office of
Inspector General, properly invested with authority to pursue, investigate and
refer for prosecution whistleblower complaints, might have inhibited the state’s
last half dozen corrupt actors from pursuing corrupt activity?
In the latest scandal, now in the hands of the FBI, there
were whistleblowers. Contractors had warned
Lamont that principals in the executive department now under
investigation by the FBI were subverting the very purpose of the contracting
board, but they were not successful in suitably alarming state agencies – the
Attorney General Office, still the King’s lawyers, and the very agency hastily
remodeled so as NOT to pursue and investigate corrupt activity in contracting
matters, the State Contracting Standards Board, emasculated and then brought
under the shelter of the State Office of Policy Management, the eyes, ears and
nose of the Lamont administration.
Why, it may be asked, had no prominent Democrat allied with
the Lamont administration smelled the putrid corruption? Had the entire
executive apparatus caught the sniffles from the Omicron virus? Was there no
one aboard the executive Titanic to spot the iceberg ahead?
The State Contracting Standards Board, someone should have
reminded all the kings’ men, was created expressly to thwart corrupt activity
in the aftermath of the Governor John Rowland scandal nearly two decades ago. When Lamont
moved the board’s mandate into the Office of Policy Management, he was,
Democrat President Pro Tem of the state Senate Martin Looney might have
reminded the governor, thumbing his nose publicly at the General Assembly and
good government enforcers like himself.
But no warning of any kind wafted into Lamont’s ears, and
now, in the absence of an Office of Inspector General, it will be left to the
Federal sleuths who put Rowland behind bars – twice – to remind the governor
that no one, as the old saw has it, is above the law.
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