Why Connecticut Needs An Office Of Inspector General – Now!

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.

A competent FBI investigation will find that the State Contracting Standards Board dumpster fire was set ablaze owing to a struggle centering on Project Labor Agreements (PLA), a collusion between successive Democrat administrations and SEBAC, the union conglomerate authorized to sign off on contracts, that raises the cost of labor by requiring non-union contractors to offer wages and benefits comparable to those offered by unionized contractors. Such arrangements benefit unions by artificially raising the cost of labor and deepening budget debt.