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Why Connecticut Needs An Inspector General

Attorney General Tong

Every so often in Connecticut, the bureaucratic iron curtain parts and we are treated to headlines such as these: UConn prof wins $736,000, gets job back after questioning school’s management and favoritism in ‘whistleblower’ suit and Connecticut Lottery to pay $450,000 in settlement of suit that arose after allegations to FBI.

Such stories have a very short shelf life and generally do not result in creative solutions for persistent and recurring problems. No one is hauled before a congressional investigating committee, necessary reforms are easily shelved along with a momentary embarrassment, and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong  walks off the stage with a sardonic smile pasted on his face, muttering “no comment.”

A payout follows, a smothering blanket is thrown over the whole sordid mess, life resumes its wayward course and, in the absence of a real solution to a long festering problem, the whole cycle repeats itself.

The UConn professor was awarded $736,000 by a judge who, remarkably, was able to reach a just finding solely on the basis of evidence put before her in a case involving misadministration at UConn, Connecticut’s holy-of-holies state supported university. The professor, known in Connecticut parlance as a “whistleblower,” should be awarded with the state’s equivalent of the national medal of freedom.

Whistlebowers are people working for state agencies who blow the whistle on agency heads for unethical and possible illegal behavior. They are sometimes ruthlessly punished or hounded out of a job with the assistance of the state Attorney General, whose office is statutorily obligated to act as a defense attorney in legal actions for state agents and agencies that whistleblowers blow the whistle on.

Superior Court Judge Susan Peck, according to the story in a Hartford paper, rendered a non-ambiguous decision favoring the UConn professor.

She found that “former business school Dean Paul Christopher Earley eliminated Weinstein’s position after Weinstein persisted in expressing concern that cost cutting measures by Earley in the school’s business accelerator program could jeopardize federal funding and that Earley allegedly made decisions that benefitted his wife, Elaine Mosakowski, a tenured business professor who ran one of the accelerators... Peck awarded Weinstein about $736,000, concluding he was effectively fired by Earley in retaliation for the concerns he raised… The comprehensive, 58-page decision raises questions about the effectiveness of UConn’s internal ethics and compliance agency, the Office of Audit Compliance and Ethics, which was established in 2006 to investigate compliance issues and advise employees.”

Be it noted – Peck’s decision was rendered eleven (11) years after the professor had courageously blown his whistle.

Corruption, as it is commonly understood by most people, puts down roots and flourishes in Connecticut’s web of complex and bewildering state administrative processes.

The professor did contact the humorously named Office of Audit Compliance and Ethics, which predictably proceeded to ignore his complaint. Did the ethics office find that UConn’s firing of the professor was unethical -- for having blown the whistle at an improper and, be it noted, unethical firing of a whistleblower?

Ha! And Ha!, Ha!

This is not the first time that the office of state ethics had stood in the way of an ethical resolution to a whistleblower complaint.

This professor had the gumption and where-with-all to carry his case to court. More often than not, complainants are forced to endure very expensive legal proceedings before their complaints are justly – if ever – resolved. They are simply battered about in an impossibly complex process that both impoverishes and exhausts them. And, should they prevail – after eleven (11) years of shuttlecock “justice” -- the resolution of their cases are effectively smothered in a “plea bargain” proceeding, the details of which may never be made available to the general public.

Money, in the end, is awarded for silence. And the judgments of courts are buried in judicial morgues, never again to see the light of day. The tortured victim is compensated, and those who tortured him never feel the lash, likely because they are well appointed public servants who have a strong wind at their back – over 200 attorneys paid to square circles in the Attorney General’s office.

If the problem is that victimizers are over-represented and the victims under-represented – and that is exactly the problem – the answer to the problem is to recreate in Connecticut an Inspector General’s Office unattached to the executive department of government, fully independent, armed with subpoena power and mandated to investigate whistleblower and citizen complaints against state agents and agencies.

Connecticut’s whistleblower statute specifically protects whistleblowers who have disclosed such information to any employee of the Auditors of Public Accounts. According to the Whistle Blower statute, “The Auditors of Public Accounts shall review [whistleblower complaints] and report their findings and any recommendations to the Attorney General. Upon receiving such a report, the Attorney General shall make such investigation as the Attorney General deems proper regarding such report and any other information that may be reasonably derived from such report.”

However the Attorney General is statutorily mandated to defend in court state agents and agencies. So, the whistleblower statute itself absurdly assigns to the Attorney General’s Office both prosecutorial and defense functions.

What could possibly go wrong, and who among us would hire a defense attorney knowing that he was to be both a defense attorney and a prosecutor in civil cases involving accusations of impropriety or peculation? 

Comments

Mary B. said…
I am a notorious bonafide Connecticut goverent corruption Whistleblower whose Whistleblower complaints against State Quasi Public Agency, the Housing Authority of the City of Torrington where I worked full time as an AFSCME Council 4, Local 1579 public employee union member for 6.5 years until Feb 2006 when I was illegally fired in retaliation for filing HUD Fair Housing and Whistleblower complaints. Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities made an incorrect ruling to dismiss my 2006 whistleblower complaint they didn't have jurisdiction to make. The CHRO ruling to dismiss my whistleblower complaint can be found on line. I have fought this criminal activity out of the City of Torrington and State via Claudia Sweeney

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