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Republican leader in a General Assembly disproportionally controlled by Democrats, State Senator Stephen Harding of Brookfield, and six other Republicans have signed a letter addressed to Governor Ned Lamont demanding the resignation of associates of former Chairwoman of Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) Marissa Gillett, who recently surrendered her office.
The six Republican senators, the Hartford Courant tells us, “are
asking if two of her [Gillett’s] subordinates will also leave their jobs, along
with an assistant attorney general who represented the agency.
“In light of the recent stories regarding public confessions
of the intentional misleading of a Connecticut Superior Court judge, have the
following individuals been asked to turn in their resignations?” the senators
asked Gov. Ned Lamont and Attorney General William Tong in a letter. Those mentioned
thus far were “PURA’s General Counsel and Legal Director Scott Muska, PURA’s
Chief of Staff Theresa Govert, Assistant Attorney General Seth Hollander.”
Gillett’s resignation was not unexpected. Two of
Connecticut’s energy distributors, have sued PURA on various grounds. Their suit
has been bumping around in Connecticut courts for months, and the claims made
by the plaintiffs – Eversource and United Illuminating -- have yet to be adjudicated,
largely because Assistant Attorney
General Seth Hollander delayed proceedings by refusing to share with the
plaintiffs in the case necessary discovery data that may be used to support
claims made by the plaintiffs, such as 1) Gillett was exercising extra-legal
authority when she autocratically reduced the plaintiff’s energy price
increases; 2) Supposedly a fair and unbiased adjudicator at PURA, Gillett had
shown bias in her decisions and 3) the decision making process at PURA was seriously
flawed because decisions that should have been made according to legislative
statute by five commissioners were being made by Gillett, possibly under
instructions from undisclosed political actors.
The suit is ongoing, but Hollander did make an honest
confession when questioned by New Britain Superior Court Judge Matthew J.
Budzik.
Hollander “answered ‘yes’ when asked whether PURA had misled
the court by choosing not to admit that it was aware records sought by the
court had been erased from Gillett’s telephone by an auto delete program,”
according to the Courant report.
Attorney General William Tong, clutching his pearls, stoutly
defended his Assistant Attorney General Hollander against the accusations
leveled by Republicans in a follow up story, “New allegations arise on embattled CT agency.
Attorney asks that ‘stench’ not mar his reputation.”
Said the much aggrieved Tong, “It is highly inappropriate
and unfair to hold Mr. Hollander responsible for the alleged actions of his
clients, and to second guess his actions as a lawyer and an advocate and demand
that he lose his job”
And then, a master at deflection, Tong offered a suggestion
to impertinent Republicans: “I offer a suggestion: instead of picking on an
assistant attorney general for doing his job, I invite you to join me in taking
on United Illuminating and Eversource to stop their unjustified demands that
Connecticut ratepayers pay them and their shareholders millions upon millions
of dollars more on top of rates that far exceed what Connecticut families can
afford. Please join me in fighting back against our state’s utilities for using
lawsuits and legal process to run one of their regulators out of town and for
attacking and intimidating legislators who are also fighting against exorbitant
rate hikes… I cannot make it any clearer: Assistant Attorney General Hollander
has my complete support. And he is not going anywhere.”
The suggestion itself is bizarre, coming from an uber-moralist
who offers himself to the general public as a white-hatted defender of their
interests. Actually, the chief statutory responsibility of Tong and his
predecessors is to defend the governor and his executive departments in cases
that arise in court. And this is not best done by assistant attorneys general
who mislead courts and deny plaintiffs the discovery data they need to expose
wrongdoing.
Had PURA misled the court by choosing not to admit that it
was aware records sought by the court had been erased from Gillett’s telephone
by an auto delete program, Judge Budzik asked Hollander?
Answer: “Yes.”
Mercifully, Budzik did not ask Hollander whether he was
under instructions from Attorney General Tong or Governor Ned Lamont to deny to
plaintiffs for several months discovery data that was their due in order to
construct a true and faithful account of the legal issue before the court.
There are, the Courant tells us “new allegations” regarding yet
another probable cover-up at PURA, this one involving a Freedom of Information
(FOI) complaint filed by the Courant. Scott Gaudiosi, an attorney who served as
PURA’s FOI liaison and handled all public records requests, has left his
position because the superior to whom he reports, (PURA chief council Scott
Muska), “has engaged in behavior that is not up to the… standards of a state agency,”
Gaudiosi claims in an email. “He [Muska] has withheld documents that are
clearly responsive to requests under the Freedom of Information Act… I have
spent thirteen and a half years as a PURA employee and feel that continuing to
report to Scott could show to the outside {world] that I condone his actions,
which could not be further from the truth… Whenever PURA received a request
from utility attorneys or involving commissioners, I was not allowed to fulfill
my duties as liaison,” he wrote. “Scott handled those requests himself, and
those requests are at the heart of the complaints about his behavior. These
were the requests where documents were withheld…In some cases, I was asked by
Scott [Muska}, as my supervisor, to respond that PURA had no responsive documents,
or that we provided any responsive documents we did have, even though I was not
allowed to work on the request and validate those statements.”
There are too many participants in PURA’s falling house of
cards not to entertain the possibility of cover-up coordination among the various
parties, not to mention conspiracy.
Harding is right to raise an alarm. If there were more
Republican soldiers in the General Assembly, reasonable suspicions could very
well lead to a legislative special council appointment. That likely will not
happen in a government run by party caucus.
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