As a general rule, incumbent politicians do not like audits. An audit is a scrupulous examination, political and economic, of a politician’s record in office. If the audited politician’s career in office is at an end, an audit, usually performed by the opposition party, may seem redundant. What is the point of beating a dead political horse?
These strictures would seem to apply to former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart’s career-ending audit about which much reportorial and commentary ink has been spilled. At this point, it seems safe to say that Stewart’s political reputation has suffered irremediable damage. Stewart’s withdrawal from her race for Governor of Connecticut on the Republican ticket was occasioned by the publication of an audit’s findings. The audit was commissioned by the incoming Democrat Mayor of New Britain, Robert (Bobby) Sanchez, and conducted by a putative “non-partisan” law firm, Crumbie Law Group.
In recent days, we find
another audit has tickled the interest of some Connecticut reporters, this one
involving a substantial cast of political characters: Hartford City Treasurer
Carmen Sierra, Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, City Council President T.J.
Clarke, discharged Hartford Audit Commission Chairman Bruce Rubenstein,
recently deposed from the panel, and City Council President T.J. Clarke, among
others.
As a general rule, party whistleblowers occupy the same bottom rung on a state’s political latter as peeling paint. The sooner they are scraped off, the better for every active politician. The problem purging must be done efficiently with as little party ruckus as possible. In the Hartford case, eerily similar to the New Britain case, it was not possible discretely to hide the bodies under the political bed.
The most recent update on the story was written by Managing Editor of the Hartford Courant Helen Bennett whose lede suggests further scrutiny might disclose the hidden bodies.
Former Connecticut state treasurer and Hartford City Council president Shawn Wooden resigned from the Hartford Pension Commission citing “significant fiduciary and ethical concerns” under the city’s current treasurer. A week later, City Treasurer Carmen Sierra … “has pushed back, citing what she said is the ‘enormous success’ of the pension fund under her watch. Hartford City Treasurer Carmen Sierra took this stand in a letter to Mayor Arunan Arulampalam and City Council President T.J. Clarke, in which she addressed the fund and claims by former Hartford Audit Commission Chairman Bruce Rubenstein, who was publicly critical of Sierra after he was not reappointed to that panel.”
These events, purposely confusing, have more turns in their course than a scurrying serpent’s spine. And it should not be possible that wrongdoing by Hartford politicians can so easily be smothered by the citation of political successes? The administration of political business in New Britain was no less successful, as witness the many reelections of Erin Stewart, the former Mayor of New Britain and the former Republican gubernatorial contender.
Rubenstein’s successor, Attorney Kate Torres, we are advised in the Courant story, “was confirmed on April 13, 2026 before Mr. Rubenstein convened any meeting to discuss a potential audit. Under the City Charter, Ms. Torres was seated immediately upon confirmation. Therefore, the April 15 Internal Audit Commission meeting held after her confirmation could be challenged as improper [emphasis mine], as Mr. Rubenstein had already been replaced. Any suggestion of ‘retribution’ [on the part of those who terminated Rubenstein] originates solely from Mr. Rubenstein, not from this office, Sierra’s letter states. Rubenstein had been on the commission since 2013; the audit has since been reapproved.”
Responding to Torres’ circulated letter, Rubenstein quietly noted, according to the Courant, “Treasurer Sierra mentioned a replacement to me about a month before Attorney Torres was nominated and confirmed, and well after the wheels were in motion to audit the MERF [Municipal Employees Retirement Fund] and after people within her orbit told me of problems with her and the MERF and the Treasury Department.”
Wooden’s comments, it should be noted, echo a similar resignation from former commission chairman Joshua Gottfried, who was also removed in April 2026.
There are, the reader may notice, numberless forward and backward steps in this awkward dance, and the dance itself, as some investigative journalists persist in telling us, raises far more interesting questions that have not been answered – because they never were asked - by ducking and bobbing politicians, such as:
1) Have we not learned in the New Britain case that unmonitored state credit cards should never be issued to municipal chief executives who may safely abuse them with impunity? Employees whose continuance in their jobs depends upon the good will of their bosses are unlikely to blow whistles. Why wait for the second shoe to fall before outlawing such practices? Just tote up the additional charges usually incurred by chief executives and add them to their ever increasing – occasionally unearned – salaries.
2) Shouldn’t the newly established “Sanchez Rule” deployed so effectively against a Republican threat apply as well to every incoming municipal chief executive, Republican or Democrat? If audits are good for the goose, why are they not also good for the gander?
By all means, let there be audits – the more audits the better. That is the real lesson of Stewart’s humiliation. If former Republican Mayor Stewart should find her way to jail, room should be made for her Democrat compatriots in crime. Surely a “clean politics” bill in the Democrat dominated legislature can be devised on behalf of pilfered taxpayers in Connecticut who have not yet moved to southern states where solicitous politicians treat their taxpayers more like prized citizens and less like milch cows with swollen utters.
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