Lamont and Gillett
In proving foresight
may be vain/The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/ Gang aft agley – Robert Burns
At a minimum, the Connecticut Freedom of Information (FOI)
law and its Commission, responsible for enforcing the FOI law, have been
entrusted by the state legislature to assure an open political process and to
guard against insufferable political effronteries to the law.
In brief, the law stipulates that politicians and
administrators of the public’s business cannot do anything they like all the
time; there are limits to the nearly limitless arrogance of Connecticut’s
one-party state, always verging, as is common in one-party states the world
over, on the razor’s edge of imperious
arrogance.
In an age in which politicians wish to conduct the public’s business
privately and off the record, the internet and legal propinquity threaten to
spoil the best laid plans of mice and men.
That is exactly what happened when one of Connecticut’s two
energy distributors, Eversource, brought the state’s Public Utilities
Regulation Authority (PURA) to court. The
case was decided in favor of Eversource and United Illuminating, largely
because PURA’s chairwoman, Marissa Gillett, admitted under oath that she had repeatedly
violated state law by making unilateral decisions without the legally required number
of commissioners participating. Instead, Gillett had, according to numerous
reports, designated herself as the presiding officer in nearly all the
decisions made by a truncated PURA – very likely with Governor Ned Lamont’s
approval or direction. Did she skirt an administrative process to attain a
result approved by Lamont? Only last week, Lamont told Connecticut’s business
community, “I appoint PURA [the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority],
and those are the folks who are holding Eversource and U.I. [the state’s energy
distributors] accountable. The last commissioner [Marrisa Gillett] — the
utilities thought she was holding them too accountable.”
Connecticut’s crusading Attorney General, William Tong, may
want to bring Lamont up to speed on the progress of the PURA case. “It ain’t
over,” as Yogi Berra once said, “until it’s over.”
“The long-awaited decision and accompanying order to produce
thousands of documents,” Courant reporter Edmund Mahony tells us, “settles a
request dating from May 2025 by Eversource for all records generated that month
by the Public Utility Regulatory Authority concerning proposed energy and
utility legislation, including correspondence with the
legislature (emphasis mine)… At the time of the records request,
Eversource was in a protracted dispute with former PURA Chair Marissa Gillett,
who the state’s biggest utilities had accused of improperly or illegally
manipulating the outcomes of regulatory proceedings in ways that unfairly
impacted utility bottom lines… In its decision Wednesday, the Freedom of
Information Commission ordered PURA to produce thousands of records about
proposed legislation that the commission said the authority had improperly
redacted or refused to release.”
In its long awaited decision on Wednesday, the Courant tells
us, “the Freedom of Information Commission ordered PURA to produce thousands of
records about proposed legislation that the commission said the authority had
improperly redacted or refused to release. PURA, under new leadership appointed
by Gov. Ned Lamont, agreed to produce all the records. The commission also
voted on Wednesday to admonish Scott Muska, the former PURA legal director who
Gillett appointed and put in charge of the agency’s responses to Eversource
public record requests.”
The court proceedings are laced with potential potent
dynamite: “Eversource was looking for records that suggested Gillett was trying
to persuade legislative allies to amend laws in ways that would help her push
her regulatory agenda. The records request became moot a year ago when Gillett
resigned, having lost support in the legislature.”
Moot, schmoot – if there are emails showing that Lamont or
state legislators participated in an effort to short-sheet utility providers,
likely evidence will be present in possible conspiratorial emails and other “private”
communications. The deletion of emails, especially
those relating to court cases or sworn congressional testimony, is generally
frowned upon by non-partisan news outlets.
It looks like the Lamont administration has done a hasty job
mopping up the Gillett inspired PURA mess, but carefully mopped messes –
especially in an era in which purged data frequently rises, vampire-like from
the grave at midnight -- have a way of returning with renewed vigor during
political campaigns. There is little danger that the Democrat dominated General
Assembly will stumble politically and open a public investigation into legally
questionable administrative proceedings in which the governor and some legislators may have played a part,
but still red flags have been posted everywhere, and buried emails occasionally
are resurrected in hard fought campaigns.
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