Dannel Malloy’s Home Depot Cabinets Moment.
Governor Dannel P. Malloy stumbled in Friday’s post-Bond Commission press scrum. The beleaguered governor tried to distance himself from scrutiny of the $500 million Stamford Transportation Center project. The delayed project’s designated developers and generous family members provided $165,000 to the state Democratic federal fund that expended hundreds of thousands of dollars–by conservative estimates–on Malloy’s 2014 re-election campaign. This is proving difficult to explain. State Democrats agreed in June to pay $325,000 to the state’s election finance agency to keep secret campaign communications among Malloy and his political inner circle.
Malloy told persistent reporters that he has personal relationships with transportation center developers. “I have purposely tried to stay out of this discussion to a great extent,” The Stamford Democrat also declared, “So from the very outset I tried to stay away” from the project, the two term Stamford Democrat declared. Trying is not the same as doing.
Malloy, however, has not walled himself off from the tortured negotiations on a project that was to have begun construction two years ago. His claim to have “tried” to stay away from the long and fruitless negotiations will be unlikely to stand up under scrutiny from those with the authority to inquire into the details of the curious course negotiations with the John McClutchy-led development team this summer. Malloy is unlikely to have been silent as secret negotiations reached a critical point. He may have intervened on behalf of the developers. The Department of Transportation has declined to release project communications between DOT’s commissioners and deputy commissioner and Malloy budget chief Benjamin Barnes, one of the governor’s longest serving and closest aides. Barnes’s leading role has him looking like Malloy’s surrogate.
Malloy’s claim to have tried to stay out of the Stamford Transportation Center deal reminded observers of scandal-prone John Rowland’s December 2003 false claim that cabinets in his lakefront cottage were off the shelf from Home Depot. Rowland was trying to minimize renovations to the Litchfield County hideaway. The doomed Republican governor had not counted on the hero of that chapter of his unraveling, Tammy Lauzier, wife of the cabinet maker who had provided the custom cabinets that graced the troublesome cottage.
Friday felt like a new phase began in Malloy’s year of consequences. It awaits its own Tammy Lauzier–with subpoenas.