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Office of Policy and Management (OPM) Secretary Melissa McCaw made a major announcement Wednesday. McCaw’s friend Konstantinos Diamantis will serve as her deputy undersecretary beginning Thursday. Diamantis has been at the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) overseeing the state’s school construction program.

Diamantis will be bringing the school construction program to DAS. That means political operator Robert Ficeto, who is a Diamantis subordinate at DAS, will be moving to OPM. McCaw’s decision to bring the DAS duo to OPM has caused concerns within the political and professional ranks of state government. McCaw’s oddly fulsome email announcing Diamantis’s appointment will do nothing to relax furrowed foreheads.

You can read the long announcement/testimonial/valentine here:

From: McCaw, Melissa <Melissa.McCaw@ct.gov
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2019 4:12 PM
To: OPM-DL OPM All Staff <OPM-DLOPMAllStaff@ct.gov>
Subject: Agency Appointment

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Konstantinos “Kosta” Diamantis as Deputy Secretary for the Office of Policy and Management.

Kosta brings a unique and diverse background and skillset to his position as Deputy Secretary, with over 30 years of experience combined in the public and private sectors; practicing law, serving in the state legislature, and most recently, working at the Department of Administrative Services. Throughout these experiences, he has developed a deep understanding of the legal, legislative, policy, financial, and operational functions of state government and his role in strategic negotiations makes him uniquely qualified to support me and the Office of Policy and Management.

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Konstantinos “Kosta” Diamantis as Deputy Secretary for the Office of Policy and Management. 

Kosta holds a J.D. from Franklin Pierce Law School and was a sole practitioner for over 28 years. His practice focused on criminal defense, including work in juvenile court, abuse neglect cases, and contracts.  Additionally, Kosta served in the General Assembly from 1992 through 2006, and followed with a role as Special Counsel to the Speaker of the House James Amann. During his legislative tenure, he was named House Vice Chair of the Appropriations Committee and served as the House Subcommittee Chair of Elementary and Secondary Education, and Judicial and Corrections. His legislative work also includes service on various committees, such Executive and Legislative Nominations, Insurance, and Health and Human Services. Kosta will immediately begin to support the agency’s work in the areas of Intergovernmental, Criminal Justice, Capital and other programs and policy.

Some of you may know Kosta from his time at DAS, where he previously served as the Director of School Construction, Grants and Review and most recently the Director of Construction Management. Together with his team, he continues the mission to provide adequate learning environments and facilities to meet the programmatic needs for our students as well provide state of the art facilities, while simultaneously maintaining frugality with state resources and over time reducing the annual outlay of required bond allocations from $850 million to under $500 million through active management of design, construction process, change order review, site review and payments.

In order to ensure the cost efficiencies in administering the school construction program and consistent with OPM’s responsibility to administer various municipal grants and municipal aid programs, Kosta will continue to supervise the school construction program, whose staff will be relocated from DAS to OPM in the near future.  For this reason, Kosta’s functional title will be Deputy Secretary for the Office of Policy and Management and Director of School Construction Grants, Review and Audit.  In addition, efforts will be made in the upcoming legislative session to transfer the statutory responsibility for the administration of school construction grants from DAS to OPM. The OSCGR unit and function will leverage synergies with OPM’s extensive work supporting our municipalities.  

Please join me in welcoming Kosta to OPM effective Thursday, November 21 and wish him success in his new role. I am confident I can count on each of you to orient Kosta to our great agency and the important work we do in the service of our great State. Without a doubt, he will come to know and appreciate the outstanding expertise and team members we are fortunate to have in OPM.

Best regards,

Melissa

McCaw’s plan to win retroactive legislative approval of her de facto transfer of the administration of school construction grants from DAS to OPM may prompt considerable scrutiny. Diamantis will not need to spend much time getting to know and appreciate team members at OPM. McCaw’s tribute announcement suggests the synergies are ready to launch.

The position was briefly held at the start of the Lamont administration by Natalie Wagner.

Melissa McCaw, Governor Ned Lamont’s former budget chief, will teach a class in budgeting at the University of Connecticut. McCaw served as Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management from January 2019 until she resigned in February to become head of finance for East Hartford.

McCaw will teach Public Finance and Budgeting to Master of Public Administration Fellows on five Saturdays between October 22nd and December 3rd at UConn’s Hartford branch.

At OPM, McCaw presided over two programs, school construction and the State Pier project, that are the subject of federal criminal investigations.

McCaw’s friend and colleague Kostantinos Diamantis expressed interest in the MPA Fellows program, according to an April 22, 2021, email the sent to Mohamad Alkrady, Director of the School of Public Policy. Diamantis told Alkadry that he was not the only Diamantis interested in the MPA program. “Also my daughter who is EA to Chief States Attorney is also interested I added her to this email.” [sic]

Anastasia Diamantis is no longer an executive assistant to the Chief State’s Attorney. Richard Colangelo retired as Chief State’s Attorney after coming under fire in an independent investigation of his hiring of Ms. Diamantis in 2020. Kostantinos Diamantis was suspended from OPM and retired from his position as head of the state’s school construction financing program in 2021. He has attempted to rescind his retirement.

Published August 25, 2022.

What a difference a federal criminal investigation makes. In November 2019, then-Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw was in a twist over the grim state of the Connecticut Port Authority. A CT Mirror story by Keith Phaneuf highlighting more embarrassing revelations included in a report from state auditors had caught McCaw’s attention.

McCaw told the agency’s spokesperson, Chris McClure, that she needed the durable Democrat to “take the lead on crafting OPM’s comm plan to highlight our extensive and outstanding work, including timing of release, etc. Currently the administration is silent and all these audit issues and I want to get in front of it and be clear that we’ve taken the lead and we are restoring the financial integrity and related and confidence back into this organization…This progress is not DECD’s. It is OPM.”

McCaw subordinate Jeffrey Beckham replied that he and colleague Robert Dakers would be delivering the budget agency’s testimony at a December 4th legislative hearing on the audit. “Draft it,” McCaw replied, “I might present it depending on workload although I believe I’m scheduled to be out.” McCaw did big foot Beckham and Dakers at the daylong hearing, presenting testimony alongside Paul Mounds, Governor Ned Lamont’s chief of staff, and David Kooris, who was serving as acting chair of the authority as well as deputy commissioner of DECD.

In the aftermath of the port authority scandals, McCaw’s deputy and close friend, Kostantinos Diamantis, was given extraordinary dominion over the State Pier project at the New London port. The decision by Lamont to entrust Diamantis with extensive power baffled observers at the time. Federal criminal investigators appear to be focused on the former Democratic state representative’s role in the creation of a $235 million wind turbine hub.

The emails were included in the Lamont administration’s compliance with a federal subpoena seeking documents related to the probe. Nobody is in the hunt for credit now. McCaw and Diamantis have left OPM. Beckham has succeeded McCaw. Lamont continues to be notably incurious about who knew what at OPM.

The federal criminal investigation, which Lamont said he learned of “in passing” from his corruption-busting legal counsel, continues.

Published April 29, 2022.

Office of Policy and Management (OPM) Secretary Melissa McCaw’s departure from the Lamont administration is imminent, Daily Ructions has learned. McCaw has held the job of budget chief since Lamont took office in January 2019. McCaw previously served as Hartford’s finance director. She leaves under fraught circumstances of a federal criminal investigation of two programs she oversaw in her agency and her charges of abuse by Lamont’s inner circle.

The Middletown resident made a serious error when she insisted that Kostostinos Diamantis be appointed as her deputy budget director and–in what may turn out to be a destructive decision for Lamont himself–insisted he be allowed to bring his school construction portfolio with him from the Department of Administrative Services (DAS). At least one close adviser to Lamont raised serious and specific objections to the appointment of Diamantis to a position in the heart of the administration, directly beneath McCaw in chain of command. No one would listen. The school construction program, the State Pier project in New London, and Diamantis are the focus of a federal criminal investigation. Diamantis has denied any wrongdoing.

Diamantis left both his state jobs at the end of October 2021, weeks after I revealed in my Hartford Courant that Chief State’s Attorney Richard Collangelo had hired Diamantis’s daughter as a $99,000 a year executive assistant. Diamantis claimed he was the target of Lamont’s inner circle because he defended McCaw against attacks from the governor’s office.

As revelations of alleged corruption in the school construction continue, it has become clear that McCaw failed in her fundamental responsibility to supervise Diamantis in any meaningful way.

McCaw provided an effusive welcome to Diamantis in an email to OPM employees in 2019:

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Konstantinos “Kosta” Diamantis as Deputy Secretary for the Office of Policy and Management.

Kosta brings a unique and diverse background and skillset to his position as Deputy Secretary, with over 30 years of experience combined in the public and private sectors; practicing law, serving in the state legislature, and most recently, working at the Department of Administrative Services. Throughout these experiences, he has developed a deep understanding of the legal, legislative, policy, financial, and operational functions of state government and his role in strategic negotiations makes him uniquely qualified to support me and the Office of Policy and Management.

“Uniquely qualified” may take on a new meaning as targets of the school construction corruption investigation begin to enter into pleas as the investigation begins to reap its harvest in public.

Published February 24, 2022.

Two programs in OPM Secretary Melissa McCaw’s agency, school construction and the state pier project, are the subject of a federal criminal investigation. School construction has been taken from her after her deputy, Kostantinos Diamantis, was suspended in October. He retired but is seeking to return to his job as the head of the school construction program. The state pier project remains under her jurisdiction. This is unprecedented in a state that has endured frequent corruption scandals. Thursday’s Appropriations Committee meeting with McCaw provides a rare opportunity to pose questions and hear answers in public on matters of urgent public interest.

Here are some essential questions for McCaw:

Have federal criminal investigators contacted you about their investigation of the school construction grants program and the state pier project? Have you retained legal counsel to represent you in the investigation? Do your interests diverge from those of the state? Will you tell the public immediately if you are questioned or served an individual subpoena for documents?

Have you participated in complying with the subpoena served on the state?

How did you supervise Mr. Diamantis’s management of the school construction grants program?

Did you have any concerns that a Bristol company that had never built a school was hired without the benefit of competitive bidding to build a school in Tolland? Have you met Antoinette DiBenedetto-Roy of Construction Advocacy Professionals (CAP)? When did you learn that CAP was working on school construction projects and had hired your deputy’s daughter?

In a November 2019 memorandum of understanding, you and former DAS commissioner Josh Geballe extolled the advantages of moving the school construction grants program from DAS to OPM. Why was the school construction program returned to DAS after Mr. Diamantis was suspended and then retired? Why were the advantages you included in a memorandum of understanding no longer relevant to the effective administration of the program?

Did you participate in the decision to suspend Mr. Diamantis? Do you agree with Governor Lamont’s decision to suspend Mr. Diamantis?

Published February 9, 2022.

Anastasia Diamantis, Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s $104,000 year executive assistant, submitted an incomplete resume when she applied for the Division of Criminal Justice job that is a growing embarrassment for Governor Ned Lamont’s administration. Diamantis failed to include her job with a construction company that had a no-bid contract to build a Tolland elementary school. The Department of Administrative Services (DAS), which runs the state’s school construction grant program was deeply involved in the project.

The CT Mirror‘s Mark Pazniokas reports today that Anastasia Diamantis was employed by Construction Advocacy Professionals while it worked on the planning and construction of Birch Grove Primary School in 2019 and 2020. Anastasia Diamantis’s father, Kostantinos Diamantis, was in charge of school construction grants at the time. He reported to DAS Commissioner Josh Geballe.

Colangelo told the Mirror that he was aware of Anastasia Diamantis’s part-time job, though he would not have known about it from her resume. It makes no mention of her construction industry job.

The Birch Grove project raised concerns when Tolland officials waived traditional bidding to replace the elementary school. They had discovered in late 2018 that the building’s foundation was defective due to the presence of pyrrhotite mineral.

“Everyone has been pushing this along,” Tolland Councilman Louis Luba said, according to a 2019 Journal Inquirer story. “The sense of urgency has overridden their obligation of due diligence and we are sacrificing proper practices for the sake of expediency.” In the same story, Fred Carstensen, professor of finance and economics and the director for the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut, called the process “messy.”

The construction contract for the school was awarded to D’Amato Construction Company, Inc., of Bristol. Kostantinos Diamantis represented Bristol while he served in the House of Representatives. D’Amato had a thin history of building schools before it was awarded the Birch Grove contract. The decision to abandon bids raised serious concerns from building trades unions.

Between the discovery of the pyrrhotite in the school foundation at the end of December 2018 and a local bond referendum to approve the construction of a new school on May 7, 2019, there was time to seek proposals in an orderly manner that would have benefited the public and preserved the integrity of the system for awarding construction contracts.

Diamantis kept control of the school construction grants program when his friend Melissa McCaw, Lamont’s budget director, appointed him as her deputy in 2019. Lamont’s inexplicable consent to the move will likely cause him considerable embarrassment in the year ahead.

Kostantinos Diamantis was suspended from his influential position at OPM after this column revealing his daughter’s job with Colangelo appeared in the Hartford Courant. Diamantis retired and delivered an ugly assessment of Lamont’s top advisers.

What a differences a jarring financial scandal makes. Not long ago, state budget director Melissa McCaw praised West Haven officials for “the fiscal integrity and discipline built into the city’s decision-making.” On Monday, McCaw, running the state budget office without the assistance of her deposed friend and deputy, Konstantinos Diamantis, sent a letter demanding answers from often confused Mayor Nancy Rossi. West Haven officials have been slow to explain how more that $600,000 in federal Covid-19 federal relief funds disappeared, allegedly stolen by Michael DiMassa, a former state employee who resigned his seat in the state Hiuse of Representatives last month.

West Haven’s finances are under state supervision. Rossi and her team have not provided documents and explanations OPM has been seeking for months. “Staffing to adequate levels should not be delayed to the next budget.,” McCaw wrote. The letter claims OPM and the West Haven oversight board have been “persistent in exhorting” West Haven to meet its obligations by making required changes in how it operates.

Here’s the McCaw missile:
November 15, 2021

Dear Mayor Rossi,
The purpose of this letter is to follow up on my September 17, 2021 letter to you in which I advised the City to provide OPM with a plan for resolving prior year audit findings and for addressing persistent outstanding items in the FY 2021 Memorandum of Agreement between the City and OPM. My request was reiterated by me, and affirmed by members of the MARB, at the October 6, 2021 and November 3, 2021 board meetings.

As of Friday, November 12, 2021, my office has only received a response from the City regarding issues related to the purchasing function. However, there are remaining open items related to audit findings, the Personnel Department, staff training on the Munis financial system and staffing of the Finance Department.

This correspondence is formal notification that Municipal Restructuring Funds will not be distributed until the City is in full compliance with the MOA, and until the City’s annual financial audit and the CohnReznick audit are both completed. Further, the City has been placed on notice that if either audit indicates that the City’s delays in taking corrective actions to address audit findings were contributing factors to any misuse of Covid Relief Funds, those conclusions would warrant withholding MRF.
While the City’s improvements to its balance sheet and overall financial condition have been recognized, both OPM and the MARB have been consistent in urging the City to strengthen its financial management infrastructure by hiring the necessary staff to support that infrastructure and implementing and enforcing necessary internal control systems. OPM and the MARB have been persistent in exhorting the City to take steps to resolve audit findings and make improvements outlined in the City’s Memorandum of Agreement with OPM. OPM has consistently supported the City in these efforts.

There is no question that that City must fulfill the requirements of the MOA and do so with the greatest of urgency. As has been repeatedly requested, the City must submit a full plan for achieving compliance that commits to deadlines, assigns responsibilities for completing tasks, and ensures accountability in regular reporting.

This plan must include steps and timelines for hiring any positions deemed necessary for ensuring proper controls in the areas of finance and procurement. Staffing to adequate levels should not be delayed to the next budget. Current vacancies, and any additional needed positions, should be filled with qualified individuals as quickly as a responsible recruitment process will allow. If necessary, the City’s contingency funds should be made available to cover any related unbudgeted salary and benefit expenses for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

Sincerely,
Melissa McCaw, Secretary

Posted November 16, 2021.

Konstantinos Diamantis is out at the Office of Policy and Management. The former Democratic state legislator quit after being suspended by Governor Ned Lamont over an unspecified personnel matter.

Diamantis’ abrupt exit comes four weeks after his daughter’s hiring was disclosed in my Hartford Courant column.

The departure of the influential second-in-command at the state budget office is an abrupt change. Secretary Melissa McCaw brought Diamantis into her office in 2019 despite fierce objections from inside Governor Ned Lamont’s office. McCaw won that power struggle but her victory ended today.

McCaw’s regard for Diamantis was evident in the lavish praise she showered on him in an e-mail to OPM employees announcing his appointment. Diamantis had been overseeing school construction grants at the Department of Administrative Services. He brought the school construction grant portfolio with him, though statutory authority for the shift would come later.

McCaw ceded considerable authority to Diamantis, causing widespread dismay at OPM, other state agencies, the legislature. Nowhere was Diamantis’s influence more starkly evident than at the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney. In June of last year, Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo hired Diamantis’ daughter to fill a $99,000 a year , newly created executive assistant position in his office. Anastasia Diamantis’s experience did not make her an obvious recipient of that state bauble. Colangelo interviewed only Ms. Diamantis for the position. State law required the position to be approved by both OPM and DAS.

The hiring of Anastasia Diamantis will require the Criminal Justice Commission to ask Colangelo to explain his role in a decision with corrosive effects on confidence in his office and the fair administration of justice.

The Department of Administrative Services (DAS) released not long before 4 p.m. Friday a limited number of copies of a school construction grant program audit. The release many months after Commissioner Michelle Gilman pledged regular updates would be provided to legislators. 

The multi-billion dollar program has been the subject of a federal criminal investigation. Audit updates were not provided last year, protecting Governor Ned Lamont from having sunshine cast on an embarrassing failure of oversight by his administration during his and Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz’s re-election campaign.

The limited release of the interim report comes three days before the legislature’s School Construction Project Priority Review Committee meets Monday afternoon. The status of the audit is likely to be a top interest of legislators. 

Calls to Gilman’s office went to voicemail Friday afternoon. Its website continues to list Lora Rae Anderson as the head of communications. She’s now the chief of staff at Department of Transportation. The most recent press release on the department’s website was posted in May of last year.

Gilman’s predecessor at DAS, Josh Geballe, entered into a memorandum of understanding early in the Lamont administration that transferred the school construction office from DAS to the state budget office. That move accommodated then-school construction office head Kostantinos Diamantis’ move to the budget office to serve as deputy to his close friend Melissa McCaw. The Geballe/McCaw agreement violated state law and was terminated when scandal struck the Lamont administration and the school construction program.

Published January 20, 2023.

Governor Ned Lamont has been asking around. The Greenwich Democrat is seeking names for a new legal counsel. The inquiries by Lamont suggest the second legal counsel of his first term, Nora Dannehy, may soon leave the administration after little more than a year.

Dannehy is the career federal prosecutor who became a historic corruption buster in 2003 and 2004 as she brought down then-Governor John G. Rowland and members of his administration. Dannehy’s reputation for rectitude may not be the best fit for Lamont as his administration is under a federal criminal corruption investigation involving contract steering. Lamont said he learned of the probe when Dannehy may have mentioned it “in passing.”

Lamont lost his budget director in February. The governor said at the time that Melissa McCaw, whose agency is at the center of the investigation, was seeking a fresh start in East Hartford—a town not often identified with personal renewal—and would serve as its finance director. Lamont favorite Josh Geballe also left the administration early this year. DAS commissioner and COO Geballe had overseen the state’s school construction grants program and made the fatal 2019 decision to transfer it to McCaw’s budget agency in violation of state law. Geballe’s decision meant the head of the program, Konstantinos Diamantis, would receive no meaningful oversight from his friend McCaw.

Suggestions for the legal counsel job may be submitted directly to the governor. Applicants should note that few alumni of Lamont’s office ever mention their experience fondly. We mention that just in passing.

Published May 4, 2022.