Search Results for "Diamantis McCaw "

The state legislature’s finance and education committees will hold a rare joint meeting to learn more about the school construction financing scandal dogging the Lamont administration. The committees will hear from Department of Administrative Services (DAS) Commissioner Michelle Gilman and Noel Petra, Deputy Commissioner of Real Estate and Construction Services.

If Gilman’s Tuesday confirmation hearing is an indication of the answers she will offer Monday, legislators will have to persist in seeking substantive responses to their questions. Word salads have become the dish of choice for Governor Ned Lamont and his officials when facing questions about the alleged contract steering scheme.

Here are some questions legislators may want to ask:

According to a review by the CT Mirror, two contractors, AAIS and Bestech, “got all but 15 of the 284 purchase orders issued by the state for hazardous waste disposal and demolition from fiscal year 2017 through 2022.” Why did no one at DAS notice that one of those companies, AAIS, was getting more than 70% of those contracts? If they did notice, why did no one say something? You can see the Causes, Effects, Consequences, and Solutions of Illegal Dumping here

Commissioner Gilman offered considerable praise for former budget secretary Melissa McCaw when Lamont announced her resignation on February 25th. Is she satisfied with McCaw’s oversight of the school construction grants program?

After months of questions, no one from DAS or the governor’s office has explained one fundamental decision: How and why was D’Amato Construction, which had never built a school, chosen from the start as the contractor for the $46 million Birch Grove School in Tolland? Will you please tell us?

Tolland’s superintendent, Dr. Walter Willett, said Kostantinos Diamantis, – former head of the school construction grant program, told him there would be problems with the Birch Grove School project if the town did not hire D’Amato and Construction Advocacy Professions (CAP). Why do you think Tolland officials felt they had no one in authority to turn to rescue them from those alleged threats?

How can you be certain that the same people at DAS who appeared to have noticed nothing about this growing scandal are capable of initiating and overseeing changes in it?

Mr. Petra is a vocal opponent of oversight, as shown by his harsh criticism of the State Properties Review Board that has saved taxpayers millions. Do you share his hostility to independent oversight?

Why is DAS auditing records of projects only from 2018 when federal investigators have subpoenaed state records from January 1, 2022?

On NBC Connecticut’s Face the Facts this weekend, Commissioner Gilman told reporter Mike Hydeck that the governor raised concerns about moving the school construction grant program to OPM. How and to whom did he raise those concerns? Was it a mistake for Governor Lamont to allow the program to move to OPM with Mr. Diamantis?

How many people at DAS typically work on a school construction project?

Were DAS employees afraid to cross Mr. Diamantis?

What happens to portable classrooms when a town is done using them?

Have any DAS employees been interviewed by federal criminal investigators? Have any received a subpoena to appear before the grand jury empaneled to investigate corruption in the Lamont administration? 

What will you do if any DAS employee refuses to cooperate with federal criminal investigators?

How long did it take for DAS to provide investigators information sought in the federal subpoena? How long will it take DAS to provide that information to anyone seeking it under the Freedom of Information Act? 

How long does it take DAS to respond to a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act? What have you done so far to improve DAS’s response to FOI requests?

Michelle Gilman, the Acting Commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) and the state’s former deputy chief operating officer, is scheduled for a confirmation hearing Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. on her nomination to lead DAS. It is an unprecedented time of scandal at the agency as a federal criminal investigation examining the state’s school construction grants program continues.

The hearing before Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee will provide legislators an opportunity to ask what Gilman knows about the investigation and what she will do to repair the agency’s deteriorating reputation.

Here are questions members might consider asking:

Former budget secretary Melissa McCaw complained of her treatment by members of Governor Lamont’s staff. Were you aware of that treatment? Did you say something when you saw something? If so, what and to whom?

Were you aware of the way other people were treated by Governor Lamont’s top advisers? Did you say something when you saw something?

In January 2019, Tolland officials learned D’Amato Construction of Bristol was going to be the contractor on the $46 million Birch Grove Primary School construction project. How did that happen? Who in addition to Kostantinos Diamantis was involved in that decision?

Was it a mistake for Josh Geballe to serve as both commissioner of DAS and the state’s chief operating officer at the same time?

You served as deputy chief operating officer in Governor Lamont’s office. Did Mr. Geballe fail to supervise adequately the school construction program before he agreed to transfer it to the Office of Policy and Management? 

The agreement to transfer school construction to OPM along with Mr. Diamantis highlighted efficiencies and synergies that would benefit the program. What were those?

Was Governor Lamont mistaken to allow the transfer of school construction program from DAS to OPM in 2019? Should the legislature have enacted a change in the law before the transfer occurred? 

Have any DAS employees been interviewed by federal criminal investigators? Have any received a subpoena to appear before the grand jury empaneled to investigate corruption in the Lamont administration? 

What will you do if any DAS employee refuses to cooperate with federal criminal investigators?

How long did it take for DAS to provide investigators information sought in the federal subpoena? How long will it take DAS to provide that information to anyone seeking it under the Freedom of Information Act? 

How long does it take DAS to respond to a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act? What have you done so far to improve DAS’s response to FOI requests?

What is the cost in public trust of DAS’s slow response to requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act? 

On January 19, 2019, two members of the DAS staff met with Tolland officials six days after outgoing Commissioner Currey authorized the waiving of competitive bidding in the construction of the Birch Grove Primary School. Two principals of D’Amato Construction also attended that meeting. Who invited them? Why were Tolland officials told D’Amato was their construction company? 

If the federal criminal investigation determines that public money was paid to contractors as part of an illegal contact steering scheme, what will you do to recover those funds?

In August of 2010, then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal issued a report saying that Ms. Bysiewicz’s office maintained an “inappropriate” database with 36,000 names in it containing personal information about citizens, including their race and religion. The report said there was a “reasonable perception”that the database, funded by the taxpayers, was developed “for political campaign purposes.”

You were then-Secretary of the State’s chief of staff during the period covered by the attorney general’s report. What was your role in developing, maintaining, and utilizing this database?

The attorney general’s report in 2010 named you as one of three employees who had a computer password that was used in 2007 to improperly upload 6,700 names from Ms. Bysiewicz’s 2006 re-election campaign database into her state office database.  Did you upload the names? What knowledge do you have about how those names were uploaded into the database?

Do you believe that the taxpayer funded database in the Secretary of the State’s Office was proper? 

As DAS commissioner, what would you do if you found out that such a database was being maintained in the Department of Administrative Services?

Do you have any regrets about your handling of that political database in the Secretary of the State’s office?

Posted February 28, 2022.

By the summer of 2020, contractors and labor organizations were alarmed at abuses they were witnessing in the state’s school construction program. They were frustrated by “a shroud of secrecy over this Trade Labor List or State Contract List.” They had specific concerns and solutions. The association leaders were fluent in the substance of state construction contracting issues and, remarkably, unafraid to criticize two of Governor Ned Lamont’s most favored advisers, Kostantinos Diamantis and Josh Geballe.

The document above was prepared for the July 22, 2020, meeting with Lamont. It subsequently made its way to other state agencies. The document confirms that Governor Lamont was warned that he needed to make changes in his administration. In November 2019, the school construction program was moved from the Department of Administrative Services, where a state statute required it to be administered, to the Office of Policy Management. Diamantis, who had been running school construction, became deputy budget director that month at McCaw’s ferocious insistence. Lamont married that terrible decision to a worse one: allowing Diamantis to take school construction with him to OPM. Anyone familiar with state government at that time knew that Secretary Melissa McCaw was the person in the Lamont administration least likely to subject her close friend Diamantis to rigorous supervision.

Lamont failed to act and now faces the humiliation of a federal criminal investigation into the highest levels of his administration.

The governor can continue to avert his gaze, claim he knew nothing, and hope he gets to Election Day before lawyers the U.S. Attorney’s office begin marching defendants before judges to enter guilty pleas. There is another way. Lamont can tell the public what he knew and what he did about the warnings brave people delivered to his administration. As bad as knowing and doing nothing was, the governor not knowing that a rising tide of corruption was flooding his administration while people around him were eyeing the lifeboats is as alarming.

Published February 15, 2022.

The hiring scandal that has claimed former Lamont administration deputy budget director Kostantinos Diamantis will see others leave state government. The federal criminal investigation into the Lamont administration’s handing of the school construction grants program and state pier project will bring sorrowful headlines in the months ahead.

Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s bitter departure from his office is imminent. Budget director Melissa McCaw may follow soon after, according to residents of the Capitol village.

In this interlude, Daily Ructions readers will enjoy a 1992 performance of the Boys Choir of Harlem and Betty Buckley as they join on two Stephen Sondheim gems, Our Time, from Merrily We Roll Along, and the eternal Children Will Listen, from the finale of Into the Woods. Sondheim died at his home in Roxbury in December. He was 91.

Sondheims’s wisdom endures. Careful the tale you tell, indeed.

“Careful the spell you cast

Not just on children

Sometimes the spell may last

Past what you can see

And turn against you

Careful the tale you tell

That is the spell

Children will listen.”

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bob Stefanowski on Tuesday called on Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo. A hiring scandal has engulfed Colangelo since October. A report from former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy issued a report on the investigation he was engaged by Governor Ned Lamont’s office to conduct into Colangelo’s June 2020 hiring of deputy budget director Kostantinos Diamantis’s daughter Anastasia Diamantis as a $99,000-a-year executive assistant.

Stefanowski’s campaign issued this statement late Tuesday morning:

“It has been a week since the independent report was released about the unethical behavior of Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo, said Stefanowski. “Justice Andrew McDonald, Chair of the Connecticut Criminal Justice Commission, the Attorney General and the target of the investigation all indicated they needed time to review the 500 page report in order to proceed,” said Stefanowski. “It’s been a week of Connecticut residents questioning the ethics of the state’s top prosecutor, and that is a week too long. It’s time for Mr. Colangelo to resign immediately.”

Diamantis resigned shortly after being suspended from his job at the end of October. Twardy’s report revealed federal law enforcement authorities are investigating two programs Diamantis oversaw, school construction grants and a state pier project in New London.

Diamantis’s supervisor and close friend, budget director Melissa McCaw, was spared direct criticism in the public portion of Twardy’s report. Her actions are also thought to be under scrutiny. McCaw is scheduled to face legislators Thursday at a budget hearing. The meeting will provide legislators an opportunity to question McCaw on what she knew about the Diamantis’s handling of the school construction grant program and when she knew it.

Published February 8, 2022.

Popular Hartford Democrat Glendowlyn Thames leaves the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) this week. Farewell party takes place Wednesday. The deputy commission heads to the private sector.

Thames was on the shortlist for Governor Ned Lamont’s prospective 2018 running mates. The desire to avoid a primary and save some money caused Lamont to settle for rival Susan Bysiewicz. Democratic primary voters had inflicted a surprise decisive defeat on Lamont in 2010. He did not want to risk a second loss in upset 2018, so passed on Thames, who was the leader of Hartford’s city council.

Jonathan Harris has quietly served Lamont at the Office of Policy and Management (OPM) and as the Governor’s legislative liaison. Harris left OPM shortly before Secretary Melissa McCaw moved her close friend Kostantinos Diamantis from the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) to the executive suite at OPM as her number two. Harris’s move from OPM to Lamont’s office was an attempt to make a course correction in Lamont’s first year of confusion and broken promises, but left the upper reaches of OPM without a pair of eyes loyal to Lamont and extraneous entanglements.

Harris leaves Lamont’s office, where he was often sidelined in the ceaseless competition for influence, for the state’s most unpopular corporation, utility behemoth Eversource. Harris served in the state Senate and was executive director of the state’s Democratic organization, where he became enmeshed in a 2014 campaign finance scandal that ended with a controversial settlement. He made a brief run for governor in 2018 after quitting as commission of consumer protection.

Posted November 2, 2021.