Gov. Ned Lamont continues to baffle. He often portrays himself as a leader above grimy politics and then he goes and spoils his pose by acting like a lifelong hack. This month the contrasts were at their sharpest and most disappointing.
At the start of February, Lamont replaced Robert Rinker from the position the former union leader held on the State Contracting Standards Board, or SCSB. Rinker and others like him are essential to the efficient and honest operation of important parts of state government. They operate out of the spotlight — usually — and make sure state officials are abiding by the rules.
Membership on the SCSB requires practical experience, devotion to detail and fearless independence. Rinker was a model member, which means he made Lamont and his administration unhappy by telling the truth. The SCSB has raised issues about contracts for the cost of the State Pier project in New London. The board blocks and infuriates people who want to do it their way. Rinker has been critical to the board’s success.
Rinker received a letter from a Lamont adviser two days before SCSB’s Feb. 9 meeting informing him that he’d been replaced. There was a vacancy Lamont could have filled at the time but chose instead to get rid of a thorn.
Board member Donna Karnes called the move “beyond wrong.” Jean Morningstar, a Democrat appointed to the board by former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, said she was “outraged and disgusted” by Lamont’s move, calling it “politically motivated” and “personal.” These are not the descriptions members of the governor’s party hurl at him in public. It is a measure of their respect for Rinker that members put their own positions in jeopardy by making public declarations about Lamont’s ugly tactic.
Only 14 months ago, Lamont said, “The State Contracting Standards Board has an important responsibility of ensuring that government practices are handled in the most efficient and effective manner on behalf of the residents of our state.” As long as it’s not too efficient and effective.
Booting Rinker was not enough. Lamont proposed legislation this month to change the name of the Connecticut Port Authority, with its long history of making messes, to the Connecticut Maritime Authority and move it under the jurisdiction of the Connecticut Airport Authority.
The new agency would be explicitly exempt from the contracting board’s essential oversight.
Lamont came to prominence in Connecticut 18 years ago when he challenged state Democrats’ established order by running against then-incumbent U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Now Lamont is the established order and he wants no trouble, no matter what it costs.
Two weeks ago, Lamont refused to appoint the top choice of a prison oversight board to act as the independent authority with power to oversee the Department of Correction. The board chose Ken Krayeske as their top choice on the list of three they were required to provide Lamont.
Krayeske, an attorney, has devoted years outside the system as a ferocious and successful advocate for the incarcerated. He has fought to expose and improve the inadequate, sometimes lethal, standards of health care our prisons provide the incarcerated. Krayeske’s success has inevitably brought detractors. They are his trophies.
If we are going to create a position that shines a light on the dark corners of our prisons, we don’t need someone pretending to be like Krayeske in the job, we need the real thing. We must have Ken Krayeske. But he is precisely what Lamont wants nowhere near a state office with independent power. And so Lamont chose someone else.
After sticking it to Rinker and Krayeske, Lamont took time on Tuesday to give a warm embrace to Joseph Ganim, the Bridgeport Democratic mayor seeking reelection in next week’s special election. What did they teach those boys at Exeter, Harvard and Yale 60 years ago?
Lamont did not try to conceal his scorn for Ganim when the mayor challenged him for the 2018 Democratic nomination for governor. Ganim’s first stint as mayor ended in 2003 when he was convicted of 16 counts of corruption by a federal jury. That was nine years after John Larson chose him as his running mate for lieutenant governor. Ganim has been around a long time.
Lamont has discarded rudimentary standards and endorsed Ganim in the special election. The reason Bridgeport voters will go to the polls (or cast absentee ballots) in February is that the result of the September Democratic primary for mayor could not be determined because of rampant absentee ballot fraud. Judge William Clark ruled, “The videos [of ballot box stuffing by Ganim supporters] are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties.”
They are not shocking to Lamont. The Greenwich Democrat refuses to explain why he got rid of Rinker and refused to appoint Krayeske, and by now no one should be shocked by that, either.
