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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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