The zone of destruction has expanded.
It was created by former Public Utilities Regulatory Agency Chairwoman Marissa Gillett’s reign of conniving.
Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik issued a ruling that handed a complete and unambiguous victory to two gas companies in a case that began as an appeal of a PURA rate decision and became the instrument for PURA to be reduced to ruins.
Judge Budzik’s decision ordered PURA to start again in considering the original rate requests. He did so because he concluded that the information PURA would have to provide him to decide the rate case appeal would be so unreliable that it would be impossible for him to exercise his authority in a fair and informed manner.
The decision is uncomfortable to read if you care about the rule of law here in the Constitution State. Connecticut’s powerful utility regulator, a state agency, became a nest of intrigue, deception, and abuse of power. At the center of this story, as incredible as it still seems, is a December opinion piece that appeared on the CT Mirror website and purported to be written by state Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, and state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport. The two legislators are, for now, the co-chairs of the General Assembly’s energy committee and devoted supporters of Gillett.
The opinion piece advanced the wacky conspiracy theory that international financial ratings agencies had conspired with Eversource, the state’s biggest utility, to lower the company’s ratings to prove Connecticut is a terrible place to do business. The substance of the screed was not only strange, but it was also written in a sophisticated style that no one, absolutely no one I know, would attribute to Needleman and Steinberg.
The Courant’s Ed Mahony unearthed text messages between Steinberg and Gillett that suggested Gillett had played a role in writing the oped. The texts came from Steinberg’s phone. Gillett had none. If Gillett had a hand in the incendiary oped it meant she was not a fair-minded regulator and should not be in the job that requires one. She denied having anything to do with it.
During the litigation between the gas companies and PURA before Judge Budzik, lawyers for PURA initially told him that they had searched for records related to the op-ed and found none. This seemed implausible and required an explanation. At a second hearing last summer, Assistant Attorney General Seth Hollander disclosed that Gillett had been automatically deleting text messages, which are public documents she was required to preserve.
On Wednesday, Judge Budzik fulfilled his obligation by referring Hollander and PURA general counsel Scott Muska to the body that if it finds cause to do so, disciplines lawyers who violate rules of conduct. Muska claimed in an interview this week that he had informed the attorney general’s office of Gillett’s practice of deleting texts and they, after a long interval, decided initially not to disclose that revelation to the utility companies’ lawyer and the court.
It continues to astound what people in responsible public positions were willing to do to conceal the truth of who wrote that oped 11 months ago. Because the underlying rate case has been remanded to PURA to start again, Needleman and Steinberg must be so pleased that they will not be deposed under oath by utility company lawyers. The two must feel like the big men they likely wish they could be that so many have sacrificed themselves, maybe even wrecked their careers, to keep the truth out of public view.
On Tuesday, Steinberg may have said more than he intended when he disclosed to WICC talk show host Lisa Wexler that Gillett may have reviewed the oped or even fact checked it before it was published. “What difference does it make?” he mewled into the void. Steinberg, seeking distance, said he received the proposed piece from Needleman. The two legislators may not want to breathe too heavy a sigh of relief. The extraordinary efforts to conceal who wrote the oped could become the subject of the grievance committee that receives Judge Budnik’s referral.
When the gas companies filed their appeal, Attorney General William Tong expressed his contempt in an early court filing. He called the companies’ request to obtain information from PURA “premature” and a “scattershot grab-bag of grievances” that “either miss the mark entirely or do not meet additional factual inquiry….” The companies “have publicly launched a fusillade of political and legal attacks on PURA and its Chairman,” Tong declared in a March filing seeking to block information from becoming public.
The intersection of politics and the law can be a confusing place. Tong has been a loud critic of the state’s utilities, and his antipathy has flowed into litigation. But the practice of law places restraints on him and his office that may not have been honored.
Our politics inside and outside government have veered far outside the bounds of normal. The indispensable Anne Applebaum warned this week on Chuck Tood’s podcast, “The way ICE is being used as a paramilitary force…the President’s constant attacks on journalism, the attacks on research and science and universities, the attempts to capture culture…the attempts to destroy an independent civil service. All those things packaged together. This looks to me like an assault on a democratic political system.”
CT judge learns ex-state official misled court on records that were erased
Tong and his fellow Democratic attorneys general around the country have been one of the organized forces fighting the undermining the rule of law that sustains those other wide and relentless assaults. When his office allegedly engages in tactics that cause a judge, who was once a lawyer in the attorney general’s office, to conclude it withheld evidence, that’s a wound that will be magnified. The zone of damage from one rate case will have expanded again, far beyond Connecticut.
Kevin Rennie can be reached at [email protected]