While you were preparing your chestnuts to roast over an open fire this week, the state Department of Administrative Services was taking out the trash.
“Taking out the trash” is the expression hardened communications professionals and other ceaseless cynics in and out of government use to describe burying a piece of news they would rather the world not notice.
There’s no better time to bury news than the eve of Christendom celebrating God becoming man and walking among us. Thus, sayeth LinkedIn, that Theresa Govert, of former chief of staff at the beleaguered Public Utilities Regulatory Authority has found shelter on “the executive team” at DAS.
The Wednesday announcement on the DAS LinkedIn page made no mention of Govert’s turn in an unflattering spotlight this year. Nor did it include the wreckage Govert escapes as she leaves PURA. Govert was mentioned in connection to the explosive December 19, 2024, opinion piece that appeared in the CT Mirror under the names of two state legislators. The oped claimed Eversource had convinced international financial ratings agencies to lower their assessments of the company due to PURA’s policies regulating utilities doing business in Connecticut.
Then-PURA chair Marissa Gillett sent a text to one of the two legislators a few days before the fuse was lit on the bomb masquerading as an oped. Her text referred to a draft that Gillett was “waiting for Theresa and others to put eyes on before sending to” the two legislators.
In the intense months of litigation that followed, Gillett and others denied that she was referring to the oped excoriating the utilities she regulated. No one has ever produced another oped she claimed to be referring to. Gillett also reluctantly revealed through state lawyers that her own text messages had been automatically deleted from her mobile phone.
Govert had a different and singular explanation for her inability to fill in any of the many blanks in the incredible story that emerged in litigation initiated by two gas companies that the state eventually admitted had been unfairly treated by PURA. The Democratic loyalist testified under oath that she also automatically deleted text messages related to her job and then locked down her inability to recall anything substantial by disclosing that a reaction to medication she was taking at the time affected her ability to recall events.
It wasn’t just text messages that disappeared and eluded Govert’s ability to recollect them. She also wrote and sent the email that brought down Gillett. Govert had committed to writing the email that announced to the two other PURA commissioners that they would no longer have direct access to the agency’s staff members. The December 22, 2023, message from Govert referred to meetings with PURA staff members inspiring the new policy in which Govert would determine the two commissioners’ ability to work with agency experts. When Gillett testified before the legislature early this year that there was no such policy, Govert remained silent.
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In a complaint before the Freedom of Information Commission, lawyers for PURA trashed a PURA employee who testified that she had seen the email that by last summer had disappeared. Govert, who had written the email and sent it to others, again remained silent. So did her PURA colleagues. When The Courant’s Ed Mahony obtained the email and published its contents, the game was up. If Govert’s reaction to medication had caused her to forget about her own electronic missive, the $123,000-a-year chief of staff did little to restore her recollection.
That must have been some job interview DAS conducted with Govert, who likely could not comfortably continue at PURA. She is an ideal addition to Commissioner Michelle Gilman’s idea of conducting the public’s business. A dream team for that duo, a nightmare for the rest of us. Gilman is the member of the Lamont administration who put her considerable experience in the hackerama to use in 2022 to smother the original intent of a $250,000 audit of the school construction financing program after press reports began to expose the manipulations of program director Konstantinos Diamantis.
Gilman prohibited outside auditors from contacting the local officials who had been the targets of Diamantis’s ugly tactics that caused him to be indicted and convicted of federal criminal charges this year. What a jury was able to conclude quickly after two weeks of testimony, Gilman spent $250,000 in public funds to keep out of the public’s view.
The announcement of DAS’s hiring of Govert was as effusive as the one then-budget director Melissa McCaw issued in 2019 when she brought her close friend Diamantis into the state budget office. (A federal criminal trial on an alleged bribe he accepted while there is scheduled to begin in February.) DAS, in the unattributed LinkedIn post announcing Govert’s new job, promised she “will play a key role in supporting our policy efforts, including managing the agency regulation revision process and supporting the implementation of statutory initiatives requiring inter- and intra-agency collaboration.”
DAS is a powerful agency that describes itself as “the nerve center of state government.” Govert, as a member of the executive team “will lead the development of DAS’s strategic plan, helping to guide the agency’s long-term vision and priorities.” That is a frightening prospect for anyone who cares about the agency that, among its many responsibilities, manages the operation and retention of the state’s emails. “We’re thrilled to have Theresa on board and look forward to the expertise and leadership she brings to DAS,” the agency declared in its effusive announcement.
Gillman added a comment on LinkedIn. “Welcome Theresa,” the party loyalist wrote. “Looking forward to the journey ahead.” Govert remembered to reply with a suitably cloying thought of her own. “Thank you. Am always inspired by your leadership.” Of that, no one who has watched this bewildering year in the machinations at PURA, can doubt Govert means it as a compliment, and that the public will bear a heavy burden.
Kevin F. Rennie can be reached at [email protected]