By CHRIS POWELL
Last year former state Public Health Commissioner Renee D. Coleman-Mitchell, who is Black, induced the Lamont administration to pay her $200,000 to settle her lawsuit charging that her firing by the governor three years earlier was racist. Now former Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis, who is also Black, is suing for damages as well, charging that her firing this year by the Public Defender Services Commission was racist.
What’s going on here?
Is Governor Lamont really racist?
Are the members of the public defender commission — appointed by the governor, the chief justice, and legislative leaders — really racist too? That might seem strange, since two of the commissioners are Black, one is Puerto Rican, and two of the commissioners were appointed by the chief justice, who is Black.
State agency commissioners and agency chief executives typically serve at the pleasure of the governor or the board that appoints them. Lamont fired Coleman-Mitchell at the height of the recent virus epidemic. He seemed unhappy with her performance, as she seemed to be with his. The public defender commission fired Bowden-Lewis after many months of controversy over her abuse of her colleagues and her repeated insubordination to the commission.
In settling her case, Coleman-Mitchell essentially repudiated her accusation of racism, agreeing with the state that the record of her separation from state government would be changed to read that she resigned in good standing, even as the settlement also forbade her from ever again seeking employment in the Public Health Department. (Two hundred thousand dollars can change many people’s stories.)
On its face Bowden-Lewis’ lawsuit is even more ridiculous than Coleman-Mitchell’s. But Coleman-Mitchell’s settlement probably invited Bowden-Lewis’ lawsuit. For government’s money is often considered nobody’s money by those who dispose it, and the money paid to Coleman-Mitchell has proclaimed the profitability of a racism accusation where politics precludes efficiency and good sense.
Together the lawsuits also have proclaimed the danger of hiring done partly or entirely in pursuit of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and political correctness rather than competence and decency alone. “DEI,” a euphemism for the now-discredited form of racial discrimination that itself was euphemized as “affirmative action,” will, as “affirmative action” did, impugn its nominal beneficiaries, putting their competence under suspicion and then making their removal for incompetence more difficult. It will disserve everyone.
As the late newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, racism will be over not just when people can be hired regardless of race but fired regardless of race. Connecticut state government won’t be over racism as long as it remains too timid to talk back to opportunistic accusations and instead pays small fortunes to make them go away, accepting such nuisance settlements as the cost of doing business in the P.C. age.
HIDDEN TAXES RISE: Most people think Connecticut’s two major electric utilities, Eversource and United Illuminating, are ripping them off. That’s exactly what state government wants people to think.
The companies no longer generate electricity but only distribute it. Customers can choose their supplier even as most still leave it to their utility to do the choosing for them. The companies make no money from this. They make their money only from distribution.
Indeed, it’s starting to seem that state government makes more money from electricity than the utilities do.
For the Connecticut Examiner reported the other day that as of this month electricity bills in Connecticut will include the highest government-mandated charges in 20 years.
The charges, essentially hidden state taxes, pay for what are called public benefits — certain government programs and policies that state government has decided should be financed by electricity users. The Examiner says henceforth 25% of a typical Eversource customer’s electric bill and 18% of a typical UI customer’s bill will result from public benefits charges.
State government could fund these programs and policies through regular taxes, but regular taxes can’t be blamed on someone else. Stuffing electricity bills with hidden taxes lets elected officials scapegoat the utility companies, and scapegoating is state policy.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
A previous version of this column said one of the members of the Public Defender Services Commission is Black. Two are.
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Chris Powell column 
Again, thank you for the work you do to display the things we commoners don’t see due to the media’s unwillingness to report.
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