Who’ll notice prison audit? And Bronin has a health issue too

By CHRIS POWELL

Anyone seeking to learn how poorly state government runs would never start by paying close attention to the proceedings of the General Assembly, which remains largely indifferent to government operations. The legislature is much more interested in making government bigger than in making it more effective and efficient.

---

‘Social equity’ is euphemism for patronage and redundancy

Liberal reform squeezes Yale thanks to Trump and Republicans

Let public broadcasting try living without government subsidy

---

Because it is grotesque, the case of an emaciated man of 32 from Waterbury who is said to have been imprisoned by his stepmother for 20 years until his escape this year continues to be questioned by legislators. But at this late date any negligence by child-protection authorities will be hard to establish, and legislators know that many recent child-protection failures are getting a pass even as child neglect and abuse are always being manufactured by the welfare system, which also gets a pass.

So it’s more practical to pay attention to the work of the state auditors of public accounts, like their report last week about management failures in the Correction Department in 2022 and 2023.

The auditors found that the department gave excessively long paid administrative leaves to nine employees — leaves that lasted from a year to 3½ years and thus unnecessarily cost the department $835,000 when, much earlier, the employees could have been put on unpaid leave, dismissed, or returned to work instead.

The Correction Department excuses itself by asserting that the cases involved investigations and proceedings conducted by police, prosecutors, and courts, investigations whose durations were beyond the department’s control. 

So were the police, prosecutors, and courts too slow? Couldn’t the department have placed the employees on unpaid leave after 15 or 30 days and settled up financially if their cases resulted in reinstatement?

If Governor Lamont or legislators thought that the $835,000 cited by the audit was a lot of money to waste, they could ask those questions. They’re not likely to.

The audit also found that the Correction Department lacked documentation controlling overtime, compensatory time, and union leave time.

The impression given by all this is that the department is being operated for the benefit of its unionized employees, not the public. Do the governor and any legislators want to know if that impression is correct? And if it is correct, would they really object or would they just be glad of another reason for the unions to support their re-election?

* * *

As he challenges longtime U.S. Rep. John B. Larson for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 1st District, former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin’s platform is arrogant: Larson is too old and it’s my turn.

Bronin’s platform has prompted journalism to repeatedly recall Larson’s freezing up briefly during a speech in the House in February, an incident involving a heart valve replacement 15 years ago and erratic blood flow. Now, especially since Larson just turned 77, people are watching him for recurrences or evidence of decrepitude.

Meanwhile no one in journalism is asking about Bronin’s health. While he is only 46, for many years Bronin has suffered ulcerative colitis — an inflammatory bowel disease believed to be caused by a chronic auto-immune disorder — and during his second term in 2021 and 2022 he underwent surgeries to remove and rebuild his colon. He missed many weeks of work.

Bronin was candid about it and presumably has recovered and feels fit to pursue his political ambition again, which until a few weeks ago was the governorship. Governor Lamont wouldn’t make way for him and, while the governor, at 71, could be vulnerable on the age issue against a challenger contriving prejudice against age, he still seemed too strong for Bronin to challenge, so Larson became the easier target. 

But auto-immune afflictions can flare without warning, and the funny thing is that while Bronin now contends that injecting youth into the congressional Democratic Party by ousting Larson is urgent, it became urgent for him only after the governor decided to stay put.

Bronin may test Larson’s stamina and health. But Larson may test Bronin’s too — if journalism is willing to notice.

---

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

-END-