Republicans called Tuesday for reforms of how Connecticut state lawmakers earmark tens of millions of dollars annually in grants for favored nonprofit groups with scant vetting, oversight or transparency.
“There’s no application process, there’s no public hearing, there’s no statutory requirements, there’s no oversight before, during or after,” said Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott. “Essentially, it’s a closed-door process, where political connections decide who gets our money.”
The press conference by the House and Senate Republican minority leadership was pegged to the FBI investigation of the role played by Democratic Sen. Doug McCrory of Hartford in determining earmarks, as well as the trial that opened this week of a former school construction official charged with bribery.
“We have this culture of corruption in which the candy store is open,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield.
“I guess it’s a good thing — but embarrassing for the state of Connecticut — but the FBI is doing our work for us,” said House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford.
Disclosure of the FBI investigation has brought new attention to the age-old political art of using earmarks to garner votes for a budget, a practice that exponentially increased as COVID relief arrived via the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
Earmarks grew relatively scarce in the decade after the 2008 recession, but ARPA gave lawmakers a deep funding pool that allowed them to disburse $281 million in directed grants, Republicans said.
As the ARPA money ran dry, as the Connecticut Mirror reported in August, legislators appropriated $60 million over the past two biennial budget cycles for unrestricted grants.
The top Senate Democrats, Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney of New Haven and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk, dismissed the news conference as a political stunt and noted that the GOP leaders have been silent about what they say are the greater misdeeds of President Donald Trump.
“Connecticut Republicans’ sudden concern about transparency is predictably hypocritical. They’re silent about the massive actual corruption happening in Washington under Donald Trump,” said the Senate Democrats in a statement.
As examples, they offered “Trump’s border czar getting $50,000 in a paper bag to steer contracts, Trump’s foreign bailout for billionaire donors, Trump’s constant leverage of the government for his own enrichment, and Trump’s administration hiding the Epstein files and considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Neither Looney nor Duff responded to calls for comments on what previously has been exposed as an earmark process with few standards. McCrory, who remains on the board of the Community Investment Fund, which distributed competitive grants, declined to comment.
In an interview, House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, shared the annoyance expressed by Looney and Duff, but he acknowledged the desirability of some reforms.
“At the end of the day, people want to get political. That’s fine,” Ritter said. “But do I think there are people who want to look at the process and get some questions answered? Yes, and I’m one of them.”
Ritter said he was open to some of the basic reforms suggested by the Republicans, including requiring nonprofit recipients of grants to submit financial documents, including their 990 tax returns. Those documents are public information, but the state agencies that disburse the earmarks do not routinely require them.
But he said Republicans are being disingenuous in claiming they never have sought or obtained earmarks.
“If you want to clean it up in a bipartisan way, let’s have that conversation. But you can’t ignore precedent or past practice that you participated in, and I don’t think you can honestly sit there with a straight face as a party and wag the finger at Democrats, given the things going on in this country,” Ritter said. “It’s very hypocritical, in my opinion.”
Candelora, who generally has a constructive relationship with Ritter, complained that the extent of the earmarks has grown while the oversight has shrunk. The GOP minority scrambles to assess the legitimacy of recipients, some of whom are new.
Yes, he said, earmarks have been around for a long time.
“These are always contained in the budget,” Candelora said. “We’re relying on AI and chat GPT to figure out where they go. We don’t think that’s a prudent way to do things.”
Sampson noted that $75,000 went to Black Girls Get LegalTee, Inc., a Norwalk organization that got IRS tax-exempt status only a year ago. Its listed agent of services is the sister of state Rep. Kadeem Roberts, D-Norwalk.
“Shouldn’t that at least raise a question about a conflict of interest?” Sampson said.
Roberts did not return a call seeking comment.
Roberts is a member of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, whose members are each granted $150,000 to distribute in earmarks, a practice established after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
Urban lawmakers and community advocates said the killing of 20 students and six educators was understandably galvanizing, and it led to passage of some of the nation’s strongest gun safety laws. But they said the reaction underscored to them the tolerance of a steady and largely unnoticed wave of violence claiming the lives of urban young.
Candelora said the Republicans are “all for helping high-risk children, for helping reduce violence in our cities. That earmark was made well-intentioned. And it’s lost its way, very clearly.”
Many of the grants have little connection with preventing youth violence, he said. The reforms could help them rediscover their original purpose.
“I think that this process would reassert and make sure that the spirit of what we pass is fulfilled, because we’re all sympathetic to the issues in our cities. We want to reduce violence,” Candelora said, “For me, Nothing is more frustrating to watch that money be squandered and wasted by legislators who have pet projects and don’t care about the people in their districts.”