If the political rehabilitation of former Gov. John G. Rowland isn’t complete, it probably will be soon.
Rowland, a Republican, Connecticut’s first corruption-convicted governor, wasn’t out of prison for long before landing a nebulous but well-paying “economic development” job with city government in his home town, Waterbury. Now that job is allowing him afternoons off to be host of a radio program on WTIC-AM1080 in Farmington, where he is afforded some political cover by his co-host, the Meriden clergyman with whom he found religion after the law closed in.
On the radio, Rowland is as genial and glib as ever, and back in Waterbury it’s as if nothing ever happened — nothing terrible anyway. After all, prior to Rowland’s conviction Waterbury and its neighbors Naugatuck and Bridgeport had plenty of experience with criminal mayors (now Hartford has such experience too), and in those gritty precincts “Felony” may be a girl’s name as often as it is a one-way ticket to the big house.
Nobody should want ex-convicts to have to live in shelters and keep stealing because they can’t get regular work. But even in hard times there’s work other than in public office and public forums, and those can’t be places of honor if their occupants can’t be disqualified even by the worst disgrace ever to have befallen Connecticut.
This is even more galling now that, on the radio, Rowland is criticizing the state employee unions for their excessive compensation and influence while state government’s hands are badly tied by a 20-year agreement his own administration made with the unions in 1997 for medical insurance and pension benefits. That agreement got the unions off his back but helped bring Connecticut to its current bankruptcy even as Rowland himself soon will be one of those coddled state pensioners.
For some people, things just always work out.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
