The electric and gas utility Avangrid on Wednesday again accused its Connecticut regulators of openly defying a court order to produce documents that have become subject to public records requests and widespread speculation regarding an alleged anti-utility bias at the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority.

The company’s comments came after another batch of records was released by the state on Tuesday in response to a lawsuit challenging the regulators’ decision last year to cut Avangrid’s gas rates.

As part of that lawsuit, Avangrid attorneys have sought to connect PURA Chairwoman Marissa Gillett with an op-ed signed by two state lawmakers last December accusing the state’s utilities of engaging in “propaganda” by pinning their financial hardships on decisions being made by regulators.

If Gillett played a role in drafting that op-ed, the attorneys argue, it would reveal a level of bias that should have led her to recuse herself from the company’s rate case. Both Gillett and the op-ed’s authors, however, have repeatedly said that she did not have a hand in writing or editing the piece.

Much of the debate has focused on string of text messages Gillett sent to one of the authors, state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport — which were later released through public records requests — in which she said she had completed an unspecified “draft” days before the op-ed was published in the Connecticut Mirror on Dec. 19.

Avangrid’s attorneys have argued that the “draft” is likely a reference to the op-ed and have repeatedly sought additional records and communications to prove the connection. Last month, attorneys for PURA said they had uncovered additional records related to the “draft” and promised to release them after the July 4 holiday.

When those new documents were released on Tuesday evening, however, they contained no reference to the controversial op-ed — or to Steinberg and his co-author, state Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex.

“In defiance of clear court orders, PURA still has not produced the “draft” referenced in the Chairs’ text exchange with Rep. Steinberg or PURA’s text messages used to circumvent Connecticut public records law,” Sarah Wall Fliotsos, a spokeswoman for the utilities, said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue all means available in our litigation to get to the truth of this important matter.” 

The pages of emails and letters that were released by the Attorney General’s office did include three examples of “drafts” that Gillett and her staff were working on at around the same time the op-ed was published.

Those drafts included responses to two other lawmakers who had wrote to PURA with questions about the rollout of smart metering technology, as well as a response to questions from a reporter who was working on a story about Gillett. None of the emails released on Tuesday indicated that Gillett had shared any of those drafts with Steinberg.

Asked for comment on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office referred to written records in the lawsuit. A spokesperson for PURA did not respond to a request for comment.

Steinberg said Wednesday it had been months since the conversation with Gillett and that he no longer remembers what “draft,” specifically, she was referring to. “I don’t have any specific reference for you, I’m sorry,” he said.

Wednesday was not the first time that Avangrid has accused regulators of defying a judge’s orders to produce records related to the op-ed and its authorship.

After an initial round of discovery was completed earlier this year, attorneys for the utility called PURA’s responses “incomplete, evasive, and noncompliant” for failing to include the “draft” document mentioned in Gillett’s texts to Steinberg, or copies of the conversation from her cell phone.

In a response filed with the court on June 6, Assistant Attorney General Seth Hollander said that PURA had already conducted multiple searches of its records and could not find any documents relating to the drafting of the op-ed. That search included reviews of the personal and work phones for Gillett and her chief of staff, Theresa Govert.

Attorneys for the utility, he wrote, had developed “a theory that other documents ‘must exist’ concerning the drafting or authorship of the op-ed based upon a self-serving interpretation and even speculation about an exchange of text messages.”

“Yet, apart from one single ambiguous text message, Plaintiffs have nothing to support their theory,” he added.

During a hearing a few weeks later, however, Hollander revealed that Gillett’s texts with Steinberg had been subject to an auto-delete function on her personal phone and were no longer recoverable. That prompted the judge overseeing the case, Matthew Budzik, to order depositions of both Gillett and Govert to determine whether either had any role in drafting the op-ed.

Those depositions were delayed by up to a week, however, after Hollander emailed Avangrid’s attorneys on June 27 to say that PURA had identified an additional batch of documents related to the “draft” mentioned in Gillett’s texts to Steinberg.

It was that batch of documents that was released on Tuesday, prompting Avangrid to again accuse PURA of ignoring the judge’s discovery orders.