An effort to undermine the credibility of the chief executive officer of the University of Connecticut Health Center was timed to go public before the celebratory kickoff Wednesday of Waterbury Hospital’s renewal as part of an evolving new hospital system led by UConn Health.

In a letter released to the Connecticut Mirror Monday night, Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, asked UConn Health officials to publicly answer questions about the qualifications and abilities of Dr. Andrew Agwunobi, who has run the teaching hospital for all but two of the last dozen years.

Harding, acting on information provided by persons he declined to identify, said there was little during Agwunobi’s tenure that inspires confidence in his ability to run a growing and more complex health system, and he called for a reassessment of Agwunobi’s record running other hospitals in four other states before coming to UConn in 2014.

“This one particular person has quite a bad track record for taking over and running organizations,” Harding said of Agwunobi.

His letter raised questions about Agwunobi that largely mirrored the points Kevin Rennie made Sunday in a column published by The Hartford Courant, which Harding says was brought to his attention. Harding said he did not know the motivation of anyone who urged him to speak out about the hospital executive, but he geared release of the letter to a celebration scheduled for Wednesday morning in Waterbury.

Jennifer Walker, a spokesperson at the health center, forcefully pushed back at Harding’s assertions about Agwunobi, a practicing pediatrician before turning to high-level administrative jobs in health care after earning an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2001.

“The implications made in the letter are deeply misleading and come at a conspicuous moment: the launch of the UConn Health Community Network, a major, first-of-its-kind partnership designed to strengthen and sustain community hospitals across Connecticut,” Walker said.

Gov. Ned Lamont and Comptroller Sean Scanlon, who worked with Agwunobi at the governor’s request on ways to save Waterbury Hospital last year and stabilize UConn Health’s finances, each vouched Tuesday for Agwunobi as right choice to lead the hospital’s transition into a larger health system.

“I’m confident in his vision to expand clinical operations, reinforce financial sustainability, and grow UConn Health as an international hub of excellence and opportunity for communities across our state,” Lamont said.

In a special session in November, the General Assembly passed legislation allowing UConn Health to create subsidiaries or joint ventures in order to purchase Waterbury, Bristol and Day Kimball hospitals. It authorized $390 million in bonding to support capital improvements at the facilities.

The legislation passed on votes of 133-11 in the House and 31-4 in the Senate. Harding was among the four Senate Republicans who voted against the bill.

UConn Health’s purchase of Waterbury Hospital for $13 million from a bankrupt out-of-state, for-profit company took effect over the weekend. Talks are continuing for the purchase of Bristol and Day Kimball, which are independent nonprofit hospitals at a time when most hospitals are part of larger systems.

Agwunobi was hired to run UConn Health in 2014 and took on the additional duties of interim president for the entire university after the resignation of Thomas C. Katsouleas in 2021. Agwunobi left UConn in early 2022 to run a home-care subsidiary of the health care conglomerate Humana.

He returned in 2024, attracted by a plan to remake the chronically financially struggling hospital into a health system. Scanlon, who joined Lamont in interviewing finalists recommended by a UConn search committee, said Agwunobi laid out a vision for addressing a problem that has “vexed every governor since the ’60s, which is, what can we do to make UConn Health more financially sustainable than it is?”

Scanlon said Harding or anyone else has the right to ask if the right person is leading any public institution.

“But I would say, ‘Look at what he has done since he has been the CEO in round two.’ And I think his tenure has been marked by significant change towards the thing that they and us and everyone has long wanted, which is, how can this institution, which is deeply important to us, be less of a drag on the state?” Scanlon said.

Harding’s letter strings together a number of publicly known aspects of Agwunobi’s time at UConn, including an abandoned partnership with the Department of Correction to care for incarcerated persons, salary mistakenly paid to a professor long after his death, a lawsuit by an official fired after investigating a sexual harassment claim, and an audit indicating a conflict of interest.

The senator also challenged how deeply UConn examined Agwunobi’s record running other hospitals in Georgia, Florida, California and Washington state, as well as his brief tenure on the board of WellCare, a Florida company at the center of a massive Medicaid scandal nearly 20 years ago. Agwunobi was not among the WellCare officials accused of wrongdoing.

Given that UConn has frequently operated at a deficit, Harding said he was “similarly concerned” about UConn Health’s long-serving chief financial officer, Jeffrey Geoghegan.

“Given the magnitude of these matters, I am calling for a public meeting at which UConn Health CEO Andrew Agwunobi and CFO Jeffrey Geoghegan will be expected to answer questions fully, directly, and on the record before the community whose trust and tax dollars are at stake,” Harding wrote.

Harding suggested no venue for what would be an extraordinary public examination, nor did he copy other legislative leaders on his demand. As the leader of the Republican minority, he has no way to compel Agwunobi or Geoghegan to respond. Harding conceded that no public conversation was likely.

Harding addressed his letter to John Driscoll, who became chair of UConn Health’s board of directors after Agwunobi’s return, and Daniel Toscano, chairman of the board of trustees for the entire university. Neither man could be reached for comment.

Walker did not respond when asked if her statement reflected the opinions of Driscoll or Toscano.

Harding’s letter makes an issue of Agwunobi’s former association with WellCare.

“As recently reported, Dr. Agwunobi’s involvement with WellCare raises troubling questions about oversight, conflicts of interest, and the public’s confidence in leadership,” Harding wrote. “Dr. Agwunobi cashed in vested stock options from WellCare worth roughly $1 million after only months on the board. The following month, he became the state regulator responsible for overseeing WellCare’s Medicaid practices in the state.”

Agwunobi was named in December 2006 by Gov. Charlie Crist to run Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration. The value of Agwunobi’s stock options were reported in 2007 by The Street and repeated by Rennie in his column Sunday.

Walker said the $1 million figure was “inaccurate and significantly inflated.” She did not say how much he did make but challenged any suggestion of a conflict between his roles at WellCare or Florida’s AHCA.

“Dr. Agwunobi served on the WellCare board for only six months 20 years ago before he was recruited to lead a state agency in Florida. He resigned from the WellCare board before assuming his regulatory responsibilities, and there was no overlap whatsoever between his board role and his later work as a state regulator. Florida state officials were fully aware of his prior board service at the time of his recruitment and vetting for the role.”

Walker said Agwunobi “was not aware of any improprieties and was never implicated in or associated with the actions of WellCare executives who were later investigated, and he was neither named nor interviewed as part of the investigation.”