A federal probe into a Connecticut State Senator’s involvement in a nonprofit is ongoing.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Andrew Brown to discuss his article written with Dave Altimari, “Documents: Sen. Doug McCrory held sway over Blue Hills nonprofit,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read their story here.
WSHU: Hello, Andrew. Hartford Democratic State Senator Doug McCrory is in the middle of a federal probe right now. So how did you get hold of so many of the internal records from the Blue Hills Civic Association?
AB: We requested records that were turned over to state auditors earlier this year as part of an ongoing audit of Blue Hills and more than $15 million that the nonprofit in Hartford received in recent years. So we essentially came into possession of Blue Hills internal records because they were collected by state auditors and then turned over to the FBI, thus giving us access, through the state’s Freedom of Information Act, to be able to view these internal records and really tell the inside story of what happened to Blue Hills.
WSHU: So, looking through these records, what do they say?
AB: I think, as we described in the story, the most succinct way to explain what we found was that Blue Hills, over several years, mostly between 2023 and 2025, was transformed from a community nonprofit, which it had operated as for more than 60 years, and it was transformed into essentially a political arm of state senator Doug McCrory. McCrory, a Democrat who has represented the north end of Hartford for two decades, essentially used Blue Hills, as their executive director said, as a conduit to send money to other organizations in the community. And what we found was that several of those organizations were run by people with prior political or professional ties to the state senator.
WSHU: So basically, he set it up like a patronage-type situation, where people would now owe him political favors.
AB: I think the most accurate way to describe it is that he turned Blue Hills essentially into part of his state Senate office, and in some cases, his political office. So whenever he was running for re-election, like in 2024, for instance, he did this one campaign event where he actually hand-delivered a giant commemorative Blue Hills check to another nonprofit, giving them $10,000 from Blue Hills. Well, the records show that in the back end, he was the one controlling that money. So it essentially became a fund that Senator McCrory had almost exclusive control over, and we’re not talking about a couple of $100,000; we’re talking about over a three-year period, nearly $8 million that he had power over.
WSHU: Now, the collapse of Blue Hills came as a surprise to most of the employees. Could you just tell us a little bit about what you heard from the former employees that you were able to talk to?
AB: Yeah, when the employees were laid off last April, many of them had no idea what was happening, or why a 60-year-old nonprofit had collapsed. But they were told essentially in a late-night email, without any warning, that they were all laid off, and there was no reason for them to return to the office. The immediate cause of that was that the state of Connecticut had frozen all of the nonprofit’s money after they realized that $300,000 had been stolen through a fraudulent wire transfer from the nonprofit. But as we explained in the story, over the past year, it’s become clear that there was much more going on behind the scenes at Blue Hills. Many of the former employees we spoke to over the past few months said that they had no understanding or knowledge of Senator McCrory’s role at the nonprofit outside of his being a normal state lawmaker advocating for their organization at the state legislature. But there were some people who were more frequently in Blue Hills’s office in the north end of Hartford who said that there were some signs in recent years that essentially, as one person put it, Doug McCrory had become the de facto executive director of Blue Hills. That prompted all kinds of questions, as we point out in the story, from the nonprofit’s own attorneys, its annual auditors, and, as we explained in the story, it eventually drew the attention of the FBI, which, more than two years ago, began asking people about McCrory and essentially how money flowed through the nonprofits in Hartford’s north end.
WSHU: So, what is the state doing to try to deal with that situation? Because this is something that the Lamont administration has had to deal with. Is there any sign that state money going out to nonprofit organizations is being monitored more closely by officials?
AB: The Lamont administration certainly wants to change how some of this money flowed in the past. So the most immediate reaction was that the governor proposed changes to what is known as the earmarking process, which is essentially a way for individual lawmakers to insert grants into the state budget for specific organizations. You know, there’s no competition there. They just essentially decide which groups get money, and the Lamont administration wants more transparency surrounding that. Just the other week, actually, earlier in April, the House passed a bill that would implement several changes, including making the earmarking process more transparent and giving state agencies the ability to provide more oversight of these earmarked funds, which McCrory helped to direct to Blue Hills. That legislation has not been taken up by the Senate, however, where McCrory is still an active member, so nothing has been officially done yet. The Lamont administration has said, even without that legislation, they will be essentially staffing up, particularly in the Department of Economic and Community Development, to monitor these earmarks. But the governor wants a law passed that is on the books that makes it essentially a statute for how these earmarked funds should be handled. We will see as we near the end of the session here whether the Senate actually takes that up and passes it.
WSHU: Well, in the meantime, McCrory is still sitting in the Senate, and even though he’s under federal probe, there’s no case that has been brought yet.
AB: That’s correct. We know that he is under federal investigation based on subpoenas that the state received last year. So he was obviously the target of those subpoenas based on the information that the FBI and a grand jury were requesting from the state. But you’re exactly right; to this point, he has not been accused of anything, and no indictments have been filed in court that have charged him with any crime.
WSHU: Okay. Well, thank you so much, Andrew. Fascinating look into how state money has been going out in Hartford over the past few years.
AB: Thank you.