The Connecticut Senate gave final passage to a bill Monday to increase transparency around legislative earmarks and to address a political scandal created by one of their own members.
The bill, which unanimously passed the Senate, will mandate additional documentation and reporting requirements from any entity that receives legislatively-directed funds — more commonly known as earmarks.
That legislation, which was pushed by Gov. Ned Lamont and passed by the House on a unanimous vote last month, is a direct response to the actions of Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford.
A state audit released earlier this year showed that McCrory sent more than $11 million in legislative earmarks to the Blue Hills Civic Association, a community nonprofit that served part of his district in the North End of Hartford, and then instructed that organization to send much of that money on other nonprofits and businesses.
McCrory, who is also the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation, has denied any wrongdoing, but his influence at the Blue Hills Civic Association prompted Lamont to call for the senior Democratic senator to “step back” from his leadership roles in the General Assembly earlier this year. He has not.
A recent investigation by the Connecticut Mirror showed that McCrory held enormous sway at the Blue Hills Civic Association, and he used that power to funnel state grant funding to a host of organizations, several of which had previous connections to the state senator.
The legislation passed on Monday attempts to fix several issues that were cited in the recent audit of Blue Hills.
The bill requires any nonprofit that plans to subgrant state money to another group to get approval from state officials in advance.
It instructs those nonprofits to provide an explanation of what the money will be used for — something that currently doesn’t occur. And it mandates the Office of Policy and Management, the governor’s budget office, to assemble an annual report on all of the money that lawmakers tasked state agencies with distributing to nonprofits and other groups.
Sen. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox, the Democratic chairwoman of the Government Oversight Committee, argued on Monday that the bill would increase transparency around legislative earmarks while ensuring that nonprofits can still obtain the state funding they need to maintain their operations.
“It’s important we do not make undue burdens for our nonprofit organizations that are doing the work on the ground,” Gadkar-Wilcox said.
The Republican minority in the Senate unanimously supported the bill that Lamont and the Democrats drafted, but they argued on Monday that more could be done to provide transparency and accountability surrounding taxpayer money.
“I would suggest it is only one small step forward, and we should do more,” said Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott.
Sampson and his Republican colleagues put forward an amendment that would have provided even more rules for the earmarks.
They asked the Democratic majority to require lawmakers to attach their name to individual earmarks so the public could see which lawmakers were sending money to various nonprofits. They wanted nonprofits to outline how much of the state grant funding is spent on salaries and administrative costs. And they wanted nonprofits to report whether anyone in their organization has ever been convicted of fraud or another financial crime before.
That amendment was voted down.
Many of the Republicans who spoke on the bill recognized that there are many good nonprofits serving communities in Connecticut. But they alluded to the FBI investigation into McCrory and said such scandals require more action on the part of the legislature to protect taxpayer money and uphold the public trust.
“There have been a litany of abuses, of crimes, and waste in this state government that need to be addressed directly,” said Ryan Fazio, a Greenwich Republican who is campaigning for governor this year.
Gadkar-Wilcox sought to challenge Fazio’s remarks about corruption in Connecticut by arguing that the federal government under President Donald Trump was also facing corruption scandals of its own.
