How
Many Charges Will It Take?
And
How Much Disgrace Is Too Much?
Published
on 12/21/2003
Gov. John Rowland has
apologized twice for lying about who paid for the renovation of his cottage on
Bantam Lake in Litchfield but has not quite apologized for what he was lying
about — taking expensive gifts resembling kickbacks from state contractors and
political appointees. Indeed, when, in his presence and with his approval, his
wife, Patricia, read a poem denouncing the news media just moments after he had
delivered his second apology this week, it began to seem that the governor
wasn't really apologizing at all. For far from repenting the gift taking, the
governor is preparing a legalistic defense of it and of a lot more unethical
conduct.
In support of the
governor's claim that he is entitled to conceal gifts from state contractors as
a matter of “personal privacy,” his legal counsel is maintaining that state
ethics rules actually allow him to take such gifts as long as the contractors
don't do business directly with the governor's office but rather with other
state agencies. The Journal Inquirer reported last week that prior to 2001 the
governor personally approved all major state contracts but, as a federal
investigation of corruption in his administration expanded, he stopped doing
so, perhaps to legitimize his taking gifts from contractors.
Of course for practical
purposes the distinction being made by the governor's counsel is absurd, since
the governor appoints and dismisses the people who run the other agencies and
needs only to telephone them to have them do as he wishes with contracts. Legalisms
aside, the use of intermediaries cannot make a corrupt
scheme respectable, and
even the governor himself doesn't really think so, or else he would not have
concealed the gifts he received at his cottage in the first place and would not
continue to conceal other ties to contractors now.
While he sought with his
first apology to seem to be making full disclosure, the governor could not get
through even a week without another embarrassing revelation. Seemingly prompted
helpfully by the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI, just as the Hartford
Courant has been recently, The New York Times discovered this week that the
governor not only has gotten free paving work at his cottage from a state
contractor but also had become the contractor's business partner shortly after
becoming governor in 1995.
The Times reported that
the governor was admitted to a sweetheart real estate subdivision deal in
Naugatuck with the paving contractor, Anthony Cocchiola, whose company has
received more than a million dollars in state work under the Rowland
administration, and with the governor's former divorce lawyer, Michael
Cicchetti.
The governor's partners
signed the promissory note for the bank loan with which their land was made
developable but he never signed it and thus never took the same financial risk
even as he shared equally in the profits, $60,000 for each partner, a quick
return of more than 700 percent on the $7,200 he is said to have invested.
It is now clear that the
governor is being undone by the recklessness of his search for surreptitious
income under the pressure of the settlement of his divorce from his first wife.
Documents released by the governor when he confessed to lying about his cottage
indicated that he has been obliged to pay alimony of $33,600 per year, which
during his first two terms as governor was a majority of his $78,000 salary.
(Only last year was his salary raised to $150,000.) And this week the Times,
quoting unidentified sources in the governor's office, reported that he is
accumulating a debt of tens of thousands of dollars to his ex-wife.
Rowland is not the first
politician in need of money to get himself invited to a sweetheart real estate
deal, and such deals aren't necessarily illegal or unethical if the partners
want to share their money that way, it is reported and taxed, and the
politician is not in a position to use his office to do favors for his
partners. The problem in Rowland's case is once again the state contractor
connection, which implies bribes and kickbacks.
That the contractor
scandal is getting bigger was made clear this week when the governor's
Executive Residence aide, Jo McKenzie, having just been subpoenaed to appear
before the federal grand jury, tried to dismiss a reporter's question about
whether she too got gifts from contractors. “Don't be fresh,” McKenzie replied,
an answer the U.S. attorney is not likely to settle for.
From the detailed leaks to
the newspapers and their exquisite timing it is also clear now that the
investigation is targeting the governor himself. If he won't resign or come
clean all at once — disclosing all gifts and the details of outside income he
has received — the U.S. attorney well may take him to the laundry every week
with more leaks to the newspapers.
So Connecticut generally
and Connecticut Republicans particularly should prepare for their own Watergate
experience, and soon Patty Rowland may want to write another bitter poem.
What rhymes with
Cocchiola? Maybe “payola”?
Chris Powell is
managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester. 