Rennie Takes Rell And Moody To Woodshed

This is why I like Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie. He powerwashes Jodi Rell’s phony patina:

Everything old is new again as Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s administration breathes its last while trying to revive her reputation for achievement and honor. That’s a heavy lift, so Rell turned to the University of Hartford to burnish her sorry record for the ages. They don’t call it U-Ha for nothing.

The governor plans to establish The Rell Center for Public Service at U-Ha “to instruct and encourage integrity and responsible participation in government and public service.” Under that description, Rell should be a student, not a speaker at the “lectures, panel discussions, symposia and forums on important local and regional issues” the center will offer.

A forum on how to let an irresponsible budget become law without your signature even when you have the votes to sustain a veto? Thin gruel, though Rell has a unique knowledge of that subject. Democratic and Working Families Gov.-elect Dannel Malloy will have more detailed and insightful knowledge of the consequences of Rell’s retreat from responsibility when her mess falls to him in January.

Lobbyists and others were surprised last week to receive invitations to a Dec. 7 fundraising event for the Rell center. Lobbyists are the people Rell banned, with fanfare, from meetings in her office when she became governor in 2004. When she decided the public should pay for political campaigns, she supported a ban on lobbyists and their spouses contributing to campaigns: not even $50. What she does not object to, indeed solicits, are contributions of up to $5,000 from lobbyists to underwrite her risible institution.

The opening gambit in the service of authenticity could be a weeklong celebration of exposing myths in politics and government. The list of donors to the Dec. 7 event could serve as a primary document for students. How many will be state contractors? Anyone get a bucket of tax credits or state guaranteed loans? By choosing U-Ha as the repository of her ephemeral aspirations, Rell moved the finances out of the public domain, for it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

That’s the way the Ethics Governor likes it. Her egregious chief of staff, M. Lisa Moody, was a demon on the delete button of her office computer, destroying the trail of e-mails that revealed Rell allowed her office to become a political campaign headquarters. All that’s ever mattered has been winning the day in the news.

Each time violations of laws and rules were exposed, Rell dismissed them as “gotcha” moments instigated by the press. Except once. That was five years ago when Moody was caught in her office raising money for Rell’s campaign. The scandal ensnared more than a dozen members of Rell’s administration who had been enlisted by Moody as illegal fundraisers for Rell. Snow White made a tearful announcement that Moody would be suspended for two weeks. Others did not get off so lightly. They paid fines for their misfeasance.

Invite some of them to join a panel on Rell’s ethics, integrity and spine. They can speak with authority on the 2005 Marco Polo affair, named for the East Hartford restaurant where the infamous fundraiser was perpetrated by Moody for Rell.

The Rell Center could sponsor a lecture on how that telling conspiracy instructed us in integrity in government, but it’s not one Rell could deliver. When Moody’s role in obtaining lists of 5,300 names and addresses from the state’s arts agency while attempting to coordinate an official announcement with campaign fundraising was exposed, Rell shrugged.

She did not cavil when Moody claimed a student who worked in Rell’s office was involved in a mailing concocted to cover the fundraising gambit. No one, by now testifying under oath, remembered it, and the student was dead. Please, Gov. Rell, call it a symposium or a panel or a trip to fantasy land, but don’t try to associate what you’ve countenanced with truth or integrity.

The Rell Center will delve into “research and scholarly inquiry on the nature of integrity in government and public life.” This is a new area of interest for Rell and her puppet master. Suddenly, a governor devoid of intellectual curiosity wants to lecture us on virtue. That will be a short class for no credit.