House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora on Wednesday called in writing for the appointment of a special impeachment committee to investigate whether chief utility regulator Marissa Gillett “may have lied” to the legislature about a controversial policy that critics believe undercut the authority of her fellow regulators.
In a letter to House Speaker Matthew Ritter, a Democrat, Candelora wrote, “I am requesting that you convene a Select Committee of Inquiry to investigate and consider her conduct, and report to the House on its findings, including whether sufficient grounds exist for impeachment.”
The letter follows a report Wednesday in the Courant that — as a related case moves toward a critical hearing in court next week — Gillett’s Public Utility Regulatory Authority abruptly backed away from earlier denials and acknowledged the existence of email directives on the ability of the authority’s other two commissioners to consult staff experts directly on regulatory questions.
PURA’s unexpected acknowledgement that the email exists contradicts Gillett’s testimony to the Legislature in February during her confirmation for a second term. In response to a question then from Candelora, she denied the existence of any email or directive placing conditions of access to staff experts and said she had obtained written “attestations” from the two fellow commissioners then in office as confirmation. The emails were not written by Gillett’s staff.
In the months since, Gillett has not responded to multiple requests to produce the attestations, including one a month after the hearing from Candelora and the Republicans.
“I suspect no such attestation exists since it has now been reported that, in direct contradiction to Ms. Gillett’s sworn testimony during her confirmation hearing, she did in fact issue a directive to the other commissioners of the Authority that restricted access to support staff,” Candlora wrote in the letter.
“As a result of this revelation, I am requesting that you convene a Select Committee of Inquiry to determine whether Chair Gillett perjured herself during her confirmation process before the Legislative and Executive Nominations Committee and whether such conduct is sufficient grounds for impeachment,” he wrote.
Ritter on Thursday did not rule out an impeachment proceeding, something last convened two decades ago in the case of disgraced former Gov. John G. Rowland.
“I am in receipt of the letter from House Minority Leader Candelora requesting that I convene a Select Committee of Inquiry to investigate the testimony of Public Utilities Regulatory Authority Chair Marissa Gillett during her 2025 confirmation hearing,” Ritter said Thursday.
“I have asked my staff to review the details of the allegations contained in the Minority Leader’s letter,” he said. “In the meantime, I strongly encourage PURA to fully comply with the House Republicans’ March 27, 2025 request for information and documents, as required by the state’s Freedom of Information Act.”
PURA had seemed adamant in its insistence that there has never been a policy limiting access to staff and that exhaustive searches of email archives had turned up no such directive. But on Wednesday in response to a records request from the Courant, the authority disclosed two emails about staff access, including a December 2023 email from PURA Chief Marissa Gillett’s chief of staff to the two other commissioners then serving on the authority.
An authority spokesman said Wednesday that PURA had not produced the email earlier because the email was not “responsive” to records requests dating back almost a year by state utility companies.
“Moving forward …I would appreciate it if all requests to work with staff came through me,” the email to commissioners from PURA Chief of Staff Theresa Govert said. “This way, I can coordinate with the appropriate Director/Supervisor. Through my one-on-one conversations with staff these past few weeks, it has been made clear that they appreciate clear chains of communication and decision-making. I look forward to working with all of you to accomplish this goal.”
PURA did not immediately respond to questions Thursday.
Fights over missing documents like the emails have become flashpoints in the increasingly contentious disagreement over regulatory policy between the state’s utilities and Gillett, who has assumed a dominant policy role during a period during in which the authority has issued several rate decisions considered adverse by the utility industry.
The utilities argue that a restriction requiring presumably co-equal commissioners to obtain her approval before consulting staff experts on complex legal and regulatory questions supports their broader argument that Gillett has taken personal control of much of PURA’s regulatory apparatus by reducing the role of the other commissioners. The result, the utilities argue, has been unfair, legally suspect and effectively unilateral rate decisions.
PURA rejects the assertion .
Even as Candelora and Ritter were discussing impeachment, there were other developments Thursday in the now years-long and increasingly bitter disagreement between Gillett and the utility industry.
Among other things, PURA said it is willing to agree to what amounts to a settlement in a suit by two Avangrid gas utilities challenging recent rate decisions. In its proposed settlement, PURA agrees to re-consider the decisions in a rate review from which Gillett would be excluded.
Analysts following the case expect the utilities to oppose the PURA settlement offer, preferring instead to press ahead with the suit in an attempt to use email and other records to demonstrate what they assert — and PURA and Gillett supporters deny — is an anti-utility bias on PURA’s part.
The email dispute that that provoked a call for impeachment follows Gillett’s belated admission earlier this summer that an automatic delete program on her personal cellphone erased another record that has become a flashpoint in her disagreement with the utilities: A text message exchange that critics believe suggests she collaborated on a news opinion column or op ed that excoriated the utility industry.
Gillett acknowledged in June, months after the utilities went to court in an unsuccessful effort to access her text records, that the exchange had been deleted shortly after it occurred in December 2024. Although the texts were erased from Gillett’s phone, the Courant obtained the exchange from the personal cellphone of the legislator with whom she was corresponding.
In the exchange, the legislator discusses an “op ed,” Gillett mentions a draft she has completed and both worry about being “FOIA’d,” meaning being subjected to a public records request for the substance of their text exchange.
Gillett has said she was referring in the exchange to draft legislation not an anti-utility opinion piece the legislator co-authored and published shortly after the exchange. It was never her intention, she said, to circumvent public record laws.
The dispute over text messages arose in the suit by Avangrid gas subsidiaries challenging rate decisions. Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik, who is hearing the case, has scheduled a hearing next week to examine why PURA initially told him it had no record of the exchange and then, months later, acknowledged its deletion.
Budzik also will be called on to sort out a variety of other contested issues, among them PURA’s offer to settle the suit. In addition, Budzik is being asked to rule on a request by state
Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, that he not be required to submit to a deposition by Avangrid lawyers.
In addition to being co-chairman of the Legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, Needleman is a vocal utility industry critic, a leading Gillett supporter and co-author of the op-ed on which the utility companies believe Gillett collaborated. In a long motion opposing his deposition, Needleman asserts he is being persecuted by utility companies trying to suppress his first amendment right to free expression.
The text messages and email have become hot spots in what has turned into a years-long fight between Gillett and the utility industry over regulatory policy and rates.
Gillett supporters claim the utilities are using their substantial political influence to undermine her because she is reshaping and modernizing regulatory policy in ways that will hold the utilities to account and better protect customer interests. The supporters argue that customers suffered under years of lax regulation before her appointment by Gov. Ned Lamont. She has Lamont’s support, but narrowly survived her renomination hearing.
The utilities contend Gillett effectively has taken unilateral control of rate-making by improperly establishing herself as sole decider on important questions and pushing fellow commissioners out of the process. The utilities also argue that Gillett has made public statements that demonstrate bias.
Eversource, Avangrid and their gas and water subsidiaries have undergone a succession of credit downgrades following recent PURA recent rate decisions making it more expensive to borrow the hundred of millions of dollars they need to maintain their networks and pay for an expansion needed to sustain an explosion in artificial intelligence.