This unusual odyssey through state government cannot end now.
Wednesday brought the news that an email Public Utilities Regulatory Authority chair Marissa Gillett testified under oath did not exist had been found. By Friday morning, Gillett, with no more implausible tales to spin, resigned, the victim of the cruelest wounds, self-inflicted ones.
The saga of Gillett’s unsettling recent tenure at PURA brought out the worst in many, the best in a few. As often happens with political scandals, this could have been addressed candidly months ago and resolved. It began with an incendiary opinion piece published in the CT Mirror on December 19 last year that was attributed to state Senator Norm Needleman, D-Essex, and state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chairs of the legislature’s energy committee as its authors.
That op-ed was a nutty screed that claimed without evidence that Eversource, the state’s largest utility, conspired with an international financial ratings agency to lower the utility’s prospects as an investment.
The Courant’s Edmund Mahony obtained text messages between Steinberg and Gillett that were on Steinberg’s phone. A reasonable reading of the messages sent shortly before and after the op-ed was published suggested Gillett had a hand in crafting the op-ed. If so, she had shredded her credibility as a fair-minded utility regulator. The op-ed and the text messages became the subject of an appeal of rate decisions by two gas companies.
In the months that followed the initiation of litigation, state officials, especially Attorney General William Tong, ridiculed the gas companies’ claims of unfair treatment. Tong was flinging hyperbolic nonsense as recently as this week. What he and his lawyers have not been able to explain are the misleading statements made about the searches for Gillett’s missing text messages. It took months for them to disclose that long ago those public documents were automatically deleted from her cellphone because that is how the chief public state utilities regulator had programmed her phone.
Gillett and PURA’s chief of staff, Theresa Govert, were deposed this summer and damaged themselves but did not produce any relevant documents. Govert testified that medicine she was taking in December caused her to forget everything she may have once known about the op-ed. Gillett’s testimony was convoluted, even for her.
The Courant’s Wednesday story revealing the contents of an email Gillett and others insisted for months had never been written, making it impossible for Gillett to continue. Under questioning by House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, at her spring confirmation hearing, Gillett denied that the other two members of PURA had restricted access to the agency’s professional staff members. Gillett made emphatic, detailed denials about the restrictive requirement and even claimed to have “attestations” from the other two commissioners denying the policy.
Candelora, who enjoys a reputation for rectitude in the conduct of his office, requested those documents months ago. They were never provided. PURA member Michael Caron, months after the disputed requirement came into public view, was able to produce a paper copy of the email. It refuted Gillett’s testimony and emphatic claims by the agency before the Freedom of Information Commission.
As the evidence mounted this week, Candelora requested Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter begin the process of forming a committee of inquiry to consider Gillett’s actions and statements, including impeaching her. The evidence would have been difficult for the House to ignore.
There will be a desire to let this scandal end with Gillett’s resignation. It must be resisted. The utilities should be allowed to depose Needleman and Steinberg. If Gillett played a role in that notorious op-ed, there will, and should, be consequences for other PURA decisions. Both Democrats’ disclosure of documents has been thin. Steinberg has been notably surly about The Courant’s role in pursuing this scandal, accusing two of the newspaper’s reporters of trying to make a career of something that was not there.
Missing documents tell a wider tale about a state agency. We know now that PURA employees were involved in the creation of the restrictions placed on two commissioners. The email informing those two commissioners of the narrower way forward in discharging their duties is long and specific. Plenty of people in the agency knew of it. They said nothing when Gillett denied its existence in sworn, public testimony. Certainly, some of the PURA employees who signed an ugly letter accusing Gillett detractors of misogyny may have known about the restrictions when she denied it at that legislative hearing on her nomination.
Govert announced to the two PURA commissioners that she would be the point of contact for allowing (or refusing) their requests to meet with staff members in a December 2023 email. She remained silent for months about the document that was the subject of public debate for months. The only thing PURA did not conceal when it denied that there was such a policy were their scoffs. Govert’s and other voices were stilled.
There are two possible explanations for the extended lack of clarity. The first could be that Gillett created an environment at PURA that was so hostile that her subordinates were bullied into betraying the public interest day after day. The second could be that Gillett was surrounded by people so hostile to allowing the public to see how its vital business was conducted that a broad conspiracy of secrecy and deception formed without provocation.
The search for the truth is too important to allow Gillett’s resignation to draw another shroud over this sordid affair.
Kevin Rennie can be reached at kfrennie@yahoo.com