The American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, distributed nearly $2 trillion into communities across the United States in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Connecticut, the money was used to fund infrastructure upgrades, schools, nonprofits and more.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “How easy COVID money whet CT lawmakers’ appetites for more,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Mark’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Mark. There's an ongoing investigation into alleged misappropriation of state grants to nonprofits in Hartford, and that's what prompted you to do this deep dive into lawmaker earmarks in Hartford. So let's start with the FBI investigation into Hartford State Senator Doug McCrory's role in steering the COVID relief money to the nonprofits there.
MP: Yes. So what we know about it really stems from the release and response to Freedom of Information requests from the Connecticut Mirror and others that disclose documents that were subpoenaed from the state government. So those subpoenas were public information. The Lamont Administration released them, and the focus there is on Senator McCrory’s relationship with a woman who runs a nonprofit and also consults for other nonprofits. They appear to be looking at whether or not there was any undue influence. But again, we have to be careful here, because we know what records they're looking at, but we don't have any precise allegations of wrongdoing; they are looking at the Senator’s relationship with any number of nonprofits in Hartford, the district he serves, which is North Hartford, Windsor and Bloomfield.
WSHU: Now, let's talk about the role of lawmakers in actually getting these projects funded through earmarks. What is an earmark, and how does that work?
MP: Earmark, you know, it's known by other terms. You know, people would call it pork barrel spending. This is really something that is as old as politics, the idea of a legislator, whether it's in the Connecticut General Assembly or in Congress, of directing funding towards something in their district. This fell out of favor in Congress — in 2011, they actually banned earmarks, and then they recently brought them back with some significant reforms, and those are reforms that we don't see in Connecticut. They are, namely, a member of Congress who is trying to direct federal funding to a particular recipient, which is disclosed. They have to own it. And that is very different from how it works in the Connecticut General Assembly. It's a very fuzzy process. It really relies on a lawmaker's good relationship with the House's leadership and the Democratic majority leaders.
WSHU: The Democratic leaders are in charge of a lot of this money now, but in the past, we've had a divided government in Connecticut, and we still had this issue of earmarks.
MP: Yes, earmarks are not unique to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was my focus because they control the governor's office in both chambers of the General Assembly, and that's where the money is going to the districts of Democratic lawmakers by and large. Now we should say many of the recipients are well-established nonprofits, as well as some municipal governments, so there is nothing scandalous on its face about this money going to those recipients. But the question is, there's very little oversight. The whole process is opaque on the surface; we don't know who the lawmaker is who actually directed this money.
WSHU: In the federal legislation, lawmakers must list all the specific earmarks.
MP: Correct. That is correct, and that is a major difference between how it's done in Washington and how it's done in Hartford. Because of the FBI investigation, I think you're going to see a debate next year about how earmarks should be done. You know, the other element here is, after the Great Recession of 2008, the General Assembly really did not have a lot of money to spread around in this way. So this, this kind of stuff, dried up. And then with COVID and the American Rescue Plan Act, ARPA, there was a lot of money flowing in here, and all of a sudden, they had money to dispose of. It was discretion. A lot of it was discretionary money, and there was a hard deadline.
WSHU: So they had to spend it immediately or lose it, right?
MP: Absolutely. And it's quite clear that, you know, appetites were whetted by the ARPA money that came in. And so we saw a difference in the last two state budgets. There was a lot of vetting in the Department of Economic and Community Development, which runs some very competitive grant programs. There was also a quote, various grant line items in the budget, and it doubled from the last biennial budget to this one.
WSHU: So, how much is in it now?
MP: Over the two-year budget, it's now about $39 million. So that's over two years, and that is slightly more than double what it was in the previous two-year budget. So Cathy Austin, the state Senator who is the co-chair of the Appropriations Committee, said, look, there's no question what was going on here. The ARPA money puts people in a frame of mind to keep doing local earmarks, and that's why this is sort of blowing up. So, there's a bunch of things happening here at once, which is why I thought it was a good idea to take a look at how earmarks work in Connecticut.
WSHU: Okay, so, how is it working? You spoke with Matt Ritter, the speaker.
MP: Who was very, very honest about the dynamics. I mean, he said what we know, but people rarely say, which is, yeah, from time to time, you know, you help a member of your caucus who has some trouble back home, perhaps with a tough race, so you help that person bring home some money. In the old days, we hadn't seen this in a long time, but when there were real fights for the speakership and other leadership posts, earmarks would be spread around that way to, you know, get people to support your candidacy for speaker; that is not the case here.
WSHU: Politics does play a role in determining.
MP: Yes, it does. So what are the relationships with your leadership? But again, there's not a lot of transparency there. The other thing that I wrote about it, which is kind of interesting, is that the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus has its own pool of money, and each member of that caucus gets to earmark $150,000 to an organization in their district. And this is a deal that was cut after the Sandy Hook shooting. This was sort of a side agreement, because there was such a focus, understandably, on the murders of those 20 children and six educators. But you know, you had urban lawmakers who pointed out that the body count, quite frankly, in some of their cities was higher, but without making news, it would be one here, one there. What came out of that were two grant programs addressing youth services and youth violence protection, and it is really up to the Black and Puerto Rican caucus to distribute that money.
WSHU: But the money does go to a youth program run by the University of New Haven.
MP: Well, the evaluation was done by the Tow Institute in concert with the University of New Haven. So, the people are active in the Black and Puerto Rican caucus, particularly Toni Walker, who is the co-chair of the other appropriations. She points out that their earmarks, their programs come with some training from the Tow Institute and University of New Haven and some evaluations, because they're really not detailed evaluations of the efficacy of these various groups. You might have to submit an annual report that shows activities, but there is no measure of how effective they are. The Black and Puerto Rican caucus actually has contracted again with this Institute and the University of New Haven to really try to do that feedback to see what works. What are the good metrics that would measure the efficacy of these programs?
WSHU: What are the Republicans saying about all this?
MP: Well, Tammy Nuccio is the ranking Republican on appropriations. You know, she just said, Look, this is asinine that there, particularly, I'm talking about the various grant line items in the Department of Economic and Community Development, where there are no standards. And she just says, This is crazy. There is no vetting. And Vinny Candelora, the House Minority Leader, makes a similar comment. And really, it's hard to push back at that, because at least in the case of the various grant line items, there are not a lot of standards. One of the senior officials at the ECD, that department, makes it clear that this program comes without any parameters as to who can get the money. The legislature says, give them the money. They cut a contract, and at the end of the year, they make sure it was spent, and they get a kind of minimalist report as to what they did with it.
WSHU: Wow. This is an issue that is very likely to come up in the next session, right?
MP: Matt Ritter, the speaker, certainly thinks so. There's nothing like a federal criminal investigation. What are the standards for how money's going out the door? And again, I want to be careful and not sort of, you know, smear all the recipients, because, again, many of these are well-established nonprofits, but some are new, and some of them, you don't really have a lot of detail about what you're getting for the money. It's really spreading money around. And, you know, there are things like Little Leagues that get the money, which I think everybody likes the Little League. But the question is, is that really the best use of state funds? It's a real broad mix of what the money is used for.
