Ethics

Lawrence McHugh, the chairman of the University of Connecticut Board of Trustees for nearly a decade, will replace Donald Frost of Fairfield on the Connecticut Port Authority’s board of directors — after a WSHU investigation.

The identity of the Connecticut Port Authority board member who accepted illegal gifts from a vendor seeking business has been revealed in documents obtained by WSHU through a freedom of information request.

The names of two Connecticut Port Authority employees who received illegal gifts from a vendor seeking business in 2017 and 2019 have been revealed in a letter to state legislators.

The troubled state Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE, went out of businesses earlier this month, after Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature agreed to replace it with a new ethics panel, but progress has been slow.

Robert Bruneau, a city councilman and fire commissioner in West Haven, used his elected position as a leader of the West Shore Fire District to authorize contracts and payments for a company owned by his wife and son, documents show.

The growing dispute highlights the local politics and influence that are at play throughout Connecticut at the moment as municipal boards, commissions and councils decide how to spend millions of dollars in one-time funding.

Reinvent Albany’s Rachael Fauss said under the plan, the governor and legislative leaders would retain the power to appoint representatives to the commission, along with the state’s attorney general and comptroller.

“We don’t want the deck chairs on the Titanic being rearranged,” Horner said. “We want the real independent ethics commission that the public’s been promised.”

Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo Jr. will step down March 31 from the post that he has held since January 2020.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo may be out of office, but his legal troubles aren’t over just yet.An alleged leak to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo from someone inside…