Steering into rough waters with Rowland at the helm
By Paul Hughes, Record-Journal staff, August 1, 2004

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State Sen. Thomas P. Gaffey, D-Meriden, says the $57 million Connecticut Juvenile Training School was built in his district because of politics and political corruption.

Gaffey had known about the politics part from the start. Former Gov. John G. Rowland and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly made a deal in 1999 to build the training school to replace the deteriorating, dangerous and unsecured Long Lane School.

It was not until last year that the senator suspected political corruption was involved.

A guilty plea from Rowland's former deputy chief of staff in March 2003 revealed that a federal grand jury was investigating corruption in state contracting. The former aide admitted to accepting bribes to steer state contracts to unnamed businesses.

After the guilty plea, it soon became public knowledge that the Connecticut Juvenile Training School was a focus of the federal probe.

This year, the impeachment investigation of Rowland reinforced Gaffey's suspicions that the training school was not located, designed and built for the reasons that the former administration had stated to lawmakers and the public.

The impeachment investigation looked into how the New Britain-based Tomasso Group was chosen to build the detention center. The inquiry found that the company had been afforded special treatment that possibly violated state law. Rowland also has admitted taking gifts from principals of the Tomasso Group, but he has insisted he did nothing in return.

Today, Rowland and members of the Tomasso family and their businesses remain subjects of the federal investigation into corruption in state contracting.

"The governor wanted to build a $57 million facility, and now we know why," Gaffey said.

"Now we know that building was the product of a really corrupt deal," said Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, a member of the House Select Committee of Inquiry that investigated Rowland.

"Unfortunately, it was a corrupt process, and we ended up with a facility that cost $57 million," said Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn.

The resignation of Rowland ended the impeachment investigation, so the House Select Committee of Inquiry reached no conclusions about the training school.

However, the select committee confirmed that a Tomasso executive accompanied a top Rowland aide and the commissioner of the Department of Children and Families on a November 1998 trip to Ohio to scout three juvenile detention centers. One of those facilities became the model for the Connecticut training school.

The Tomasso Group won the contract to build the detention center five months after the Ohio trip. The select committee's final report said the Tomasso executive's presence may have violated a state law that makes it illegal for state officials to discuss the state's real estate or construction needs with an outsider. It also noted that none of the Tomasso Group's four competitors for the training school contract had representatives on the trip.

The inquiry committee found that Rowland did not know about the Ohio trip ahead of time, and although the governor was angry and surprised to learn of it, he did nothing afterwards, and he even publicly denied knowledge that a Tomasso executive went on the trip.

Lawlor, a former state prosecutor, said the evidence suggested to him that top Rowland aides steered the $57 million contract to the Tomasso Group. He said it is unclear to him whether or not the former governor had been involved in the string-pulling.

Unparalleled pressure

However, Lawlor said Rowland pushed hard to build the Connecticut Juvenile Training School. He said the pressure the administration applied on the legislature was unparalleled in his 17 years there.

"I have never seen anything quite like it," said Lawlor, House chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

The Select Committee on Children had advocated the construction of smaller, community-based rehabilitation centers around the state and tried to block construction of the training school. Members succeeded in stripping the project's funding several times, but the administration kept saving it.

"They fought us right to the final day of the session," said Rep. Mary M. Mushinsky, House chairwoman of the committee on children.

In addition to the former governor, Gaffey blamed the legislature's Democratic leaders for accommodating Rowland. Gaffey had supported a $162 million plan to build three smaller, regional detention and rehabilitation centers around the state.

"Nobody would listen to me because there was a deal that had been cut with the governor. My own leaders came to me and asked me not to filibuster," Gaffey said.

At that time, Gaffey said, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate were more interested in making deals with Rowland than challenging him.

The senator argued against the construction of the Connecticut Juvenile Training School on the Senate floor, but he did not filibuster. He was one of eight senators who voted against the plan.

phughes@record-journal.com

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