When it comes to ethics and government oversight and watchdogs, Connecticut should be like Middle Earth and rings of power. You shouldn't have to persuade people based on hypothetical scenarios. "What if the most evil person alive was trying to get a really awesome ring and use it to screw all of us?" This already happened, right? Ring control should be a given.
So it is with independent oversight of Connecticut government. We don't have to imagine what could go wrong. It already did. We had a bunch of corrupt, power-grubbing office-holders, the worst of them being John G. Rowland.
One of Rowland's techniques was trying to kneecap and hamstring watchdog agencies that might be investigating him. And there often were a lot of them. He went after their budgets and their independence. At the federal level, he tried to install a trusted aide as head of the very Justice Department office that eventually brought him down. (And our dopey U.S. senators at the time backed that deal!)
It has never been possible to make watchdog agencies independent enough, even back in the good old days. In 2006, an independent investigator concluded that the head of the State Elections Enforcement Commission had difficulty enforcing election law when the Rell administration broke it. The commission's head was so dependent on Rell's administrative control that he improperly cut her campaign manager in on negotiations over Rell staff campaign violations. That's like Archibald Cox inviting John Mitchell to help him figure out what to do about Watergate.
Independent investigator Daniel Klau concluded that a watchdog shouldn't be in the position of deciding whether to fine or discipline somebody who might have a role in setting his salary. Makes sense, right? Klau said we needed to get the enforcers into positions where they didn't have to be afraid of governors or legislators.
So did we fix that? No. We made it worse.
The Malloy administration, two years ago, consolidated all the watchdog agencies into one office with a head guy appointed by him. The idea was that the head guy would only have control over "back office" functions like copy machines and IT. The watchdog agencies could even fire him if he got out of line. What ensued looked like a few episodes of "Game of Thrones" without, as far as I know, all the sex. Just the intrigue and venom and turf battles.
The new super-group — the Office of Government Accountability — included the elections commission, the Office of State Ethics, the Freedom of Information Commission and six other agencies that nobody cares about and never get mentioned. I'm pretty sure one of them is the Office of Déjà Vu because I am writing the same damned column I wrote two years ago.
Now Malloy people want to streamline the chain of command. They'll be the boss of the accountability head, and he'll be the boss of the watchdogs. No more independence. When you strip away the rhetoric, that's the way it shakes out.
Malloy's people say it's a money-saving move, but that's a crock. Two vacant positions won't be filled. For less than $200,000 they're prepared to sell out a major tenet of democracy. The real reason is control. In a moment of candor, budget czar Ben Barnes told the Connecticut Mirror: "Everybody's got to work for somebody. You gotta have somebody when you don't show up to work, when you do sh---y work, when you show up drunk. Somebody's got to be able to discipline you and fire you."
I won't lie to you. Things can get sloppy in these agencies. In 2004, the ethics office was making headlines for its, well, ethics problems. On the plus side, the Office of Drunks and Sh---y Work was shut down in 2006.
Everybody's got to work for somebody. But everybody does not have to work for you, Dan and Ben. The people who are supposed to growl and bark when you get out of line should not work for you.
Republican leaders are seizing this opportunity to make Malloy look like Nixon and themselves like Elliot Richardson. If Malloy doesn't like it, he can take it up with the Venom and Turf Battle Commission.
Colin McEnroe appears from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on WNPR-FM (90.5) and blogs at http://courantblogs.com/colin-mcenroe/. He can be reached at Colin@wnpr.org.
