CT Port Authority Project Costs $255M, Corrupted by Unethical Gifts By Adam Andrzejewski
The Connecticut Port Authority’s remaking of New London’s State Pier is costing $255.5 million and is the subject of a wide-ranging federal probe of several construction projects that were overseen by Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration.
Connecticut newspaper The Day reported that Attorney General William Tong is investigating a controversial grant in 2020 — a $523,000 success fee given to a marine consulting firm, Seabury PFRA, “for its role in choosing the politically connected operators of the port of New Haven to run the competing New London port,” the newspaper said.
An employee of the consulting firm had served on the port authority board of directors until right before his firm got the large contract.
The Seabury firm agreed to pay $10,000 in fines for violating ethics codes by giving gifts to two port authority employees and a board member, the Office of State Ethics said.
The gifts came during 2017 and 2019, a time when agency spending was out of control, not properly recorded, with lavish expense accounts and payments made to insiders without competitive bidding, The Day reported.
Former board chairpersons, Old Lyme First Selectwoman Bonnie Reemsnyder and Scott Bates, deputy secretary of the state, both resigned at the request of the governor.
While the Ethics Office fined Seabury for the unethical payments, it won’t say who got the bribes and neither will the Port Authority.
This unholy alliance between the Connecticut Port Authority and Seabury PFRA seems to be crumbling but so far $255.5 million has been spent on this project and the people who took the bribes may still be in positions of power.
The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
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