A reboot of holding prosecutors accountable

Laws are not made to be broken. They are reliably created, and shaped, by violations of trust. If no one ever broke the rules, we wouldn’t really know where to start when forming laws, would we? State lawmakers quietly laid down some new rules in recent weeks. You may not have heard about it during a harried session that was more focused on tax cuts, raises for state workers, abortion protections and mental health.

The new punishments came in the wake of Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s decision to retire March 31 amid a nepotism probe.

The fallout has been pretty quiet in recent weeks. But that volume will surely be pumped up as Republicans seeking state offices seek to pin the word “scandal” to Democrats who have maintained a stranglehold on the majority in Hartford.

Colangelo, who held the office for about two years, came under fire after hiring the daughter of Office of Policy and Management Deputy Secretary Konstantinos Diamantis. It came at a time that Diamantis was reviewing raises for Colangelo and his staff.

A report challenged Colangelo’s transparency in interviews that took place as part of a probe into the allegations. The six-member Criminal Justice Commission responded by initiating proceedings that could have led to Colangelo’s removal for “misconduct,” “incompetence” or “material neglect” of his duties.

Regardless of the outcome, such proceedings could have proved embarrassing for Colangelo as well as other state leaders. Colangelo, who previously served as a state’s attorney for the Stamford-Norwalk judicial district, opted to retire. He also continued to deny wrongdoing.

But such proceedings only had two possible outcomes. The commission could have removed Colangelo from office, or kept him there. The law did not include language for other forms of punishment.

We need to be able to trust the people who uphold our laws, whether they are police, judges or prosecutors. But everyone is human. And accountability can’t simply be based on a trust system.

So Connecticut’s lawmakers tried to fill in the gap by granting the commission the right to administer other forms of justice, such as a suspension.

Legislators went further than that. They acknowledged a potential problem with Colangelo also serving as chairman of the Easton Board of Police Commissioners and as a member of the Republican Town Committee. So, moving forward, prosecutors will not be permitted to also hold elected positions in state or municipal government.

Lawmakers were merely plugging a hole in the system, as similar commissions overseeing judges and public defenders can hand down a range of punishments.

But these actions were reactive rather than proactive. There is a minimal amount of data on the work of prosecutors. The commission has an annual budget of $409 (not a typo). It’s hard to put a price on accountability, but it is surely more than the price of a 55-inch television set at Walmart.

Lawmakers need to give more teeth to watchdog commissions like this one.

It’s hard to put a price on accountability, but it is surely more than the cost of a 55-inch television set at Walmart.