Family leave agency criticized

Lawmaker cites slow startup, quick payday for Dem operative

House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, has been criticizing the state’s new quasi-public family leave authority recently for falling behind schedule in signing up employers for a mandatory payroll deduction system to fund paid leaves scheduled to start next year.

But now he’s raising a more pointed issue: the agency’s award of a contract to a Democratic political activist without soliciting competitive proposals.

“Yet again, we see a no-bid contract going to a Democrat political operative,” Candelora said in a phone interview Thursday. “It raises an eyebrow on why [state bidding] procedures are being circumvented and creates the appearance of an impropriety.”

He was talking about the Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance Authority’s six-month, $100,000 contract with communications consultant Patty McQueen — a Democratic activist who assisted Ned Lamont in his successful 2018 campaign for governor and lately has been serving part time as the state Democratic Party’s spokesperson.

The authority’s chief executive officer, Andrea Barton Reeves, responded that politics had nothing to do with the contract that started Nov. 9 and ends May 9, and that the arrangement is justified and proper.

She said it was entered under a “sole source” provision that the authority can use under urgent circumstances such as those that existed back in November. At the time, the new authority (created over GOP opposition by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly under a 2019 bill signed into law by Lamont) faced an uphill battle during the COVID19 pandemic in signing up state businesses for the program and was facing a Jan. 1, 2020, legal deadline, Barton Reeves said.

The contract says McQueen, a former newspaper reporter, gets to keep $30,000 for various outreach efforts, including arranging news conferences and news media interviews. The other $70,000 goes for production of radio commercials written by McQueen, as well as purchase of airtime for an advertising campaign that’s now in progress, according to the contract that McQueen and the authority provided upon The Courant’s request.

This is the second time this year that Candelora has spoken

up about a contract being awarded without a competitive process to a Democratic activist and Lamont supporter.

In January he had criticized the $250,000, threemonth, no-bid contract that the state Department of Public Health entered Dec. 1 with the public relations firm of ex-TV news reporter Duby McDowell to handle COVID-19-related communications.

(The DPH said last month it was “likely” that contract would be extended for a limited time beyond its Feb. 28 expiration pending the hiring of a new DPH communications chief, and this past week new contract documents showed a one-month extension for $35,000 — down $48,333 from the monthly rate McDowell’s firm had been receiving.)

On Thursday, Candelora said: “We have bid procedures in the state of Connecticut for a reason. Private companies get more than one quote when they’re going to get work done, and the state of Connecticut should be doing the same. And when they don’t, I think they need to explain why — especially with a program that’s being funded from the private sector’s hardearned wages.”

McQueen and Barton Reeves gave their explanations on the phone Thursday night and in emailed statements Friday.

A looming deadline

Barton Reeves said that late last year, the authority found itself facing a Jan. 1 deadline to sign up all of the 108,000 businesses in Connecticut that employ at least one worker to start deducting half a percent of their workers’ wages.

The money withheld from paychecks goes into the new state paid leave trust fund, in anticipation of January 2022 when benefits begin to be paid. Under those urgent circumstances last fall, the agency invoked the sole source provision it’s empowered to use to hire a contractor without going through its normal competitive process, she said,

The signup deadline had to be moved back two months, to this past Monday, but even by then it was reported that some 44,000 of the 108,000 businesses in the state still had not registered with the authority to begin their mandatory participation in the paid leave program. There have been gains in recent days and more are expected shortly, Barton Reeves and McQueen said.

Barton Reeves said that in her previous job, as president/CEO of Harc Inc., the nonprofit group that serves people with intellectual disabilities, she became familiar with McQueen’s abilities when McQueen’s communications firm served a coalition of nonprofit organizations.

“My knowledge of Patty’s work far predates the governor’s run for office and his election. I first encountered Patty and experienced the caliber of her work during my time as an active member of the state’s not-for-profit trade association, then known as the Connecticut Community Providers Association (CCPA), and now known as the Connecticut Community NonProfit Alliance (The Alliance),” said Barton Reeves, who left Harc to become the authority’s first CEO in early 2020.

“I had been a very active participant in the trade association since 2009 and remained so for 10 years. During that 10-year period, I had the opportunity to witness firsthand how incredibly effective Patty was in statewide outreach and engagement on issues that were of critical importance to the not-for-profit community and the people it served.”

She said that last fall, “although the Paid Leave Authority had hosted over 60 webinars and had a very robust social media campaign, in November 2020, when registrations opened, it became increasingly clear that many businesses still were not aware of the Paid Leave law’s first phase of implementation and the upcoming changes to employee paychecks.”

“With only six weeks remaining before January 2021 and the start of payroll deductions, we had to work even more quickly to be sure that businesses and Connecticut’s workforce were informed of the upcoming first phase of paid leave,” Barton Reeves said. “Patty’s work for the Paid Leave Authority included scheduling a plethora of radio and television appearances and press conferences, the results of which has helped to exponentially increase awareness of the program and registrations with the Paid Leave Authority, which is exactly the outcome we sought. Her work has been highly effective.”

She said no one from the political sphere, including the governor’s office, had contacted her to suggest hiring McQueen. Josh Geballe, Lamont’s chief operating officer in the governor’s office, serves as chairman of the paid leave authority’s board of directors, but Barton Reeves said Geballe also had not spoken to her about hiring McQueen.

McQueen said: “I met Andrea Barton Reeves while working with Connecticut nonprofit human service providers to advocate for better funding. She’s brilliant and fierce and she knows how to bring people together to get things done. I was honored that she believed I could help get the word out about a program that people want and need, and I’m proud of what we have accomplished.”

Competitive procedure

Barton Reeves said the authority normally uses a competitive contracting procedure, as it did in late April of last year when it solicited proposals for a contract to develop “website content” and a “marketing plan to educate the Connecticut workforce, employers ... and other key audiences about the Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance program and the work and role of the Authority.”

Three firms submitted proposals, and Miranda Creative, a Norwich-based advertising agency, was hired. The firm has been paid about $137,000 so far, Barton Reeves said.

McQueen’s contract gave the new authority a needed six-month boost as it continued to build toward full strength, and now two new staff members have been hired who will pick up what McQueen has been doing, Barton Reeves said. She expressed optimism that businesses will be fully registered in the payroll deduction program and it will be ready to go next year.

Candelora said he has called recently for the program to be put on hold for a few months, to avoid problems he said are predictable, but have been ignored. He added: “This is a program that was not supported by Republicans, and we want to make sure every penny is spent properly.”

Companies that have not been withholding the half-percent of employees’ wages since Jan. 1 can make up their arrearages by temporarily deducting up to 1.5% percent of workers’ paychecks for a limited period of time, after which the employers may have to make up the differences themselves, instead of taking it out of workers’ paychecks, Barton Reeves said. She said her agency is willing to work with employers to get them to comply, rather than be punitive.

The Connecticut paid leave program significantly expands benefits for workers who take extended time off for illness, or to care for a loved one or family member, and is one of the most sweeping in the U.S. It entitles workers to as many as 12 weeks of paid leave, with two additional weeks of paid time off available for those experiencing a serious pregnancy-related health complication.

Employer registration for the program is available online. Self-employed individuals and sole proprietors can opt into the program if they want to.

Qualifying reasons for a paid leave include: the birth of a child, or placement of a child with one’s family for adoption or foster care; caring for one’s own serious health condition or that of a family member; serving as an organ or bone marrow donor; caring for a family member in the military injured on active duty or being called to overseas active duty; and being affected by family violence.

Jon Lender is a reporter on The Courant’s investigative desk, with a focus on government and politics. Contact him at jlender@ courant.com, 860-2416524, or c/o The Hartford Courant, P.O. Box 569, Hartford, CT 06141-0569 and find him on Twitter @ jonlender.