Finally, it’s case closed for UConn ethics fight
Official who awarded husband a fellowship pays up, 2 years later
Former UConn graduate school diversity officer Charmane Thurmand, who was found by state ethics officials to have improperly given her husband a $53,000 fellowship, has paid a $20,000 fine two years after it was levied in 2019 — finally ending a long and contentious case.
In March 2019, after a fourday contested hearing, the state Citizen’s Ethics Advisory Board ordered Thurmand to pay the maximum $10,000 fine for each of two ethics violations that it found she had committed three years earlier.
Thurmand, who resigned from her UConn position in 2017 and now lives out of state, did not appeal the ethics board’s ruling — but she still hadn’t paid the fine a year and a half later. And so, last October, the Office of State Ethics (which the advisory board oversees) filed an enforcement action in Hartford Superior Court with the help of the state attorney general’s office.
On March 1, Thurmand’s attorney, Justin Sargis, sent a $20,000 check to the ethics office’s enforcement officer, Mark Wasielewski, with a letter saying the payment was made with the understanding that the state would withdraw its enforcement action — which it did, this past Monday, court records show.
Another condition for the repayment, Sargis noted in the letter, was that “the Office of State Ethics is waiving any and all interest accrued on the judgment” over the past two years.
Sargis could not be reached for comment Thursday on his client’s behalf.
‘Deters future violations’
Ethics advisory board Chair Dena M. Castricone said it was important that her agency follow through and make sure the fine was paid.
“Our commitment to recovering penalties hopefully deters future violations of the law,” she said. “The board and the Office of State Ethics are committed to ensuring the collection of penalties assessed following the board’s conclusion that the Codes of Ethics have been violated.”
The case dated to 2016, when Thurmand served as a UConn official who assisted the graduate school in awarding diversity fellowships. She awarded such a fellowship to her husband, graduate student Martinus Evans, even though he did not apply for it and wasn’t eligible to receive it, ethics officials said.
UConn conducted an internal investigation that found Thurmand included her husband as one of the recipients of the Giolas-Harriott Fellowship for fall
2016, and later told the graduate school dean that the award had been reviewed and approved by an independent selection committee.
By late February 2017, Thurmand had resigned after being placed on leave for allegedly benefiting her husband improperly.
After conducting its own investigation, the ethics agency found in 2019 that:
Thurmand directed that her husband be hired as a graduate assistant but “not be required to do any substantive work in his graduate assistantship,” and she took steps to ensure he would be paid.
She also ordered that Evans receive a $2,000 fellowship the summer after his graduate program ended, and directed his academic department to contact her with any questions about his or the fellowship’s status.
Her husband “received financial gain from the Graduate
School greater than $53,000, in the form of tuition waiver, cash stipends and graduate assistant pay, as well as other tangible and intangible benefits.”
”[N]o ... state employee shall use his public office or position ... to obtain financial gain for himself, [or] his spouse,” according to the section of Connecticut statutes known as the Code of Ethics for Public officials.
In 2018 Thurmand sued UConn in federal court, claiming racial discrimination. Thurmand, who is Black, said in the suit university officials conspired against her in retaliation for speaking out about discriminatory practices, including “a racist policy of treating individuals of color differently than their white counterparts.”
The suit also alleged that UConn officials then colluded with the Office of State Ethics to pursue a “retaliatory, racially motivated and baseless ethics complaint.”
That federal lawsuit is no longer active, and the court file indicates it was settled. No further information was available.
Update: Lamont team vs. watchdogs
Last week’s Government
Watch column told of the
Lamont Administration’s effort to persuade the General Assembly to curb the powers of the watchdog State Properties Review Board (SPRB).
The effort didn’t fare well in preliminary action on the administration’s bill.
But that was just Round 1, and there’s been no public statement by the Lamont people to the effect that they plan to back off during the rest of the legislative session that ends in June.
The SPRB has saved state taxpayers $86.75 million in the 46 years it’s existed. It was created by the legislature as a reform after an early 1970s scandal over sweetheart deals for office space, leased by state agencies from politically connected landlords. The board saves money by reviewing market rates and other information relating to deals made by executive branch officials for state property purchases, leases and other contracts — and by refusing to approve many of them until they’re renegotiated at better terms for the state.
That process has traditionally frustrated executive branch administrative appointees. This year, the Democratic Lamont administration’s public works/ property management agency, the Department of Administrative Services, has asked the Democratic-controlled legislature to significantly reduce not only the SPRB’s decision-making power, but also the number of projects the board gets to decide on.
DAS Deputy Commissioner Noel Petra testified for passage of the bill at a March 10 hearing conducted by the legislature’s Government Administration and Elections (GAE) Committee — and he described SPRB members as slow and inexpert. “We spend hundreds and hundreds of hours every year ... explaining to them
... basic construction contract law, explaining to them ‘basic
101’ contract construction best practices . ... [T]hey don’t have the expertise ... to understand the complexities,” Petra said.
SPRB officials countered with their own testimony saying Petra’s assertions were incorrect and his manner was “insulting.” They said they have much quicker turnaround times in their decision-making than DAS does.
At midweek, it appeared that the SPRB’s arguments were being favored by legislators over Petra’s, at least for now.
When the GAE panel met Wednesday to vote a number of bills out of committee — for further action toward potential House and Senate approval — the three sections of the administration-backed bill that would have imposed the new restrictions on the board were stripped away by unanimous consent of Democrats and Republicans.
Sources said there had been behind-the-scenes discussions of Petra’s unflattering March 10 discourse about the SPRB, but no one mentioned it at the GAE meeting Wednesday. Instead, committee leaders from both sides of the aisle opened the session by saying they hoped to preserve the bipartisan spirit they’ve maintained so far this year.
Here are a couple of other parts of the deputy commissioner’s controversial testimony on March 10:
Petra said the six SPRB members have a financial motivation to spend a lot of time deliberating on proposals by his agency and others. The unsalaried SPRB members get “per diem” compensation of $200 per meeting, and Petra said, “The more that they review, the more that they get paid.” He also said: “Their goal is like any other consultant, to grow their scope, to grow their authority, to increase their payments.” The six SPRB members’ per diem payments totaled $137,915 in
2020, for an average of $22,986 each. Petra’s base salary as deputy commissioner is $176,460 a year.
Petra cited a May 31, 2019, formal opinion by state Attorney William Tong, and said that “the AG ... commented that the legislation [outlining the SPRB’s powers] is overly broad and it needs to be defined.”
However, Tong’s opinion actually concluded that “if the legislature had intended to limit the scope of the Board’s review, it could have done so” any time since 1975. “The [SPRB] performs a quality control function with respect to DAS’s real estate and development decisions.”
SPRB member Jeffrey Berger — a former Democratic state representative from Waterbury who once chaired the legislative finance committee and served as deputy speaker — said last week that giving misinformation in testimony is “probably the worst thing you can do” in the eyes of legislators, even though those who testify aren’t sworn to tell the truth.