Fairness took a holiday when Colangelo hired an assistant
The daughter of an influential state official and former Democratic legislator was hired last year for a new $99,000 a year job in the state’s Division of Criminal Justice without any evident competition. Equity and fairness took a holiday in June 2020 when Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo hired Anastasia Diamantis as an executive assistant. His office refuses to comment on the details of how
Diamantis got the patronage plum.
An executive assistant position is a state government bauble reserved for the connected. In June last year, Anastasia Diamantis was making about $60,000 a year as a disability claims examiner assistant at the Department of Rehabilitation Services. A month later, she was an executive assistant in the Division of Criminal Justice, pulling down that $99,000, “plus,” as one recent state job posting declares, “excellent State of CT medical insurance, retirement, and related fringe benefits.” This year Diamantis is expected to earn more than $106,000, according to the State Comptroller’s office.
Diamantis is the daughter of Konstantinos Diamantis, a former Democratic legislator and the state’s current deputy budget director. Colangelo’s job may be a lot easier if Anastasia Diamantis helps prepare the budgets he submits to the Office of Policy and Management (OPM) for approval.
Documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request expose the unusual course Colangelo took in hiring Anastasia Diamantis. On June 9, she sent Colangelo a brief email, attaching her “resume per your request.” She completed an application three days later.
On June 18, Colangelo asked Cathy Riberio, the division’s head of human resources, “Did the letter go out to Anastasia yet?” It hadn’t, but Riberio had already confirmed a July 3 start date with Anastasia Diamantis. Rubiero asked Colangelo to confirm the $99,000 starting salary. He did. “Congratulations!” Riberio wrote 30 minutes later, “Your background check is complete and you are approved for” the job.
For context, new prosecutors do not make close to $100,000 a year. Their background checks usually take weeks. Everything about the
Anastasia Diamantis hiring was different.
On Wednesday, I submitted questions to Alaine Griffin, Colangelo’s director of communications. She responded, “Following an in-person inquiry about potential openings at the Division, Ms. Diamantis was encouraged to submit her resume and upon further review, it was determined that her education and experience aligned with the current needs of the agency.”
Griffin refused to disclose when Anastasia Diamantis was first considered for the job, how many applications were received and applicants interviewed. Those ought not to be state secrets.
Executive assistant jobs are pliable creations. The one Diamantis snagged required not five or 10 years of “professional experience,” but nine. Guess who graduated from college in 2011 and, applying a wide definition to professional experience, hit that minimum threshold. Anastasia Diamantis.
The executive assistant”prepares or assists in the preparation of budgets” and “interprets and administers pertinent laws” The division is stuffed with lawyers.
Anastasia Diamantis is not a lawyer, but she did work at a law office — her father’s — as a high school student and collage freshman. Her resume says she was a legal office assistant and “attended hearings and oversaw the practice of law gaining insight as a paralegal.” That’s a lot of responsibility for a teenager.
Executive assistant positions must be approved by OPM, where Anastasia Diamantis’s father has become an unusually influential second in command to budget chief Melissa McCaw. State law allows OPM to approve no more than four executive assistant positions per agency. Colangelo’s office refused to say who requested the creation of Anastasia Diamantis’s position, his office’s third executive assistant. It also would not disclose who at OPM approved the hefty salary. No one at Gov. Ned Lamont’s OPM was likely to question a new job and big boost in pay for the daughter of the agency’s top deputy.
As Anastasia Diamantis was reaping the benefits of her family connection, the nation was engaged in calls for an examination of our criminal justice system in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. A few days before Diamantis began her new job, Colangelo announced an initiative to foster diversity and inclusion in the criminal justice division. Colangelo’s words mean nothing when accompanied by rank political patronage at the highest level of our criminal justice system. Other leaders who recite platitudes about equity while the state’s top prosecute exiles fairness are his silent accomplices.