Mistakes made with money meant to help students

Office of Higher Education Executive Director Timothy Larson incorrectly used a fund intended to assist abandoned occupational school students like the ones now struggling because of the recent closing of Stone Academy, records show. Larson in 2021 and 2022 spent some of the restricted money on a marketing contract with a small Hartford public relations firm that employs his niece.

The Private Occupational School Student Protection Account is created under a state law that assesses a fee based on tuition at such schools as Stone, which trained its enrollees for positions in the medical field. The fund, according to a state budget office memorandum, is “for use in the event of a school closure to provide tuition reimbursement to enrolled students who cannot complete their programs.”

Larson, who makes $175,000 a year as the head of the 27-employee agency, claimed after more than three years on the job that he was unaware of the fund restrictions. Before he figured it out, Larson used the fund to pay for, among other things, CareerConn 22, described by the state budget office as “a promotional event for private schools” held last March at the Mohegan Sun casino. The event was aimed at high school students and others who might not be interested in attending college.

In July 2021, Larson’s office requested proposals to promote

CareerConn 22 from state-qualified marketing and public relations companies. OHE chose three finalists from six bids. The bid from McDowell Communications Group was the second highest of the finalists at $104,500. Former television reporter Duby McDowell is the president and owner of the company and employs Maura Fitzgerald, Larson’s niece, as senior vice president. (Note: McDowell and I were co-hosts of a television public affairs program for 13 weeks, beginning in October 2020.)

The lowest bidder by more than $40,000 was Mason, Inc., of Bethany, at $59,000. Instead of awarding the CareerConn contract to Mason, Larson’s office changed the rules. It asked the three finalists to revise their bids and add a proposal “containing a marketing and PR strategy that would more directly address public perception concerning careers in the trades and how this could merge into the marketing efforts for CareerConn.”

They had a week to respond and the contract went to MCG — and Fitzgerald, the daughter of Larson’s sister, would appear on promotional material as the event contact. When I asked Larson’s office last year about the contract, OHE spokesperson Noele Kidney replied that MCG had bid $66,000 and the other two finalists had each bid $100,000 in the second round. Kidney stated that MCG and the firm it included in both bids, Latino Way, are owned by women and Latino Way is minority-owned. “A decision was made to go with the vendor that provided the lowest bid.”

However, as it turned out, that was debatable. MCG had not provided the lowest bid. Of the three finalists, Mason, Inc., raised its bid to $100,000 when OHE requested more services. The other finalist, Cashman and Katz, of Glastonbury, priced its first proposal at $112,000. It revised it downward to $100,000 for the sudden second round.

MCG’s new bid was $66,000 for some services but the company did not include in the bottom line as much as $40,000 it mentioned for doing surveys to counter the prevalent “‘college or bust’ mentality” that had vexed Larson. Between November

2021 and September 2022, state financial records show, OHE paid MCG $119,661.21, nearly twice its revised bid amount, for advertising and marketing as well as management consulting services.

McDowell and Fitzgerald are practiced hands at state

contracting. MCD has received more than $750,000 from the Lamont administration, the most recent a $9,000 payment from the Department of Social Services for advertising and marketing. Fitzgerald currently serves as a contracted spokesperson for the DSS, where her aunt Leslie Larson is a $92,000 a year executive secretary.

When state budget officials stopped him from continuing to take restricted funds for students, and said to transfer “all relevant FY 2022 expenses from POSA and other revenue accounts,” Timothy Larson needed $268,000 in budget adjustments last year to balance restricted funds accounts.

When asked by a budget oversight committee why there was so much less money in the POSA fund than there had been, Larson, appointed to his job by fellow Democrat Gov. Ned Lamont, said he was “still trying to understand where that has went.”

Last month, more than 800 students were suddenly locked out of Stone Academy. Larson’s job is to regulate private schools like Stone. He has failed to organize an effective response for abandoned students, many of them women and minorities.

Justin Cullipher, a former Stone student told Fox61, “The second I asked a question why the state allowed Stone Academy to continue taking students when they already had multiple violations, everyone turned their back and walked away.” He must not have known the right people.