Veteran of DRS knocks ‘ripoff ’

Complaint blames age discrimination for him receiving menial work

HARTFORD — Many Connecticut residents have complaints at this time of year against the tax man, but Richard D. Kriscenski has another reason. He works there.

After 23 years at the state Department of Revenue Services, Kriscenski, 63, says he is a victim of age and disability discrimination. As such, despite being paid more than $100,000 per year, he says he has been demoted to handling menial tasks at the level of a trainee.

Kriscenski, a Bristol resident, has filed a 17-page discrimination complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and a whistleblower complaint with the bipartisan state auditors.

In a highly unusual move for a state employee, Kriscenski also filed written testimony recently against the re-nomination of Republican Mark Boughton to continue as the state’s tax commissioner. Boughton, the former mayor of Danbury, is a close ally of Gov. Ned Lamont and is among the most high-profile of state commissioners.

“DRS needs a commissioner whose time is not divided with another position as he is as a senior advisor for infrastructure to Governor Lamont,’’ Kriscenski wrote. “DRS also needs diversity at top management. There are too many white males running the agency. This lack of diversity is what perpetuates this abuse of power . ... Please reject Mark Boughton and ask the governor to nominate a commissioner who will make this an agency where everyone is treated equally and not a fiefdom.’’

Kriscenski’s complaint was essentially ignored as the committee approved Boughton’s nomination on a bipartisan basis by 10-0. The nomination was later approved on a voice vote by the full House of Representatives.

After Kriscenski’s written

complaints and criticism of Boughton, Kriscenski was recently suspended for 20 days without pay after he said his bosses accused him of improperly accessing tax information. He says he did nothing wrong, and the upcoming suspension is scheduled to be served from this Friday to March 23.

Boughton said Thursday that he was unable to provide a point-by-point refutation in a personnel matter.

“I really can’t comment on individual claims in front of CHRO right now,” Boughton told The Courant. “That’s the proper agency to vet any complaints that he might have. I will say, though, that obviously DRS has a different view of his employment.’’

How it happened

For four years from 2016 until 2020, Kriscenski worked on confidential cases of overdue taxes and tracked down the owners for payment. In his biggest case, he says he successfully collected $330,000 from a single individual who owed money back to the mid-1990s.

“My job was to go in there and try to find the assets,’’ Kriscenski said in an extended interview. “I brought in millions of dollars to the state of Connecticut by myself.’’

But Kriscenski was no longer working in the “asset alert’’ unit when he says he wanted to check on how some of the latest cases were being handled. He says that he emailed his supervisor multiple times to say he would be checking on the cases but received no response. Instead of holding off, he said that he went ahead to check on the “asset alert’’ cases that he had not been assigned to work on.

“DRS was not working these cases. Nobody was working them,’’ Kriscenski said of the uncollected taxes.

“So I wanted to go in and I wanted to find out how many bills, how many cases, I could find that have bills that if we don’t work them are going to be just charged off and never be able to collect them,” Kriscenski said. “I wanted to do that to report it to the auditor of public accounts. My belief was that I am protected as a whistleblower under the auditor of public accounts, but I didn’t want to just go in and look at those cases.’’

At that point, he emailed his supervisor to say that he was going to review the files as part of his remote work schedule — but never received a response.

“For those four days, I looked at those cases,’’ Kriscenski said. “Then, they came after me and said, ‘You accessed unauthorized cases.’ I’m like, no, I sent in my telework schedule to my supervisor, but he did not read what I sent him . ... It’s not my fault my supervisor doesn’t read what I send in to him. If he had told me no, I wouldn’t have done it.’’

As a public employee, Kriscenski was entitled to a so-called Loudermill hearing that is well known in union circles. The hearing is designed to take evidence from an employee before any discipline is imposed. He said his views were “dismissed because I was told not to work the cases.’’

State auditor John Geragosian said that he could not confirm that a complaint had been filed with his office because state law protects the identity of whistleblowers. The auditors’ annual report, however, states that a complaint was filed against the tax department last year regarding “employees’ workloads’’ that is still being reviewed by the auditors.

CHRO complaint

In his CHRO complaint, Kriscenski is seeking a promotion, a return to his pre-pandemic work on the uncollected tax cases “with all the authority I had been allowed to properly do the job’’ and “guaranteed 100% teleworking.’’

Kriscenski wanted last year to be transferred to the tax department’s fraud unit, but an email that was copied to Boughton in June 2022 shows that a supervisor said that “the fraud unit does not have a need for a transfer at this time.’’

Kriscenski says he should be assigned substantial work that could increase collections of taxes in the state, adding that a veteran co-worker with more than 30 years of experience is also facing the same plight.

“Gov. Lamont touts his business experience being used in government, but no private sector business would want us to be trainees when we have skills that could help the bottom line better now,’’ Kriscenski wrote in an email in September to Lamont’s office.

“A few extra million dollars a year coming in now doesn’t concern DRS management, but the taxpayers of CT deserve it now to meet these challenging times of inflation and increased educational and societal needs like increased mental health funding. DRS is wasting our experience and salary. It makes no sense,” he wrote.

A Democrat, Kriscenski has run for mayor twice in his hometown of Bristol and for the city council, all resulting in losses on Election Day.

After learning of his suspension, Kriscenski says he will fight the potential loss of about $8,000 for 20 days’ pay, and his union has filed a grievance as he is still battling on principle. A CHRO hearing is scheduled for mid-april.

“The taxpayers are getting ripped off with me sitting here being a trainee for $103,000 a year,’’ he said.

“When I tell my union and my stewards and my supervisors, they essentially tell me: ‘You’re 63 years old. You’ve done your 23 years. Just take the money and run.’ But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. People are telling me this at work,” Kriscenski said.

“That’s age discrimination in and of itself for somebody to tell you : ‘You’re kind of old. You have 23 years in. You ain’t really going anywhere so take the menial work and be happy.’ That’s a ripoff to the taxpayers.’’