Celebrate season of giving with Lamont’s $50K party tickets

Gov. Ned Lamont has extended the season of giving with unseemly gusto.

His inauguration organizers are asking lobbyists to push their clients, including from some state contractors, for contributions of up to $50,000. That’s the price of a platinum sponsorship of the governor’s second inaugural ball.

Connecticut is a funny, old place, home to declarations of self-regard where humility ought to dwell and noisy rectitude when humility would serve best. To pay the freight for Lamont’s celebration on the first day of his second term, a private firm is contacting the people who have a permanent stake in pleasing Lamont and the people around him, now they know the price.

In Connecticut, it is against the law for a lobbyist to ask a client to contribute anything to a state political campaign. Not one nickel.

This is not a campaign event but a governor’s “deputies” asking lobbyists to comb their client lists for inaugural ball underwriters would be costly to the public during the legislative session that begins that day.

A Nov. 25 email from Brian J. Dowd, the $140,000 a year general counsel at the Office of State Ethics, to Nora Dannehy, Lamont’s legal counsel, notes that the ethics agency “will consider the inauguration and any related activities to be official state functions.” Any contribution made to support for the inauguration is “a gift to the state.” That gift is “exempt from the gift limits” under the state’s woefully weak ethics code.

“Proposed sponsorship of the Governor’s Inaugural Ball will be considered a permissible ‘gift to the state’….,” O’Dowd’s opinion continued. As part of its campaign to raise money for the soiree, Lamont’s inauguration staff are circulating O’Dowd’s opinion “confirming that donations to the inaugural committee are permissible gifts to the state….”

The ball will take place across the street next to the state Capitol at the historic Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, where Winston Churchill once spoke from its main stage. In less than three weeks, the place will be crammed with people afraid to say no to Lamont’s minions or delighted to say yes because it’s the cost of purchasing access.

That $50,000 platinum sponsorship gets the principal and his or her spouse, plus two staff members, into a VIP reception, eight tickets to the ball, and “recognition throughout the Bushnell,” according to the sponsorship package price schedule.

The gold, at $25,000, silver at $15,000, and bronze $10,000 sponsorships feature a descending scale of benefits. The bronze, you will be disappointed to know, does not include attendance at the VIP reception. Inflation finds its ruinous way into every corner of life. Lamont may see that $50,000 top price as a reason to boast. Massachusetts’ governor-elect put a $25,000 cap on “gifts” to her inauguration. Connecticut charges twice as much as the Bay State for access. Such an honor.

Mockery masks my sorrow. At the beginning of the 21st century, Dannehy earned our collective gratitude and an honored place in our state’s history as a leading federal prosecutor who investigated and prosecuted corruption in Republican John Rowland’s

administration. He resigned and went to prison.

The Courant’s reporting forced the Republican from Waterbury to admit state contractors had provided improvements on a vacation home for free and he’d accepted gifts from subordinates.

In the aftermath of the Rowland scandals, state legislators enacted laws restricting the ability of contractors to influence state officials. Those reforms included prohibiting state contractors from contributing to political campaigns and enacting an expensive program that requires the public to finance many political campaigns.

Why did they bother? Now, for the first day of a governor’s term all common sense rules on spending for access are repealed. The first page of the sponsorship solicitation package features the ethics opinion to Dannehy on Lamont’s official letterhead.

Time cannot diminish Dannehy’s reputation in investigating, confronting and prosecuting corruption at the highest level of state government. Only she can do that. Dannehy will soon leave Lamont’s administration. In a late act of service to the governor she has added a coda to her record of public service that undermines the reforms her work forced state leaders to enact.

Those party sponsorships may have a long radioactive half-life. The governor may continue to obstruct public disclosure of how he conducts the people’s business but events will reveal the paths from inaugural sponsorships. This kind of open purchase of access contributes ordnance to the assaults on our democratic institutions.

Lamont will begin his second term reminding us that in Connecticut it’s what’s legal, not illegal, that possesses the power to shock.