New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
State paid West Haven firm $1.4M to clean abandoned mental hospital in Newington
Connecticut officials are examining why the state paid a contractor an estimated $1.4 million to clean up asbestos and other hazardous materials at Cedarcrest, an abandoned mental hospital in Newington, when that work was never formally authorized.
The state Department of Administrative Services confirmed that AAIS, a West Haven company, was hired to perform the cleanup and provide security services at the former Cedarcrest Hospital from August 2020 to December 2021.
But state officials now say that project was not approved through an appropriate contracting process. And they said DAS is still trying to understand how much work AAIS completed at the site.
John McKay, a spokesman for DAS, told the CT Mirror there was no specific contract between the state and AAIS for the remediation work at the former hospital, which is located just off the Berlin Turnpike in Newington.
Instead, he said, the roughly $1.4 million that AAIS received was initiated through a “blanket purchase order,” which was also used to fund cleanup services at other stateowned properties in recent years.
That irregular payment process, according to DAS, was handled by former state employee Michael Sanders, who died of a drug overdose in late 2021 shortly after a federal grand jury began requesting records related to AAIS, the state’s hazardous waste contracts and Connecticut’s school construction program. “The project was being overseen by Mike Sanders,” McKay said.
Prior to his death, Sanders was responsible for managing the state’s relationship with AAIS and several other companies that were part of an emergency list of demolition and hazardous waste contractors. The list was created to offer a streamlined path that would replace the standard bidding process to address immediate needs, such as removal of asbestos discovered during public building renovations.
Sanders was also part of the state’s school construction office that was led by former state deputy budget director Konstantinos Diamantis, who is at the center of the federal investigation.
This isn’t the first time that Sanders has been publicly blamed for improperly
awarding demolition and abatement contracts for state-funded building projects.
Diamantis, who stepped down from his position in state government in late 2021, also pointed the finger at Sanders last month after local officials in New London accused both men of pressuring the municipality to hire AAIS for work at New London High School.
It’s unclear if the payments for the Cedarcrest property are of interest to federal prosecutors. Nobody has been charged to this point in connection with the federal grand jury investigation, despite numerous subpoenas being issued to Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration and several school districts in Connecticut.
According to state officials, the money that AAIS received for the Cedarcrest project was funneled through blanket purchase orders that were used to fund numerous projects that involved asbestos cleanup and other hazardous material handling.
Financial records obtained from the State Comptroller’s office show that AAIS made millions of dollars through some of those purchase orders, but those records do not clearly detail all of the work that was supposed to be performed for that money.
Some of the jobs assigned to AAIS in those documents are vaguely described as “asbestos removal services for various locations.”
According to McKay, DAS began its review of the Cedarcrest property in late 2021 shortly after the Lamont administration was served with the initial federal subpoena. He said the agency eventually ordered AAIS to halt its work at the Cedarcrest property in February 2022 — the same month the federal grand jury investigation burst into public view.