GOP becomes toothless watchdog
The irony and coincidence couldn’t have been more glaring.
There was state Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano trotting out his nowdiminished caucus’s 2019 versions of good government; their proposals to provide better oversight of state services and save taxpayer money.
“We want to keep Connecticut moving forward,” he said, with just a few fellow senators behind him, who possibly knew what was coming when the reporters’ questions would shift their focus from the odds-against initiatives to the fox in their hen house. “Foster confidence and investment in Connecticut.”
A couple hours earlier, their former Capitol attorney and fundraiser, Mike Cronin, had finally been arrested on an 11-page larceny charge for stealing $267,816.30 from the Senate Republican Leadership Committee PAC. Apparently he had enough sense to keep the withdrawals from the PAC below $10,000 a pop over the sixyear scam, so he currently faces only a single felony charge.
Somehow, the $90,000 or so that he admitted to Fasano (in the ruins of the GOP losses last December) that he had stolen, hit a multiplier as the forensic fraud examiner in Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane’s office performed a deep dive into the embezzlement that may have sunk the Republicans’ aspirations to gain their first majority since 1994-95.
Among the purchases Cronin made was a $3,000 ring for his second wife; and more than $9,000 for back rent for the apartment where they were living in Glastonbury. Cronin was using the Republican Senate offices address in the Legislative Office Building to fight a bankruptcy and foreclosure proceeding in the West Hartford home occupied by his former wife. In a related action, at the time Cronin was residing in Glastonbury, he listed his primary residence in West Hartford.
Coincidentally, or ironically, depending on one’s view, on the day Fasano fired Cronin, Dec. 3, the foreclosure action was withdrawn, likely because Cronin coughed up an estimated $80,000 in back payments and penalties. Cronin — treasurer of the PAC beginning in 2007 — and his first wife apparently defaulted previously on their mortgage, because they were ineligible for mediation.
The story gets messier, because he related to the court that in April 2017 the West Hartford house was his primary residence. But in August 2018, in attempt to get out from under the foreclosure, he testified in Superior Court filings that he divorced his wife in 2014, and deeded the house to her. Mediation is only available if the home in question is one’s primary residence.
Then, of course, the IRS could become interested in this white-collar crime, since — nearly comically — there are guidelines for crooks to report ill-gotten income or they can face federal charges. Even John G. Rowland, the twiceconvicted former governor and federal inmate, reported his income during that latest tangle with the feds, or he might still be in the slam.
The arrest warrant says that the day after his firing, Cronin went to Kane’s office and admitted he was the sole signatory, and the chief fundraiser for the PAC, set up in the state’s landmark 2005 election reforms, which limited contributions to individual candidates to $100, while allowing legislative leadership PACs to accept $2,000 per contributor. “Mr. Cronin admitted that it was possible that sometimes he took cash donations for his own personal use and that money never made it to the SRLC’s bank account,” the warrant says.
Maybe Senate Republicans weren’t going to dodge November’s blue wave, which swept away three veteran senators — Toni Boucher from Wilton, Scott Frantz in Greenwich and Mike McLachlan in Danbury. Cronin, according to the arrest warrant, returned about $32,290, for a net loss of $240,081.17. Some of that would have been available to prop up, say, McLachlan and Frantz who received no contributions from the PAC, according to State Elections Enforcement Commission filings. Boucher got about $4,400 from other committees.
Toward the end of his news conference, after Fasano let the other GOP senators melt away, he announced that the PAC accounts will now be closely monitored at the end of each month. “I don’t think it has any effect upon the 2018 races at all,” he said, whistling in the hen house. Nope, just a ironic coincidence.
“He lied to us about the bank balances and therefore that’s sort of how he covered his tracks,” Fasano said, his voice halting with emotion. “This is someone who was held in great respect in this building. Someone a lot of us considered a friend.” The Republicans have filed a civil suit for restitution.
But their credibility as a fiscal watchdog, who spent most of the previous eight years railing against Gov. Dan Malloy as an ineffective manager unable to supervise and rein in state government, has been tattered from the inside.