Audit: Conn. corrections officers abused pandemic hotel program

A special program designed to shelter corrections officers in hotels during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, using millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief funding, was repeatedly abused by prison workers, according to an ongoing state investigation.

The Department of Correction set up the Temporary Emergency Lodging Program in the early months of the pandemic to allow corrections officers to book a stay at a hotel if they were concerned about picking up the coronavirus at a state prison and bringing it back to their family members.

The initiative was financed with $6.4 million in federal relief funding, according to a recently released audit.

Internal investigations by state auditors and the DOC reviewed by the CT Mirror allege that corrections employees used the program to book hotel rooms during a wedding, to celebrate New Year’s Eve, and to live full time in the hotels with their families.

Others booked rooms in multiple hotels on the same days, and at least one corrections officer used the program while he was on military leave.

All of those actions were violations under the rules that were set up for the emergency lodging program, but state auditors found that the state Department of Correction did not have the proper controls in place to ensure state employees didn’t abuse the system in real time.

The request forms that the agency created for corrections officers were not always filled out in advance of the hotel stays, the auditors said. And state officials did not set a limit on the number of days a state employee could stay at the hotels, which were located throughout Connecticut.

The investigations revealed that some of the DOC employees spent as long as five or six months living in hotels using the federal funds. The DOC was paying set rates of around $70 per day for rooms in hotels in Montville, Southington and Windsor, among other places, according to bills included as part of the investigations.

“The lack of internal controls increased the risk of program misuse or abuse,” state auditors noted. “Without the limitation of the number of days for a hotel stay, employees could stay at the hotel for longer than necessary. Without the employees’ verification and certification of their hotel stays, incorrect or double billing could occur without detection.”

DOC officials told the CT Mirror that the agency has now identified at least $144,000 in questionable costs related to the program.

That includes at least 35 cases of potential misuse, each of which resulted in the agency opening an internal investigation.

The CT Mirror reviewed 22 of those internal investigative reports, which were obtained through a request under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

DOC officials said the internal investigations into misuse of funds represented only a small part of the $6.4 million that was allocated for the emergency lodging program.

Department officials did not address how abuse of the program might have affected people behind bars.

At least 30 incarcerated people in Connecticut died from COVID-19 in the past three years, according to the DOC. The agency cited its broad regulations for combating the spread of COVID in a written statement to the CT Mirror and said no one under its care was “compromised by the actions of the small number of individuals” who abused the hotel program.

The agency did not explain how it came to that conclusion.

Hotel complained about dogs in rooms

But the cases in question highlight examples in which DOC employees allegedly used the program for their personal benefit.

Take the case of Brian Cagle, a corrections officer at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic. DOC officials began looking into Cagle’s use of the program after the agency recognized that he booked stays at two hotels on the same day.

The agency began to ask questions about those stays and learned that Cagle had shared the hotel rooms with his son and his ex-girlfriend and was visited in the hotel by another unnamed woman, which would defeat the purpose of using the room to quarantine.

Cagle later admitted to the DOC investigators that he ended his lease on an apartment and was using the hotel rooms as his permanent residence, which meant the state was paying for his housing costs.

A similar situation also played out with Miguel Ortiz, a corrections officer who works at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institute in Suffield, according to state records.

DOC officials were notified about his use of the program when hotel staff questioned the agency about whether Ortiz was allowed to have his wife, children and dogs stay with him.

The manager at the Hyatt House in Windsor complained to DOC officials that the hotel had spent several hundred dollars in pet cleaning fees over the course of six months in order to clean up after Ortiz’s pets..