{news} Kevin Rennie

[clifford thornton]

      http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/columnists/hc-rennie0903.artsep03,0,609683.column?coll=hc-utility-opinion<http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/columnists/hc-rennie0903.artsep03,0,609683.column?coll=hc-utility-opinion>
      Still Rotten On The Inside
      September 3, 2006 


      The academic year began this week. For a complete education on how government and politics work in Connecticut, however, skip the textbooks and get a copy of disgraced former commissioner of the Department of Children and Families' two-day, 400-page sworn statement on her role in rigging a state contract. 

      Gov. M. Jodi Rell ought to use one of her "reading days" at home to study the deposition and learn about the antics she ignored until press accounts in the spring forced her to investigate the former commissioner, Kristine Ragaglia, who finally resigned from state service in June. 

      Ragaglia, a lawyer, was an ambitious player who could not resist the opium of office. She would sacrifice everything to keep her job as commissioner. In that self-serving effort, she would seek the favor and do the bidding of Rowland chief of staff Peter Ellef and his deputy, Lawrence Alibozek, by steering a state contract for a new $57 million juvenile jail to William Tomasso and his company. Ellef and Tomasso are in prison after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges. Alibozek, a cooperating witness, awaits sentencing.

      Ragaglia tells the tale of a dissolute state government that is lubricated by ambition, booze, sex, limousines, fancy dinners and swank hotels. It is the story of naked power used in the most perverted way in the name of "the kids." The kids Ragaglia refers to are the abused, neglected and out-of-control children under the protection of the DCF. 

      As was reported in the spring (when details of her role in the corrupt enterprise were revealed by a leak), Ragaglia began a drunken romance with Alibozek after becoming commissioner in 1997. Along with Tomasso and his gal pal, and Ellef and his stable of mistresses, Alibozek and Ragaglia made a circuit of dinners and overnights in New York and Boston paid for by Tomasso.

      Ellef, Alibozek and Ragaglia were married but their spouses were not included on these holidays. Ragaglia testified in June that she never knew who was paying for the trips because her mother taught her to hit the ladies room when the check comes and let the men sort out the bill. She never paid because "I was worth it." Ragaglia should have known there was danger ahead when, during one trip to powder her nose, Ellef's tootsie suggested that they "switch dates" for the rest of the evening. Tomasso's girlfriend declined. Months later, Ragaglia would agree to bring along a single female friend to attend the 1999 Rowland inaugural ball at Ellef's request. 

      Ragaglia loved the title, the staff, the deference, the proximity to power and the parking space of a commissioner's job. She would do anything to keep it.

      When the whiff of scandal became a stink in early 2003, she was fired. Her attempts to secure another lucrative state job are a primer in the art of entitlement.

      It would be wrong, however, to conclude that much has changed in the seven years since Ragaglia's malfeasance. Alter the names and some of the unsavory circumstances in Ragaglia's testimony, and she could be describing the Rell administration.

      There is the governor who is willingly isolated. Ellef, Ragaglia said, warned commissioners that any calls to the governor at his residence would be automatically routed to him. 

      Ellef and Alibozek delighted in embarrassing commissioners. That will cause shudders among the 16 Rell administration officials who paid $500 fines for election violations because of marauding chief of staff Lisa Moody. Some of the commissioners who lived under the lash of Ellef now endure the humiliation of reading in the press gubernatorial letters taking them to task before the missives are delivered to their desks.

      Attorney Patrick McHale, representing the state, confronted Ragaglia with an ethics memo to DCF employees, setting forth the standard of behavior required of state employees. With seven years to reflect on her betrayal of her office, Ragaglia still refused to admit she had failed to meet that standard. 

      At least Ragaglia recognized the ethics memo she signed and distributed. Moody has testified and then amended her testimony to try to bolster her tattered Sgt. Schultz defense that she signed and edited but never read the ethics memo she flouted to raise a few bucks for the Rell campaign.

      Two years ago, we changed governors. The philosophy of running Connecticut's government, for all the claims of purity, remains much the same.

      Kevin F. Rennie is a lawyer and a former Republican state legislator. His column appears Sundays. He can be reached at kfrennie @yahoo.com. 

     

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