Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

When Gov. John G. Rowland flexed his considerable political muscle and moved a state community college to a vacant Hartford department store, the decision was hailed as a key to the capital city's economic revitalization. Little known at the time was the fact that Rowland had made a significant investment in a company founded by the Hartford entrepreneur who stood to gain the most from the college relocation. Even critics concede that the multimillion-dollar transactions that put Capital Community College in the long-vacant G. Fox store on Main Street have been a resounding success. But the deal is another example of an issue confronting federal investigators and a legislative impeachment committee: the often-fluid divide between Rowland's personal financial interests and policy decisions by his administration. �The Capital Community College relocation is one of several cases in which federal investigators, examining allegations of bid-rigging and violations of ethics laws, are trying to sort through private financial investments Rowland made with people whose fortunes depended, to some degree, on the cooperation of the government he heads. �The deal that moved the community college downtown involved a web of well-known Rowland friends, political aides and business associates. Among them are Hartford entrepreneur and philanthropist Anthony Autorino, former state Senate majority leader William DiBella, and two top aides who have since left the governor's office, Peter Ellef and the now-convicted Lawrence Alibozek. �Autorino was one of eight people appointed by Rowland in late 1997 to recommend projects to revitalize downtown Hartford. Several months later, the group came up with what would become known as the Six Pillars for reviving the city. And in early 1999, Autorino announced plans to make one of those pillars his own: He would buy the vacant G. Fox building from the city, and make it the new home of Capital Community-Technical College. �The plan ran into problems from the beginning. Autorino and the city couldn't come to terms on the sale of the building, and a review commissioned by the state Department of Public Works recommended another site for the college. �But by the end of the year, thanks to extraordinary efforts by Rowland, Ellef and other members of the administration to make the deal work, Autorino and his partners - including DiBella - had resolved their issues with the city. Under terms of the new agreement, they would buy 60 percent of the building and the state would take the remaining 40 percent as a new home for the college. �The relocation of the college from its Woodland Street campus on Hartford's Asylum Hill was hotly opposed by students and faculty. But the success of the downtown campus - fueled in part by Rowland's decision to support the school with an additional $2.6 million for publicly financed parking - seems to have turned student opinion. Enrollment is up and the college wants to obtain space from Autorino and DiBella to expand. �The move downtown fit seamlessly with the community college system's commitment to support inner cities and with Rowland's continuing support for urban areas around the state. But it also had the effect of significantly enhancing the value of the Autorino-DiBella investment in the Fox building, real estate specialists said. �"Ellef was very emphatic that the governor wanted the school in the G. Fox building," said Raymond Rivard of Middlebury, who was a member of the board of trustees of the state community college system when it voted in September 1999 to approve the then-controversial relocation. "It was clear they had already picked Autorino a week before the board was supposed to vote." �What was not widely known in 1999 was that in 1997, the same year he appointed Autorino to the downtown Hartford advisory committee, Rowland had acquired thousands of dollars worth of stock in a telecommunications company Autorino founded and ran. In 2000, the year the G. Fox deal was consummated, he declared a $26,000 profit from stock investments. DiBella and Rowland confidant Jo McKenzie also had options on thousands of shares of stock as members of Autorino's board of directors. �Rowland's investment cannot be tracked precisely because he refuses to discuss the subject. As investigators have focused increasingly on him in a federal corruption probe, and as legislators move toward possible impeachment proceedings, Rowland has more and more refused to answer questions about his personal finances. In this latest example, the governor's in-house legal counsel, Ross Garber, said that Rowland would not even comment on whether he bought the stock or if it was given to him. �"There is a formal legislative process underway," Garber said. "The governor will address legitimate issues in that forum." �But financial disclosures the governor made to the state Ethics Commission show that he and his wife first reported holding stock valued "in excess of $5,000" in one of Autorino's companies, Shared Technologies Inc., during the 1997 calendar year. On his ethics filing for calendar 2000, Rowland no longer reported owning stock in Shared Technologies Inc., but he disclosed an unspecified capital gain from "sale of stocks." On his federal tax return for calendar 2000, Rowland reported a capital gain of $26,440. �Rowland's stock transactions are further clouded by his lack of specificity in his financial disclosures and the merger and acquisition history of Autorino's companies. �Autorino founded Shared Technologies Inc. in the late 1980s. After a merger in 1996, Autorino remained in control of the company, but it was renamed Shared Technologies Fairchild. During 1997, the year Rowland first reported a stock position in Shared Technologies, Intermedia Communications Inc. of Florida announced a takeover deal that significantly increased the value of Shared stock. Shared Technologies Fairchild had been trading in the $2 to $3 range; Intermedia offered $15 a share in 1997 and closed the takeover deal in March 1998. �Autorino founded another company with a similar name - Shared Technologies Cellular - in the 1990s. Stock in that company peaked at $13 a share in April 1999, before plunging to pennies a share two years later. In October 2001, Shared Technologies Cellular filed for bankruptcy protection. �Autorino said recently that he does not have a clear recollection of Rowland's stock positions in his companies. But he said the governor probably made money on the Intermedia takeover then lost some on Shared Technologies Cellular. �"I think he had stock in Shared Technologies Fairchild or Shared Technologies before it became Shared Technologies Fairchild," Autorino said. "I think he also had stock in Shared Technologies Cellular, which he lost his ass in." �There is little confusion about the fervor with which Rowland and his aides pushed the trustees of the state community college system to endorse a move to the G. Fox building. �In May 1999, state officials had chosen a site known as Talcott Plaza on Main Street from among seven potential sites for the relocation of the community college. Despite that decision, Autorino insisted G. Fox was still on the running. "Never, never believe rumors," he said. �His remark was prescient. Less than three months later, Talcott Plaza was discarded for unspecified cost reasons. By August, G. Fox was the preferred site. ��In September 1999, as the board of trustees for community colleges prepared to vote on the move to G. Fox, Rowland appointed his deputy chief of staff, Alibozek, to the body. The first board meeting Alibozek attended was on September 21, 1999, the day the board voted. Alibozek attended one more board meeting before disappearing and finally resigning in February 2000. A source familiar with the matter said Alibozek was under instructions from Ellef, then Rowland's co-chief of staff, to make sure the trustees voted the way Rowland wanted. �And Ellef was leaving nothing to chance. In an apparent effort to guard against an 11th hour erosion of support for a G. Fox campus, Ellef summoned board Chairman Lawrence Zollo and two other trustees to his state Capitol office for a private meeting. One of those attending said Ellef said repeatedly "the governor wants G. Fox" and stressed that there were no alternatives. In the end, the trustees voted 11-3 in favor of the move downtown. �The G. Fox episode is one of several instances in which the governor's personal business interests have involved the beneficiaries of state actions. �In another case, Rowland's partners in a late-1990s land development deal known as the First Development Group could benefit from a $175,000 grant approved in 2000 by the State Bond Commission - of which he is chairman - to the town of Prospect. �The money was used for a feasibility study for the development of an industrial park, and if residents approve the project in a referendum, two men with whom Rowland was partners in the now-defunct First Development Group stand to make several million dollars selling property to the town. �The children of both those partners - Rowland's personal lawyer Michael Cicchetti and paving contractor Anthony Cocciola - both got state jobs with Rowland's sponsorship during the 1990s while the First Development deal was active. Rowland made $60,000 from First Development on a $7,200 investment. �Cocchiola's paving firm has received more than $1 million in state business since Rowland became governor in 1995. Cocchiola and Cicchetti were among a number of Rowland associates who assisted the governor's home-improvement efforts since 1997 on his Litchfield vacation cottage. �Rowland is facing possible impeachment, and is a central focus of a federal corruption investigation, after his admission last month that he lied when he said he paid for all improvements at the Litchfield cottage. The cottage is another example of Rowland's intertwining of personal and governmental relationships - as one of the companies that provided free work at the vacation retreat was The Tomasso Group of New Britain, which has received more than $100 million in no-bid contracts from his administration. �The governor has insisted that no one who helped at his cottage ever received a favor back from his administration - but the FBI and federal prosecutors are working to answer that question for themselves. Their investigation is more than a year old and already has netted the conviction of Alibozek, who pled guilty last March to receiving bribes in exchange for steering state business to a contractor identified by sources as Tomasso. �Ellef was Rowland's co-chief of staff at the time of the G. Fox deal. He quit in 2002 during the furor over the state's loss of more than $200 million in an ill-fated deal with Enron, and now he is a focus of the federal probe into alleged state bid-rigging and corruption. �McKenzie, a Republican National Committee member who holds a vaguely defined state job overseeing activities at the governor's mansion, already has been summoned to testify in recent weeks before the federal grand jury investigating Rowland.