Documents Belie Rowland Claim
Records Contradict Governor's Denials That His Office Played Role In State Contract Awards

December 24, 2003
By JON LENDER And DAVE ALTIMARI, Courant Staff Writers

 

Gov. John G. Rowland, defending himself against charges that favors he took from state contractors were unethical or illegal, has repeatedly asserted that his office had no role in the awarding of state business.

"We do not try to influence contracts. We have never done that," he insisted at a press conference last week. "I have never done that. Period."

But a Courant examination of state records, and statements from two former Rowland commissioners, starkly contradict that statement - adding the denial of his office's influence over contracts to the list of misleading statements or outright lies voiced by Rowland in the past month.

The two ex-commissioners both said Rowland's office was heavily involved in purchases and contracts. In particular, one of them said Rowland's former co-chief of staff, Peter Ellef, had a hand in every major contract.

"We were told that any contract of significance was not to be executed without his initials," said the ex-official, who asked not to be named.

That account is borne out by documents reviewed by The Courant involving four state Department of Public Works contracts - from the $269,000 installation of security gates at the governor's mansion to the construction of a $3 million visitors' center at Gillette Castle State Park.

All four contracts - which are among thousands of pages of documents subpoenaed by federal investigators looking into bid-rigging by the Rowland administration -were faxed to Ellef's office for approval. In at least three cases, the contracts were not signed until after being submitted for Ellef's approval; the date the fourth was signed could not be determined Tuesday.

And involvement by the governor's office in contract awards predates Ellef's appointment as co-chief of staff in 1997, according to the other ex-commissioner, Louis S. Goldberg.

Goldberg said in an interview that he quit as commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services in January 1996, a year after Rowland took office, largely because of meddling by the governor's staff - and in one case by Rowland himself - in state contract matters.

Ellef's lawyer, Hugh Keefe, could not be reached late Tuesday. He has refused to comment in the past on the federal investigation, of which his client is a central focus.

Rowland's office would not comment Tuesday on the contract documents or the ex-commissioners' comments - choosing instead to stick with the broad denial Rowland made at last week's press conference. "The governor stands by his statements of last week," deputy press secretary John T. Wiltse said Tuesday night.

The involvement of governors in contract awards is nothing new; Goldberg said his previous boss, Gov. Lowell P. Weicker, was as big a meddler as Rowland. But evidence that Rowland's office had a heavy hand in contracts causes two problems for Rowland.

One is that it further frays his credibility, which has been badly damaged by his admission that he lied about improvements to his Litchfield cottage. After insisting that he had paid for all the renovations himself, he later was forced to admit that state employees and a major state contractor had given gifts or done free work on the lakeside retreat.

Second, it could relate to questions of whether he broke the law.

Federal investigators are checking whether the governor gave anything in the form of state business to any contractor who provided work for free or on a deferred-payment basis on his Litchfield cottage. Rowland denies anyone who worked on his cottage received any improper benefit.

Also, state ethics officials say the governor cannot legally accept a valuable gift from someone with a contract his office approves.

The governor was asked at last Friday's press conference whether his office approved contracts awarded by state agencies such as the Department of Public Works, which is a key focus of federal investigators.

Rowland was fuzzy on details, but said his understanding is that there once had been a procedure - which had been "discontinued" - that involved "some signature requirement or something" but apparently had been intended just "to inform the office" of contracts.

He said the governor's office has "no legal authority" to award or amend contracts, so "in legal terms, it means nothing." Anyway, he said, whatever review that occurred in the governor's office was "done after the contract has been approved."

That does not appear to be true.

There were at least four contracts from April 1999 to October 2001 that Theodore R. Anson, the state public works commissioner at the time, submitted to Ellef for approval, according to state records.

"The following is a purchase requisition over the amount of $50,000 for Peter's approval. Thank you," read the cover sheet on the first of the four contracts, dated April 5, 1999.

The fax concerned an asbestos abatement contract for the fifth floor of the State Office Building in Hartford. Ellef initialed the contract for $228,900 to A.A.I.S. Corp. on April 6. Public Works officials Tuesday said they did not know the exact date Anson signed that contract.

Two other contracts involved Gillette Castle State Park. On May 14, 2001, Anson's secretary faxed documents concerning a $2.98 million contract for Barr Inc. of Putnam to Ellef's clerical aide. Ellef initialed the cover sheet the next day. Anson officially signed the contract on May 23, records show.

Documents for the second Gillette Castle contract were faxed from Anson's office to Ellef on Oct. 19, 2001. This contract, worth $495,800, was to go to Manafort Brothers of Plainville. Ellef initialed his approval on April 22, and Anson signed the contract on April 24, records show.

The fourth contract involved work done at the governor's mansion in Hartford. On Oct. 18, 2000, Anson's secretary faxed to Ellef's office the documents for a $269,000 contract being awarded to Mazzarella Builders of Berlin for installation of new security gates at the mansion.

"Please have Peter Ellef initial and return to me," reads a handwritten note from Sylvia Bugbee, Anson's executive assistant. A day later, another notation was added: "Ellef no time to review (day of JN mtg.) TRA signed." TRA are the initials of Anson - who signed the contract Oct. 19. It is not clear what "JN mtg" refers to.

One reason federal investigators may be interested in such documents is to answer the question of how someone in the governor's office would be in a position to steer state contracts toward a particular contractor - as Ellef's former aide in the governor's office has admitted he did.

That ex-aide, former Rowland deputy chief of staff Lawrence Alibozek, admitted in federal court nine months ago that he had accepted bribes to help steer state business to a preferred contractor identified by sources as The Tomasso Group.

Members of the New Britain-area Tomasso family are friends of both Rowland and Ellef. Tomasso provided some of the free labor that went into the renovations since 1997 on Rowland's Litchfield cottage on Bantam Lake, and top company executive William Tomasso recruited a heating contractor to install a new heating system and hot water heater at the cottage. Ellef and Alibozek, and their wives, split the payment of the $5,680 bill for that work, in behalf of Rowland and his wife, first lady Patricia Rowland.

Ellef, meanwhile, is a key focus of the federal bid-rigging investigation, but denies all wrongdoing. He resigned in 2002 amid controversy over his role in a financially disastrous deal that the state's trash agency made with now-bankrupt Enron Corp. Ellef was Rowland's appointed chairman at the trash agency, in addition to his co-chief of staff role in the governor's office.

Rowland's other co-chief of staff during that period was former Republican state legislator Sidney Holbrook of Westbrook - whose name also came up in a recent state document relating to the question of whether Rowland's office had a policy of reviewing state contracts.

Earlier this year, when the State Ethics Commission was investigating Rowland's acceptance of cut-rate or free vacation accommodations from state contractors, a commission lawyer wrote an e-mail to the governor's office inquiring about a notation on Holbrook's official calendar.

The notation of April 10, 2001, concerned a "commissioner's meeting" that may ultimately have been canceled, the ethics attorney wrote. But the calendar notation said, "Have Sid tell Commissioners that we will no longer be approving contracts. They should do them on their own. Send us a copy of the contract once approved by the AG."

It appears that intended discontinuation of the governor's office contract procedure did not occur until long after April 2001, judging by the Anson-Ellef communications on contracts as late as October 2001.

There certainly was no hesitation by the governor's office in 1995 to become involved in state contracts, according to Goldberg, the ex-commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services. He said he received repeated inquiries from Rowland office staff members in late 1995 pressuring him to go ahead with a proposal to procure at least 1,000 new semiautomatic Beretta pistols for the state police. Goldberg was resisting the deal because he was afraid pistols traded in to the manufacturer for the new weapons might fall into criminal hands.

Goldberg - a former business executive who said Rowland had used him as a "poster child" for businesslike efficiency in government - said Rowland's staff made it clear to him by December 1995 that they were disenchanted with him, and he resigned a month later.

He recalled that when he departed as commissioner, there were still two or three contracts on his desk that he had refused to sign because they did not conform with proper state guidelines. One was a contract calling for a purchase by a state agency of equipment worth more than $1 million. Goldberg said Rowland had called him personally several months earlier to urge him to approve it, saying that Goldberg's procedural objections to it had been met.

Goldberg did not agree with the governor. After that, Goldberg said Tuesday, "he never talked to me again ... to this day."