Derek Slap, communications director for the Senate Democrats in Hartford summed up the reaction to Monday’s letter issued by the former State Senator Lou DeLuca, “The Senate taking guidance from Mr. DeLuca on ethics would be like Dick Cheney teaching classes on hunting safety.” What prompted this rebuke is another one of those incidents about the political log rolling that goes on in Hartford.

Democratic State Senator Thomas Gaffey, he of the all important ECS money allocation decision committee, is dating the associate vice chancellor for government relations and communications of the Connecticut State University System, Jill Ferraiolo. You know, the same state university system where the Democrats couldn’t override the overall bonding package because another state senator, Joan Hartley, cited the unusually high funding allocation.

Republicans, like state Republican party chair, Chris Healy are outraged, in that GOP way when one of their own isn’t caught overseeing state contract giveaways. Saying to the Courant, “If this was a Republican senator, the Democrats would be calling for investigations up and down Main Street,” Healy said. “Clearly, Sen. Gaffey did not disclose what reasonable people could classify as a conflict. It’s just an awful way to conduct the state’s business. This isn’t some silly playscape that was snuck in at the last minute. This is $1 billion.”

Healy somehow forgot that it was Rell who had this idea about funding education. Something to the tune of $3 billion. Funny how legislators in Hartford of all stripes like to dump money into “Education” all the time. But I digress. From the Courant:

But Gaffey and Senate Democratic spokesman Derek Slap said that an attorney for the Office of State Ethics said there did not appear to be any conflict of interest because “there was absolutely no financial gain to the legislator, his family members or any associated business” from the relationship.

“Jill is a state employee. She is a public official,” Gaffey said Monday. “State employees aren’t lobbyists under the legal term of lobbyists.”

Gaffey, who co-chairs the legislature’s education committee and was one of the most vocal proponents of the CSU plan, said the complaints by Healy and DeLuca were “a partisan, political maneuver to deflect off DeLuca’s admitted violation of law” and his subsequent resignation from the Senate.

“We’ve got people in the administration who are married to lobbyists. We have legislators who are married to lobbyists,” Gaffey said. “I never thought I had to explain who I’m dating, particularly when she’s not a lobbyist.”

But McKinney said Ferraiolo and other legislative liaisons from state agencies are lobbyists, adding that the Senate should consider legislation that would “correct that loophole.” The liaisons, for example, are permitted inside the House and Senate chambers during debates, but lobbyists hired by special interests are kept outside the chambers and behind ropes during debates.

McKinney described a meeting he had with Ferraiolo, another state liaison and Dr. David G. Carter Sr., chancellor of the CSU system, after Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed the bond package this year that included money for CSU. The meeting, McKinney said, was designed to push for the $1 billion proposal, which eventually was reduced to $950 million for 36 projects over 10 years at Central Connecticut, Eastern Connecticut, Western Connecticut and Southern Connecticut state universities. The project, called CSU 2020, is scheduled to start in 2009.

“Their reason for being there was to lobby me — no different as if [longtime Capitol lobbyist] Pat Sullivan were in my office with a client,” McKinney said.

Oh those pesky lobbyists. They are just crawling out of the woodwork in Hartford. To imagine that there’s a sacred spot for them behind ropes during the debates as if that somehow cleanses the lobbying process, is silly. The problem here is not that Gaffey has a relationship with someone who was pushing for millions for an educational system, the problem is that they all voted for it.

source: The Courant, GOP Demands Probe; Questions State Senator’s Ties With University System Official, By CHRISTOPHER KEATING, December 4, 2007