The delegation fired off a letter Wednesday to Gov. M. Jodi Rell asking for an accounting of how the state has been spending the money it receives from the $246 billion "Master Settlement Agreement" negotiated in 1998 with top tobacco companies. The settlement grew out of a case pressed by states attorney general, including Connecticut's.

That money, distributed to state governments, is supposed to go toward weaning people from tobacco addiction. But it doesn't always end up there. A group called Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids issued a report last month, making national news -- that showed Connecticut ranking dead last among all 50 states in spending the money as designed.

Click here to read the report. It stated that less than 1 percent of the $1 billion the state has received so far has gone toward smoking cessation and prevention.

That report prompted outrage from officials throughout the state -- and prompted Wednesday's letter to the governor from Connecticut's D.C. delegation.

"We are missing an opportunity," said New Haven-area Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, "to improve the health and well-being of Connecticut's residents by failing to use money from the tobacco settlement towards smoking and tobacco prevention and cessation. The costs of smoking-related illnesses are over $1.6 billion in Connecticut today.

"By not investing in these programs today, the state is putting itself in the position
of facing even higher costs and poorer health for its citizens over the long-term."

Click here to read the full text of the delegation's letter.

"We have received the letter. We'll be responding to in the near future ... probably within a couple of days," gubernatorial spokesman Chris Cooper said Wednesday.

Cooper attacked the Tobacco Free Kids report as being based on "flawed methodology" because it based its rankings on specifically identified line items in state budgets.

"Connecticut puts the settlement in to the general fund and funds disease prevention, health promotion and anti-smoking efforts out of general fund expenditures," Cooper said. He said the state actually spent $3.1 million last year on disease prevention and anti-smoking efforts, and will spend $4.5 million this year.

"Connecticut was recently ranked as the fifth-healthiest state in the nation," Cooper said, partly because it has "one of the lowest percentage rates in the country. That also affects the amount of money you need to spend on addressing the problem."

The report's authors acknowledge using that methodology but have stood by the rankings.

Still, any way you slice the numbers, Connecticut spends only a "pittance" of its tobacco settlement money to fight tobacco abuse, argued Kevin O'Flaherty, Northeastern region director of advocacy for the Tobacco-Free Kids Campaign.

"They've now just in the last week or so said that they're spending that amount of money. They haven't given us a delineation of how they've spent or what they've done," O'Flaherty said Wednesday afternoon.

He said his organization believes the state is including money that comes from the Centers for Disease Control --which is separate from the tobacco lawsuit fund -- in its figures.

In addition, the state didn't get around to spending $2 million it set aside for tobacco prevention this fiscal year until the new year, O'Flaherty said. As a result, the legislature didn't renew that authorization for the coming year.

"We gave them credit for money appropriated in '07 for the program. We're not going to give them credit again in '08" for money not spent, he said.

O'Flaherty said that the legislature has put $88 million of the settlement money into a tobacco and health trust fund over the last nine years -- then turned around "and took $72 million of that money and put it right back into general revenue and spent it on everything the state spends money on."

Even of the $16 million that remained, only "a pittance -- $2 million -- was spent on tobacco. And nothing since 2003," except for $15,000, he said. "They've really not spent enough the settlement money on tobacco prevention at all."

"Connecticut was recently ranked as the fifth-healthiest state in the nation," Cooper said, partly because it has "one of the lowest percentage rates in the country. That also affects the amount of money you need to spend on addressing the problem."