New Haven Independent

Malloy, Stamford’s mayor, and DeStefano, New Haven’s mayor, are vying for the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Gov. Jodi Rell in 2006.

Malloy met separately with union activists and business leaders in New Haven Monday. (He didn’t identify them.) He has previously met with local aldermen angry with Mayor DeStefano. And he said he has told State Rep. Pat Dillon he’d like to meet with her; Dillon, who’s facing a primary by a DeStefano appointee, told the Independent recently that her support is up for grabs in the governor’s race.

Malloy, who’s 50 and in his 11th year as Stamford’s chief executive, proved polished and controlled during the interview, though testy at times when asked about allegations of corruption in his administration. He responded with an aggressive cogency that reflected either his years as a prosecutor or coaching by veteran political adviser Roy Occhiogrosso. (Federal investigators eventually cleared Malloy of an wrongdoing in their probe of the awarding of city contracts.) He did smile, with a twinkle in his eye — whenever the subject of DeStefano’s political troubles at home came up, including controversy over the proposed new cancer center at Yale-New Haven Hospital and the contest for president of the Board of Aldermen.

“I’m watching with great interest the aldermanic situation,” Malloy said more than once.

(Malloy has had home-front troubles too. He barely won reelection as mayor this November amid charges that he was too busy running for governor to run the city. DeStefano faced similar complaints, but no opponent with the financial or institutional backing to translate those complaints into significant votes.)

Malloy was up to date enough on New Haven’s local political battles to cite a statistic from the 2001 mayoral campaign between DeStefano and Martin Looney.

Asked what percentage of votes he expects to win in New Haven in a gubernatorial primary against DeStefano, he replied, “I think Marty Looney is my target. Forty-three.” (Actually, Looney received 37.5 percent of the vote in that election.)

In the interview at Koffee?, Malloy raised the corruption issue during a discussion about taxes and “this Republican game where if you’re a Democrat, and progressive, that means you’ve got to be for high taxes.”

CORRUPTION COSTS MONEY

Malloy: The reality is that nothing is more taxing than corruption. Corruption has never flourished more in the state of Connecticut than in the Rowland-Rell administration. That’s a huge expense. I think a workforce that is afraid to make a decision drives costs up. In the city of Stamford, I encourage all employees to make decisions and take responsibility for those decisions. You’re criticized if you don’t make a decision. You’re not criticized for making the wrong decision. Empowering a workforce to get the job done is an innovation that is long overdue in state politics.

The Independent: Let’s talk about corruption. Rell has definitely outmaneuvered you guys. This was her biggest liability. She comes in replacing a governor who went to jail. Her family was involved in some of the minor stuff early on. She ran for reelection [with Rowland] when some of the [corruption] was already exposed in the press. And yet she has somehow maneuvered around you and DeStefano to be the candidate most associated with clean government. How did that happen?

The bully pulpit of governor. Listen, I call a press conference, you might come. One out of ten times. The governor calls a press conference and calls you, you’ll show up. The access to media cannot be overstated. Now having said that, that access becomes equal probably around August and September.

She has also taken a different stand from Rowland. Rowland was an impediment to campaign finance reform. She embraced it.

I think it was very wise of her. I will also tell you she wasn’t the reason it passed. The Democrats passed it, after a lot of compromise and a lot of hard work, including some by myself that night. I was preaching the gospel of campaign finance reform. As opposed to John [DeStefano], it was on July 2 that I immediately embraced a system where the state would come in and pay for statewide elections immediately. I would have returned every dollar on a pro rata basis and stopped raising money. I would have bought into that system in a minute. John said he wouldn’t.

Another thing Rell has done is she has volunteered not to take money from people who do business with the state.

You guys, here’s one where you’re going to have to do your job. OK?

You mean like in-kind help she receives from the Republican Party?

In-kind help from the Republican Party. And what does her pledge really mean? Does it mean that no one from Otis Elevator can give her money? Can the guy who spins cable for elevators, can he give money? Let me assure you, Otis has contracts with the state. United Technologies has contracts with the state. If Jones’ Tree Farm sell a tree to the governor’s mansion, does that mean none of the Jones family can give money?

So you don’t give her credit for doing this?

I don’t know what it means. I think you guys have bought into it hook, line and sinker. You can’t answer the question I just asked. So the president, or the chairman of the board, doesn’t give money. But if the president or the chairman of the board with a wink and nod lets it be know that they would like those donations to be made… Let me assure you that no one at Otis is doing that for me.

You and DeStefano have taken money from people who do business with your cities.

Yes.

So that makes it look like you wouldn’t change the system. You’re continuing to benefit from a corrupt system.

She can continue to run ads on TV telling people not to drink and drive, and you guys say, “That’s different.” How’s that different? (Click here to listen to DeStefano’s answers to similar questions.)

OK. So given that she’s the incumbent, and she’s popular, shouldn’t you be ahead of her on this issue? For you to say, “She’s doing it too,” that doesn’t help establish yourself as the person who’s going to change the way it is.

All’s I’m saying is I played a leading role to get that campaign finance reform passed. I live by every rule that is put into effect. And I have advocated; I wanted this to take place immediately. Even that night I said it should take place immediately. The governor didn’t say she would veto anything that didn’t say it should take place immediately. Come on. Let me ask you a question. Why are we having an election now that doesn’t include it?

I think the Democrats were just as much a part of that. They were the ones who pushed for it to [take effect later]. Remember last spring? It was the Democrats who said, “We want to wait an extra election cycle [to implement public financing] so we can use our PACs to stay in power.”

Right. And the governor said, “I will veto any bill that doesn’t have immediately have public financing”?

No she didn’t. But she was on the side, unlike the Democrats, that wanted it sooner rather than later.

Unlike some Democrats. And I advocated it [happening immediately] on July 2. You can Google it.

Many Democrats who support campaign finance reform say, until the rules change, “We’re not going to unilaterally disarm. We’re going to play by the rules as they exist and try to change the rules.” Can one make the argument that that means you can’t count on those people to change the system ever, because they’re not willing to take the risks to their own careers to change it?

That’s just not the history of politics in the United States. It’s just not the history of politics.

Well, the McCain-Feingold Act’s cosponsor [U.S. Sen. Russell Feingold] risked his own seat in Wisconsin by refusing to take [tainted] money, when his own party wanted him to take it. He won reelection and had a mandate.

OK. And by the way he had the same view before and after. It didn’t change his view.

But how are you going to get ahead of Rell if you continue to take money from people who do business with you? How can the voters look at that and say, “This guy’s going to change the system”?

You know what? It’s going to be very interesting when you answer my question about where the governor is raising her money from. Did she have a fund-raiser the night of the vote?

Yes.

And that’s so different?

Can you win by not being different from her on this issue? You don’t think the Democrats should have claimed this issue before she did?

I did. I said let’s have a whole new set of rules. I said I would return contributions on a pro rata basis. I said it in the press. And let’s have instantaneous statewide [publicly financed elections]. I said, “Let’s do it immediately.” And if I was governor, I would veto any bill that didn’t do that. I’m not saying that [just] today. I said that in July, when there were people in the legislature who wanted to do that.

LESSONS LEARNED?

Are you going to try to do publicly financed municipal elections in Stamford?

You know, I guess under the thing they’re going to do a test. We’re on a four-year cycle. If the desire is to do it in two years, we wouldn’t be on that cycle. But sure, we’d be happy to do it.

Although I’d have to say, I’m not sure the voters of Stamford are as anxious to see it done on a local basis as they were on a statewide basis. Quite frankly, I think it’ll be interesting when this thing moves along and people learn more about it. I think the appropriate step we should have been taking, I have been arguing for for eight, nine years of my political life, we should be funding statewide offices. That’s the right place to have started.

Clearly the experience is going to come up [in the campaign] of the contractors who worked on your house and got city contracts…

Stop right there. The difference between me and any other politician in the state is that I had accusations made against me that were proved to be false. No one did work on my house while they were doing work for the city. No one got any work from the city that did not involve a bid process. That’s a reality.

But there was a no-bid contract in two of the cases.

That’s not true. People in the media repeated what somebody else wrote. We have a three-stage process. If it’s for one dollar to 25, it’s three quotes. If it’s from this number to that number, it’s four quotes. If it’s from this number to that number, it’s three written proposals. If it’s above a certain number, it’s a formal RFP [Request for Proposal] or a bid. There was no work done for the city that didn’t meet that criteria.

So they were under the bid level?

They complied with the process that pertained to the level of the work they were doing.

Didn’t people get work from the city after they worked on your home?

Yes. They bid.

Isn’t there a problem with appearance in that?

Wait a minute. With all due respect, do you own a home?

Yes.

OK. Let me put it differently…

I would never hire anybody who did work with the city if I were in office.

How do you know if they’re going to bid work in the future? How do you know? It was very interesting, in the midst of going through this stuff, I had a pipe break in my house over our kitchen. I had to call three plumbers to stop the water from leaking. Is that the standard now, that no one should ever work for someone in public service, for fear that in some point in the future they may want to do some [government] work?

I agree with you that the bar for people in public service is rising. Maybe it needed to rise. I don’t think John Rowland thought there was anything wrong with taking that hot tub.

That’s a bizarre standard. Of course it was wrong.

What about the guy who did excavation [at your house] who said he was told he would have his taxes lowered if he cut the price…

It was disproven. Why do you think I was cleared?

You were cleared legally. There are two standards. There’s legal. And there’s ethics.

If what he said was true, I would not have been cleared. Listen, no one has ever gone through what I went through and come out [well]…

What was that like?

It was very difficult, for my wife, for my children, for myself. It was deeply painful because it was in many senses a frontal attack on the way that I’ve actually run local government. On the other hand, listen, I did things that people never did. Did you remember any politician demanding to have their interview taken? Do you remember any other politician in Connecticut turning over documents that couldn’t otherwise be had? Do you remember any other politician in Connecticut getting a letter of clearance, a vindication?

John DeStefano got that [after the federal government investigated him in 1998].
What did you learn from this experience that might change your behavior?

I’m committed to public service, probably more than I ever was. The lesson I learned is, when your behavior is appropriate and comports with the law, that you’ll be OK. The law, meaning the infrastructure of the prosecutorial process, is not to be thought the enemy.

So the law is the answer? Aren’t there ethical standards? Isn’t what most of what Rowland did legal but wrong?

No, I don’t think it was legal.

You think every no-bid contract was illegal, every gift he took was illegal?

I think all of the pleas and the charges that were brought were proof of that.

So in other words, you didn’t come out of this thinking you could have done anything differently?

I believe that standards have evolved by which we make judgments about how people conduct their business. I think that’s very clear. I think people have to be cognizant of that. I’m certainly cognizant of that. I’m also cognizant that people can say things that aren’t true and have them published on an ongoing basis.

But is there anything different you would do? Anything?

I think in every process it’s important to dot the i’s, cross the t’s, live up to the letter of the law and the intent of the law as that might properly be read. I think it’s important as a matter of leadership that you send that message to all the people you work with, work for, and supervise. And I think great leadership will come from people who are playing that role in an ongoing, constant and proactive role. And that’s what I intend to do.

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