Convicted felon Governor John Rowland-Job: Back Around Big Money

By EDMUND H. MAHONY And JON LENDER

Courant Staff Writers

January 24, 2008


If former Gov. John G. Rowland's appointment as Waterbury development czar goes through — and there was no sign Wednesday that it wouldn't — he again could find himself at the center of the kind of big-money deals that proved to be his undoing in office.

The Waterbury business and political interests behind the Rowland appointment say the convicted ex-governor is thoroughly reformed and particularly suited for the position. But others outside the city say that even the offer of the job is a public insult. What's more, they say, it would be a mistake to reinsert Rowland into a mix of money and influence that proved in the past to be an irresistible temptation.

"This is a disgrace," said Farmington Town Council Chairman Michael Clark, a Republican and the former FBI agent who supervised the investigation that led to Rowland's imprisonment in 2005. "It is like kicking sand in the eyes of every hardworking taxpayer in Waterbury. He violated the supreme trust — the trust between an elected officeholder and the voters.

"John Rowland says he has had a spiritual rebirth," Clark said. "Well, the spiritual rebirth I want to see is when he puts his hand on a Bible and promises to tell the whole truth to a grand jury, honestly and completely, which he has never done."

Rowland, reached Wednesday night, said, "The only comment I have is that my passion for most of the last 25 years has been to revitalize our cities, and this is a way to help the city of Waterbury and the people in the surrounding communities. It's got nothing to do with the state, nothing to do with state funding, and no responsibilities that connect me with the state in any way, shape or form. ...

"I understand that some people may not agree, and that's understandable. But I've always had a great love for Greater Waterbury and its people, and this is a chance to give something back to the community."

The proposed position, conceived by Mayor Michael Jarjura and financed through city and private business money, would make Rowland Waterbury's chief pitchman — selling the city to developers and businesses that, ideally, would construct buildings, create jobs and inflate a moribund tax base.

That, critics said, could make Rowland the nexus between developers willing to take a chance on risky urban development and the alphabet soup of state and local agencies and quasi-public financing boards that can provide millions in tax breaks, loans and outright grants to offset the risk.

It was just such a meeting of politics and business that proved legally toxic to Rowland. He resigned as governor in June 2004 and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in 2005 after pleading guilty to conspiring to collect $107,000 in gifts and services from businessmen who got hundreds of millions in contracts and tax breaks from his administration.

Rowland's new job would be "very much involved in politics and economic development — and isn't that the reason why the governor got into his problems in the first place?" House Speaker James Amann, D-Milford, said.

Amann said Rowland, a Republican, backed Jarjura in 2001, when Jarjura narrowly won the Waterbury Democratic mayoral primary. "He's loyal, and he remembers," Amann said of Jarjura. "I am not knocking him for trying to help out an old favorite son of Waterbury — but I just don't know why it had to be this particular job."
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-rowland0124.artjan24,0,7975012,print.story

the center of political scum in the Connecticut universe.

I've only been in CT for a few years and already they've had more political and criminal scandals than I can count including a pedophile mayor serving a long time. Has it always been as bad as this in that town?

We actually looked for a house there when we first moved to the State, damn am I glad I shyed away, what an absolute hole.