Former Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) chairman Marissa Gillett offered “unsolicited advice” to PURA spokeswoman Taren O’Connor that she start looking for a new job because the utility companies “were not going to stop,” in a phone call the night before O’Connor was scheduled for deposition in a lawsuit brought by Eversource and Avangrid against PURA.

“She offered some unsolicited advice. Her words… To think about talking to a recruiter and starting to look for a new job,” O’Connor said, according to the deposition. “Because she felt they were not going to stop at her or Scott or Theresa.”

Attorneys clarified that “they” were the utility companies. Scott referred to PURA General Counsel Scott Muska, and Theresa is PURA Chief of Staff Theresa Govert.

The phone call was made by Gillett on October 30, the night before O’Connor was originally scheduled to give her deposition, and O’Connor said she “wondered” at the timing of the phone call.

While most of the short conversation was small talk, Gillett did tell O’Connor she might want to start looking for a new job. Gillett also said she felt “a lot of guilt related to the position that I and others have been put in.”

Gillett stepped down from PURA after emails were uncovered that ran counter to testimony she provided to the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee and following a six-year tenure that was marked with controversy culminating in the agency’s admission in court that she had flouted state law in handling PURA’s proceedings.

Muska was referred to the Statewide Grievance Committee by Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik for withholding documents from discovery and effectively deceiving the court, including the email that eventually saw Gillett resign and the fact that Gillett had auto-deleted her text messages that could have offered transparency on whether the regulator had a hand in writing a controversial op-ed penned by Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, and Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, in December of 2024.

Chief of Staff Govert admitted in deposition that, like Gillett, she had also set her phone to auto-delete text messages and claimed she couldn’t remember much from the month the op-ed was released due to medication she was taking. 

Although Gillett has stepped down, both Muska and Govert continue to work for PURA, despite the utility companies’ request that Muska be barred from participating in dockets.

O’Connor testified that after Govert was hired as chief of staff, she increasingly found herself isolated from Gillett and was “instructed” that media inquiries and requests were to be flagged and sent directly to Govert and Muska, who then, she assumed, worked out the answers with Gillett. O’Connor would then be provided the answers to send back. 

Because she had so little hand in addressing media inquiries and Freedom of Information requests, O’Connor testified that she was only vaguely aware of the allegations being made against Gillett and PURA, although she began to become uncomfortable with her name being in news reports.

“I wasn’t always completely comfortable, but I still distributed the responses,” O’Connor said. “I felt like there were – there was a lot of back and forth through articles and things. I was just a little bit uncomfortable. But I never questioned the accuracy of what I was providing.”

Although a gas rate appeal, where much of the legal battle between Avangrid and PURA was occurring, has been remanded to PURA for reconsideration, a second lawsuit brought by both Eversource and Avangrid is continuing, although the defendants have been whittled down to just the commissioners, as PURA was granted government immunity.

While Gillett has gone on to work for a nonprofit focused on dismantling monopolies, Gov. Ned Lamont, who championed Gillett despite warnings, was finally pushed into appointing all five statutorily required PURA commissioners and replacing Gillett as chairman with former Office of Consumer Counsel attorney Thomas Weihl.

Despite Gillett’s warning, O’Connor testified that she did not feel she was being treated unfairly in giving deposition and that the utility companies had never threatened or “done anything bad” to her.

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