Members of the state’s Government Oversight and Judiciary Committees held a hearing today questioning the Department of Correction Commissioner, Angel Quiros, on the repeat failures identified by the state’s Auditors of Public Accounts, as well as the auditors themselves.
“Many of these audits have findings that have existed, in some cases, for decades,” said Craig Miner, State Auditor. “It doesn’t mean that someone’s not hearing us, and I think it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t care – It may mean that the resolution is not easy to kind of figure out.”
The hearing gave legislators the floor to question both auditors and DOC officials on the most recent DOC audit, released on July 29, which assessed DOC from the fiscal years of 2022 to 2023. Some of the most significant findings of the audit were that DOC had paid $834,955 in improper administrative leave, that 19 of 20 randomly selected employees did not meet minimum training requirements, that they had improper documentation and administration of overtime, and found to have administered medication in an untimely fashion. The auditors noted that 16 of their findings were repeat findings from previous years, indicating repeat failures. Only five of the APA’s findings from previous audits had been resolved.
Of the numerous findings made by the APA, one of the most frequent talking points of today’s hearing was what could be done about DOC’s deficiencies in overtime management. The auditors found DOC officials to have inadequate documentation surrounding overtime payments, to have given overtime to ineligible employees, and to have destroyed overtime sign-up sheets sooner than their records-retention policies allow. The auditors found DOC, which consistently has the largest overtime budget of any state agency, to have paid out $96.6 million in overtime in 2022 and $103.4 million in 2023. The auditors also noted that this finding has been made in every DOC audit going back to 2010. When asked about what resolutions could be made to the issue of DOC overtime, the auditors were extremely blunt in their assessment.
“I think the overtime finding is we’re not going to solve it completely, but we’re going to — we hope to make it better, right?” said John Geragosian, State Auditor. “It’s not a realistic scenario.”
The reasons given for the problem’s persistence, both by auditors and DOC officials, were plenty. The need for 24/7 coverage of staff, as well as the occurrence of emergencies, mean that staff members don’t always have the time to “go down the list” of names and assign overtime to the employees in the order that it should, said Miner. Another reason was chronic staff shortages, which were attributed to inadequate funding and a high number of employees on workers compensation or administrative leave. Geragosian said this creates a negative feedback loop; the more employees are stretched thin, the more likely they are to get hurt on the job and require workers comp.
“If you don’t have adequate staffing levels, and excessive overtime, you put everybody at risk, you put the corrections officer at risk, you put the inmates at risk, and it’s going to lead to more workers compensation,” said Geragosian.
Not every lawmaker in attendance was swayed by this argument, however. Rep. Renee LaMark Muir (D-Deep River), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said it seems unlikely that DOC will be able to “outstaff” itself out of every problem.
“You can’t staff your way out of, you know, mismanagement or lack of accountability,” said LaMark Muir. “I haven’t heard anything, really, that is going to convince me that just throwing staff, more staff at the problem, is going to completely solve it.”
Quiros argued that since he’s began working for DOC in 1987, it has never been at 100% staffing levels, and that while staffing might not solve every problem, it would reduce the number of prison lockdowns.
“If I don’t get the resources that I need when it comes to correctional officers, and we continue on the same path, it is going to increase the facility lockdowns,” said Quiros. “In 2025 there was 387 [lockdowns], so for me, getting the resources will help, maybe not change everything, but it will help me as a Commissioner in reducing the lockdowns in these facilities.”
One of the biggest reasons given for the department’s massive payments in improper administrative leave is the issue of employees who get charged with felonies. Quiros said that the department is required to put them on paid administrative leave pending legal investigations or court proceedings, which take longer than the one-month maximum allowed for paid administrative leave. Of the ten employees on paid leave assessed by the auditors, nine of them had exceeded this one month period, with one employee being on paid leave for three-and-a-half years.
Quiros said that he has “put himself” in the process of reviewing employees on paid administrative leave. He said that last August, there were 61 employees on paid leave, and that as of this month, there are only 26, and that they are “meeting the timeframes.” In order to do so, Quiros said that he has been bringing officers with criminal charges back to work by “finding locations where they can work,” and said that the legal maximum timeframe for paid leave is “not enough.”
“I’ve heard, ‘Why can’t we not put them on administrative leave without pay?'” said Quiros. “I’m being advised by OPM [Office of Policy and Management] that we cannot. The employee has to agree to go on administrative leave without pay, so that is not an option for me.”
DOC officials gave several reasons for the agency’s training shortfalls. Quiros said that trying to schedule training was made difficult when staff-shortages, lockdowns, and inmate emergencies could prevent employees from receiving or providing training, and disrupt set training times. Additionally, he said that employees out on leave for long periods often experience lapses in training, which can be difficult to alleviate upon their return to work. Rep. Craig Fishbein (R-Wallingford) said that it is an administrative decision to return employees before they’ve received their full training, and that there should be organized efforts to ensure that employees returning for leave receive “refresher” courses.
“That’s an administrative decision, whether or not to put that person on the job without having their training,” said Fishbein. “I would think that, administratively, unless it’s in the collective bargaining contract that you can’t do that, that individuals that are looking to work in this role, should be concerned about getting [training] and — God willing — administration should be concerned that their individuals, working for them, have the training.”
Quiros said that it is his priority to ensure staff receive their 40 hours of training, and that while there will “absolutely” be “some roadblocks,” he’s “comfortable” with the improvements he’s seen made this year. He also noted that some of the issues with training are reporting related, meaning that employees received the proper training, but just hadn’t had their files updated correctly. Ashley McCarthy, Director of DOC’s External Affairs, said that they have implemented a “training lieutenant” since the audit, who coordinates staff training between DOC’s facilities and the Maloney Training Center.
On the subject of untimely administration of medication, lawmakers asked DOC officials whether they have assessed the health impact on patients who missed doses, whether DOC has created a system to prioritize medication for high-risk patients, and what changes have been made to prevent these instances from occurring in the future, as well as track compliance.
Robert Richeson, DOC’s head of Health Services, said that while the audit did not “differentiate the medicines” that were missed, preventing DOC from assessing the specific adverse health impacts, that DOC has enacted changes as a result of the audit. Richeson said that his department has “done a lot of counseling and coaching” of its nurses on the importance of documentation, and also said that the department is updating its electronic health record system to ensure better documentation on medication, and better documentation of instances in which medication can not be provided on time due to “lockdowns or incidents” that could cause delays. Quiros said that some of the issues with medication administration could, again, be attributed to staffing constraints.
“During the time period when COVID was at a peak, in those month of January and February, when I had 1,500 staff members out, we did have some times when we didn’t have enough nursing at the facility to distribute the medication,” said Quiros.
Rep. Steve Stafstrom (D-Bridgeport), Co-Chair of the Judiciary Committee, said that the issue is too serious to be recurrent. When asked earlier for compliance rates, and percentage of medication delivered on time, DOC officials were unable to provide the information. Stafstrom said he doesn’t “see sings that we are getting better, and maybe we are, but I would like the data to back that up.” He also said he believed staffing shortages were not a legitimate reason for medication delays.
“Pardon me for being blunt, but I think the excuse of staffing constraints, I think I’m not sure works anymore,” said Stafstrom. “Hospitals have staffing constraints, medical practices staffing constraints, we have staffing constraints in this building. I have staffing constraints, my law firm. We all have staffing constraints in various walks of life, but when I hear stuff like, there’s not really a policy to triage that I heard earlier today, that’s a concern to me.”
Stafstrom recommended that DOC create a monthly report of how many doses are delivered monthly and what percentage of them are delivered on time. He said that while he understood 100% compliance may be hard to reach, something as “important as folks medicine,” should be as close to 100% compliance as possible. Quiros said he’d be willing to do so, and was open to suggestions from the Judiciary Committee on how those reports could be compiled.
“I totally understand your frustration, because that’s my frustration too,” said Quiros. “So, I’ll make sure that not only that percentage, but everything else that we may have that I think that we need to share with this committee — I’m gonna work on getting that information, and establishing more communication.”
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