Republican ranking members on the Legislature’s new Government Oversight Committee issued a letter to the Democrat committee chairs requesting a hearing to determine what went wrong at the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) following the resignation of former PURA chair Marissa Gillett and the agency’s admission in court that they had flouted state statute for years.
The December 23 letter from Rep. Devin Carney, R-Old Saybrook, and Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, came on the heels of a similar letter issued by House Republican Leader to House Speaker Matthew Ritter, D-Hartford, and Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, D-New Haven, also requesting the Government Oversight Committee schedule hearings on PURA.
“As legislators, we cannot rely on the news media and the courts to do our job for us. Those entities have exposed serious issues within PURA; it is now our responsibility to examine that information and seek answers directly from agency staff and commissioners,” Carney and Sampson wrote to committee chairs Sen. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox, D-Trumbull, and Rep. Lucy Dathan, D-New Canaan. “A vague promise to the media that a hearing might occur at some unspecified future date is insufficient. Given the gravity of what has been uncovered, this situation demands immediate action.”
Sampson and Carney are urging Dathan and Gadkar-Wilcox to schedule the hearing before the start of the 2026 legislative session to “give members of the General Assembly time to consider findings and implement policy changes if warranted.”
PURA admitted in court that Gillett had essentially taken over the agency by appointing herself hearing officer for dockets, limiting other commissioners’ access to staff, and making unilateral decisions on impactful matters involving findings of law and millions of dollars in ratepayer dollars. The agency then withheld documents from court discovery and Freedom of Information requests and hid the fact that Gillett had deleted text messages between herself and the two Democrat chairs of the Energy and Technology Committee.
Following the revelation of an email that contradicted Gillett’s sworn testimony before the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee – and which PURA had denied existed – Gillett resigned, but the matter is far from over, as the utility companies now have evidence that their rate cases for the past five years may not have been handled properly.
The Government Oversight Committee, which saw its first official year of meetings in 2025, is essentially a reconstitution of the Program Review and Investigations Committee, which ended roughly ten years ago. The Oversight Committee has the authority to follow up on reports by the State Auditors and investigate state agency practices.
House Republican Leader Candelora – as indicated in Carney and Sampson’s letter – followed up on his request that the Oversight Committee look into PURA by sending a second letter directly to PURA’s new chairman Thomas Weihl, seeking information on a program that awards ratepayer money to special interest groups to participate in PURA dockets.
“Utility costs are a major component of the larger affordability crisis facing the citizens of our state who are forced every day to make difficult financial choices to keep their households afloat,” Candelora wrote to Wiehl in the December 22 letter. “Like many of the constituents our caucus members serve, we were alarmed by media reports detailing how funding approved by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) was used by a Hartford-based LLC.”
A report by Inside Investigator found that the program has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to a small LLC in Hartford called the Nonprofit Accountability Group (NAG) to hold stakeholder workshops that included thousands for food, childcare, participation stipends, and transportation, which were approved in motion decisions with no recorded votes or discussion among commissioners. The group had recently hosted former PURA chairman Gillett for one of its ratepayer-funded workshops and presented her with an award.
Candelora is seeking all texts and emails between PURA staff and representatives from NAG and other entities that received stakeholder funding; information about the “attendance/participation of former PURA Chairman Marissa Gillett in advocacy workshops held by NAG,” including whether she received any form of payment; detailed information about the “advocacy events,” including material and curriculum; payments to consultants, and verification that the awarded funds were properly vetted and accounted for by PURA officials.
“Full transparency on this matter is essential to restoring the credibility and trustworthiness of PURA – a goal we are confident is shared by our caucus, by you, and by Governor Lamont,” Candelora wrote. “While our ratepayers continue to tighten their belts, they deserve clear answers about how their money is being spent.”
PURA is now fully reformed following Gillett’s departure, with its full statutorily required complement of five commissioners appointed by Gov. Lamont, something he resisted for years, thus enabling Gillett to unilaterally appoint herself presiding officer in PURA dockets.
Although Weihl and the new commissioners represent a fresh start, convincing Democrat leaders in the General Assembly to take a close look at what happened at PURA may prove difficult. Lamont defended and backed Gillett despite numerous warnings from Republicans, the utility companies, and PURA commissioners.
The scandal also nearly saw Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, and Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, the two Democrat chairs of the Energy and Technology Committee, deposed over Gillett’s alleged participation in drafting an op-ed bashing the utility companies, and the “draft” revealed in text messages obtained by the Hartford Courant has yet to be revealed by PURA or the politicians.
“Transparency should be the cornerstone of government,” Sampson and Carney wrote. “While we believe PURA’s new leadership is committed to moving the agency in a positive direction, the past problems with transparency warrant involvement from our committee. A hearing would signal to PURA just how seriously we take this matter.”
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The new Government Oversight (GO) Committee is NOT a reconstituted Program Review and Investigation Committee. The latter was “explicitly designed as a bipartisan committee, with equal representation from both parties in the House and Senate, and traditionally rotated leadership to ensure bipartisan cooperation.” (AI) It initiated in-depth studies of a multitude of topics. The GO Committee is majority-party dominated as are most other committees are except Regulation Review. It also doesn’t have the dedicated staff to do in-depth investigations.
Thanks for the continued reporting on this scandal. The energy companies should have a field day clawing back what is owed them given the ruling of the court. How Lamont handles his PURA disaster in an election year where the buzzword is “affordability” will be interesting to watch. Given how the Lamont administration has treated transparency and FOA laws in the past, I doubt this oversight committee even meets…
What is the potential liability to CT (and respectively the taxpayers) if utilities do succeed in their lawsuits against CT PURA?
Time for some arrests sounds like this loc has the markings of Somali fraud Did she recieve gifts from this llc ? Interesting as soon as a little heat was applied, she ran