Democrats Call Comments ‘Predictably Hypocritical’
by Donald Eng
HARTFORD, CT — Community organizations are receiving taxpayer funding with too little oversight and no accountability, legislative Republicans said in a Tuesday morning media briefing at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.
“Connecticut’s government has become less of a democracy and more like a rigged casino with high stakes, shady deals and political insiders always having the upper hand,” said state Sen. Rob Sampson of Wolcott, the ranking Republican on the Government Oversight Committee. “While families struggle with electric bills and rising costs, one-party (Democratic) rule is busy enriching their own supporters and covering up their corruption.”
Connecticut State Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, speaks at a press briefing in the Legislative Office Building in Hartford on Oct. 7, 2025. Credit: Donald Eng / CTNewsJunkie
Sampson was joined by fellow Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield and House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford. The group cited a list of “unvetted and vague earmarks” that included some well-known organizations like United Way offices, Police Athletics League affiliates, local YMCAs and several Boys and Girls clubs. The list also included some more obscure funding recipients like We Believe Academy, Inc. ($5,000), Yellow Farmhouse Education Center, Inc. ($2,500) and Jeep Enthusiasts of Connecticut ($5,000).
They also mentioned 24 grant recipients that received state funding under a special act during the 2025 legislative session. That list included mostly organizations that worked with LGBTQ+ youth and immigrants and refugees, although Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, Middlesex Hospital and Jewish Family Services of Greenwich also were among the recipients of grants from $62,500 to $800,000.
The group proposed legislative changes, including requiring written requests to include the necessity and intended use of potential state funds and the name of the legislator who made the initial request for the funds. This information would be posted online.
Grant recipients would also be required to submit to random state audits and provide a certified accounting of activities, including administrative costs and the amount spent on advocacy efforts.
The Republicans mentioned the current corruption trial of former state school construction official Kosta Diamantis and referred to the legislature as a candy store with a culture of corruption.
“We hope these common sense reforms receive bipartisan support,” Candelora and Harding said in a joint statement. “And if we are called into Special Session this month, we urge Democrats to add these good government solutions to the list of action items to vote on.
In response, Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney of New Haven and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk, called the Republicans’ comments “predictably hypocritical.”
“They’re silent about the massive actual corruption happening in Washington under Donald Trump,” the two wrote. “Trump’s border czar getting $50,000 in a paper bag to steer contracts, Trump’s foreign bailout for billionaire donors, Trump’s constant leverage of the government for his own enrichment, and Trump’s administration hiding the Epstein files and considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Legislative Democrats are “working on a special session to mitigate the economic damage and health care crisis unleashed by Trump’s toxic policies on the people of Connecticut,” they continued. “Our state needs to make critical decisions about how to stop rising insurance premiums, increasing higher education costs, tariffs that are crippling small businesses, and people from losing lifesaving care.”
They concluded by asking rhetorically what it would take “to get Connecticut Republicans to focus on the real damage happening in our state right now?”
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, in a separate statement said it was difficult to respond to a news conference that ignored the amount of line items in a budget advocated for by members of both parties.
“That being said, I have publicly acknowledged my concerns with grant recipients turning around and granting funds themselves,” he said. “As always, I am glad to work on reasonable changes to our grant process with reasonable legislators.”