Lamont Signs Bonding Bill, Reiterates Hang-Ups On Construction

by Hudson Kamphausen CTNewsJunkie

HARTFORD, CT – While he went ahead and signed the legislature’s bonding bill on Friday, Gov. Ned Lamont said he wasn’t happy about the language that was changed in the bill to alter a safeguard that had been written into the bidding process for school construction.
Lamont said Friday that the change came at a bad time, referencing the recent indictment of  Kostas Diamantis by a grand jury on extortion and bribery charges.
However, Lamont said he didn’t want the indictment to affect the broader good that will be done by the bill now that it is law.

“I didn’t want to veto the whole thing over one item. It just seemed to me particularly ill-timed to be having construction managers be able to bid on things that ought to be a hands-off process,” he said. “We tried to fix [the language] two years ago, and we’re going to fix it again … I think, gently speaking, it’s not very good practice, period. The judge should not also be the plaintiff.”
The governor sent a letter to the legislature last week voicing those concerns. 
“The removal of that provision permits construction managers to select themselves to complete subcontracting work on school construction projects,” Lamont wrote. “That process, known as ‘self-performance,’ can lead to a lack of competition, a lack of transparency, higher costs, a higher risk of self-dealing, and exclusion of smaller subcontractors from the market.”

Asked about possibly adding the bill to his call for a special session, Lamont said that adding the language back into statute “seems pretty straightforward.”
Speaking after Friday’s State Bond Commission meeting, the governor was joined by Department of Administrative Services Commissioner Michelle Halloran Gilman, who said that if the language is not repealed in an “immediate time frame,” DAS will be involved in advising school districts about how to “proceed with caution” regarding their construction projects and the bidding process.
Gilman said that DAS raised concerns regarding the change in the bill’s language, and there have since been productive conversations. 

“We do recognize the legislature has been an excellent partner with us, in particular Rep. [Jeff] Currey,” Gilman said.
Currey was the one who originally proposed the language removal and ushered the bill through the Education Committee. 
Currey told the CT Mirror in May that allowing more leniency in the bidding process would provide more fiscal wiggle room for school districts with respect to costs.

“We are trying to contain costs when it comes to school construction, and I think that this is one of the ways in which you can do that,” Currey told the Mirror.