An Ethical Dilemma.

Even the most devout observer of state government probably doesn’t recognize the name of Priscilla Dickman, but her case raises serious questions about ethics in government and how best to pursue purity.

Dickman is a former medical technologist with the University of Connecticut Health Center who ended up on trial in September before the four year old, reconstituted, Office of State Ethics. She stands accused of using state office equipment, including her e-mail account, to conduct personal business on state time. She admits she did so, but argues - so did just about everyone else she worked with and questions why she has been singled out for special punishment.

During the month of September, Dickman’s trial before the ethics panel was regular nightly viewing on CTN – Connecticut’s version of C-SPAN. While I never watched a full episode of this particular reality show I did see enough to conclude that something had gone terribly awry with the system. Right there, on cable TV, I watched as hundreds of state employee man hours and thousands of dollars in attorney fees spiraled down the drain in pursuit of what exactly? A world where no Connecticut taxpayer need ever fear that a state employee might misuse an e-mail account? Capital felony cases are settled with less litigation than the Dickman matter.

To be fair to the prosecution (which is difficult for me), Ms. Dickman was not accused of simply using her state e-mail to check on her family, or order a new fleece from L.L. Bean. She is accused of conducting work related to a part time jewelry business. Even stipulating to the serious charges against her – taking an order for gold loop earrings without a license – isn’t this the kind of infraction that could have and should have been dealt with by her managers at the UCONN Health Center? My own answer to my own rhetorical question is: Yes.

Setting aside the misuse of office equipment and e-mail accounts, if Dickman, or any other state employee, is wasting time – at the expense of the taxpayer – on activities not related to her state job, then that employee should be disciplined and perhaps even dismissed from state employment. There is no need for a trial here.

Defenders of the process will argue that principles are at stake. If the ethics commission were to look the other way in this matter it would send the wrong message. The right thing to do is pursue the case, regardless of expense, so every state employee knows the potential consequences of crossing the line. Defenders of process often wage their battles at the peril of common sense and the Dickman case appears to be the perfect example.

Ms. Dickman has admitted that she used state equipment on state time for non work related purposes. Her defense is “so does everyone else.” In the four year history of the new ethics office this is the first case that has gone to trial. All others have been settled in what amounts to a plea bargain. What went wrong here?

Former congressman Chris Shays once said, when it comes to ethics in government we tend to swallow elephants and choke on flies. I may have the wildlife wrong, but you get the point. After ten years of high profile corruption cases in Connecticut, we have a heightened interest in making clear our devotion to strong ethics, but that devotion can lead to its own perversions. We should use any review of the Dickman case to learn how to swat the flies and so we can focus on elephants.

As published in the Hartford Business Journal.

Editor's Note: The photo of the State Supreme Court has nothing to do with the Dickman case other than the fact that most agree it is a symbol of justice.

Editor's Note - Moving On.Org.

By now you may have heard (The Laurel).

My wife and I are moving to Washington D.C.

She landed a great job there and in a few weeks we will relocate from Connecticut and I will begin my search for a new job and possibly a new career. It will potentially be my fourth career since graduating college.

It means that after a few weeks off from daily blogging, I will draw the curtain fully on Media Attache by the end of the month. I have two more Hartford Business Journal columns scheduled to publish in the next two weeks and after that I have to concentrate on selling our house, finding a new place to live in Washington (which I am going to try to avoid calling "D.C.") and finding that next career.

I have been blogging since 2006 and I have enjoyed it. Except for a few breaks, I posted almost every weekday and worked under the general rule that it shouldn't take me more than 45 minutes any given morning. Because if you let it, blogging can take up way too much time.

I'd like to thank everyone who checked in on a daily basis, commented, gave me news tips or gave me private encouragement to keep it up.

By the way - every once in a while someone asks me where I got the name for this blog. Here's the story. I was being interviewed once by a reporter based in London and at the end of the interview he asked me, in his British accent, if my title was "media attache?" I said, "No, but I really like the way that sounds and someday I'm going to find a way to use it." And so I did.

If I return to the world of blogging - I'll find a way to let you know. In the meantime, I'll keep this site live as a good place to archive more than three years worth of HBJ columns.

Thank you again for supporting this effort.

~ Dean Pagani

HBJ - Never Mind.

As the 2010 campaign season approaches, candidates for the legislature and statewide office face a difficult decision about how to pay for their campaigns. The relatively new public financing system is – as a practical matter – on pause at a critical moment in the campaign cycle.

The problem is especially difficult for candidates running for governor who can’t be sure whether the public campaign money they are working toward qualifying for will be available to them next year, or if they will be forced at the last minute to switch gears and begin raising money from private sources.

Earlier this year, a federal court judge struck down Connecticut’s new campaign finance law and declared it unconstitutional. His main concern was how the system treated minor party candidates. He said it gave an unfair advantage to candidates endorsed by the Democratic and Republican parties. The judge’s original ruling ordered an immediate halt to the new system, but that order was put on hold pending an appeal by the state.

It should come as no surprise that campaign finance reforms written by incumbents who are members of the two major parties would give an advantage to major party candidates, but there it is. The decision came as a big surprise to the authors of the legislation. The Connecticut political class – still betting that posing as ethics puritans is popular with the voters – has launched an all out appeal effort.

The legislature isn’t sure what to do. The Government, Administration and Elections Committee held an informational forum at the end of October and decided there are no good options. The legislature could meet quickly and try to address the concerns raised by the federal court ruling, but there is no guarantee they’d get it right. Another option is to wait for the appeal process to take its course, but that could take until the middle of next year and throw the entire campaign season into turmoil as candidates scramble for cash.

It appears obvious that the drafters of Connecticut’s public finance law knew they were laying out a questionable course, because they included what is called a “reversion clause.” In plain language it says; if someone challenges this new law and we can’t fix it by April of 2010 we will go back to the old way of doing things. Candidates will have to raise campaign money on their own under the law as it existed in 2005. It should have been named the “never mind clause.”

It is generally believed that a credible campaign for governor in Connecticut requires about $4 - $6 million. That’s why under the public financing system, qualifying candidates can access up to $5 million for the primary and the general election. Changes in how campaigns are run may have already made that number too small, but even if it is enough, there is no time left to raise it by pre-2005 means.

For the last five years, Democratic and Republican operatives have debated whether it makes sense for a candidate for governor to use the public financing system, or risk scorn by raising campaign money through private sources. Shame has forced most to conclude they have no choice but to “volunteer” to accept public funds.

Experience demonstrates that it takes at least eighteen months to raise $5 million one donor at a time. Now, with less than a year to go before the election, the future of the new system is in doubt, giving any candidate who wants to ensure he can compete a good reason and a solid defense to forgo public financing.

As published in the Hartford Business Journal.

HBJ - Small Change.

Although differences between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and the views of candidate Barack Obama defined the presidential campaign of 2008, it is difficult to see much difference between the two now that Obama is in charge.

Particularly with regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ten months into the new administration there has been little change. President Obama is drawing down forces in Iraq, but that policy had been put in place before he took office. Despite a growing sense that the war in Afghanistan is going nowhere, there are no signs the new president intends to withdraw U.S. troops there – in fact – it appears he plans to increase troop levels as part of his campaign promise to finish the job.

Slowly, the new administration is moving toward closing the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that has been used since September 11 to hold detainees captured during the Bush war on terror. As it turns out, there is no easy answer to where to put the prisoners held there. They are trapped in a zone that puts them between the civilian criminal justice system and the standards applied to prisoners of war. There is no rush to settle the matter.

While Obama’s honeymoon on domestic policy issues ended several months ago, he is fully exploiting an extended honeymoon in the area of defense policy. In some cases, he has actually been more aggressive than Bush in executing the previous administration’s policies.

In addition to the troop build up in Afghanistan, the president has quietly, but frequently authorized drone attacks on terrorist targets in Pakistan. During the summer, he authorized a U.S. Navy rescue of a cargo ship captain being held by pirates.

The most dramatic expression of the Obama military policy came in mid-September when U.S. special forces, operating off of Navy ships, staged a helicopter ambush on a senior al-Qaeda leader in Somalia. Several helicopters attacked a convoy of armed vehicles, destroyed them, killed the primary target, landed on the road, collected the body for identification and seized two surviving members of the group for questioning. Reports said several days of tracking took place before the successful mission.

It is hard not to read this intense military activity as anything but an escalation of the strategies first put in place by the Bush administration. Even though the number of U.S. causalities in Afghanistan has increased in the last ten months, the American people seem comfortable with the overall policy. As the president campaigns for his domestic agenda the military campaigns move forward quietly – out of plain view.

There has been no effort by the Obama administration to harvest political points from its battlefield advances. As an extension of his personality, Obama seems to believe being tough without flaunting it, sends a more potent message to our adversaries than landing a jet on an aircraft carrier, or taking some other form of victory lap.

Obama has signaled his respect for the professionalism of the armed forces through his willingness to authorize the strategic use of force and his resistance to the need to take credit when all goes well.

The similarity between the Bush war on terror and Obama’s approach remains. It leaves you to wonder what Obama has learned since taking office about the nature of the threats against this country? What has he seen, or learned, that has led him to conclude President Bush had few options to choose from? And what has led Obama to make the same choices. For now, the major military difference between the two presidents is style, not substance.

As published in the Hartford Business Journal.

HBJ - Death on Cable.

We don’t wait for anything anymore, not even death. And we certainly don’t waste any time thinking about what is next once someone is gone.

In the 21st century, life is fast paced. I remember reading an essay in college by a 19th century writer who was opposed to the railroad because he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to, or have the need, to travel at speeds of 10 miles per hour or more. What would he think of the world we live in today where an emerging problem is texting while driving?

Nowhere is our fast paced lifestyle more evident than in the world of cable news where the need to discuss what is happening is always pushing up against the constraints of real time. The need to break the next part of the story often kicks common courtesy to the curb.

I first noticed this uncomfortable situation in 2006 when South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson suffered a brain hemorrhage in the middle of the afternoon at the Capitol. Although the news media had no solid information on why he had been rushed to the hospital and barely any on his general condition, within two hours of the emergency, news anchors were asking political reporters about how his successor would be picked, who the likely candidates might be and how Johnson’s death would affect the balance of power in the U.S. Senate and the president’s agenda.

Today, Tim Johnson is very much alive and as his website says, is “Working for South Dakota.”

Johnson is not the first public figure to be spoken of in the past tense prematurely, but he’s the one who got my attention, because in his case all pretenses of the courtesies surrounding someone’s illness or death were dropped. At the exact moment he was introduced to a national audience as the senator suffering “stroke like symptoms” his replacement was being sought.

Jumping forward to the brain cancer diagnosis of Senator Ted Kennedy, the inevitable was contemplated at the speed of light. For fifteen months there was talk of how the Senate would function without its most well known member. Kennedy himself jumped ahead on the life/death time continuum by writing the governor about changing the law so an interim successor could be named before the special election. If the soon to be departed himself is willing to talk about it, why should the rest of us hold back? Thus began a very public debate over how the still living Kennedy should be replaced.

It can’t be stopped at this point. We can’t turn back the evolution of how we talk about death and politics. It’s just the way it is and if you are uncomfortable; you need to get over it.

There’s another aspect of cable news and death that has the power to change history. The death of any public figure becomes an instant reality TV mini-series - broadcast live. But in the one remaining nod to old school courtesy no one ever speaks ill of the dead during these tele-dramas.
From Ronald Reagan, to Anna Nicole Smith, to Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy - it’s all tragedy and greatness all the time. When it’s all over, the video is packaged and sold as a DVD boxed set, with any controversy removed to make for more enjoyable viewing.

It’s just worth noting that there was a time when we waited for someone to actually die before we plotted life without them. We would even wait a week after the funeral just to be polite.

As published in the Hartford Business Journal.

HBJ - Deference.

With all due deference to seniority in public office, recent events have me thinking more about the value of term limits. The issue comes to mind as the Connecticut political world waits while Senator Chris Dodd and Governor Jodi Rell decide whether they will once again seek the nomination of their parties to run again for the offices they currently hold.

Tradition usually dictates that if an incumbent wants to run for re-election, all other candidates stand aside to avoid an intra-party fight for the nomination. In the last fifty years, that has been the standard in Connecticut with three notable exceptions, on the Democratic side, that probably changed history.

A challenge by Lieutenant Governor Robert Killian against Ella Grasso led to her re-election and the ten year administration of Governor William O’Neill. A 1990 challenge by former Congressman Bruce Morrison to O’Neill, led in part to the election of Lowell Weicker. The third, was the 2006 challenge by Ned Lamont to Joseph Lieberman which led to Lieberman’s election as an independent.

This kind of unsportsmanlike conduct in politics should probably be encouraged rather than discouraged in the name of competition. The practice of granting deference to the incumbent has the practical effect of making the officeholder almost unbeatable. Incumbency comes very close to ownership.

Campaigns consume at least a year, depending on the office. If an incumbent faces no challenge for his party’s nomination, while the other side is locked in a long internal battle, the incumbent almost always emerges with a clear path to victory. The possibility that the Republican candidates will destroy each other, over the next year, is the one obvious factor that keeps Senator Dodd in the race despite his low approval ratings.

Once a public office is considered a “safe seat” it’s probably time for a change and the rules should allow for it. Term limits enacted through law are one way to go, but another way to limit years in office would be for the parties themselves to enact rules that allow for no more than one free pass to renomination. This is of course unlikely since the role of the party is to win elections by putting forth the strongest candidate.

Senator Ted Kennedy served Massachusetts for 46 years. Can it be that there was no other candidate, from either party, who would have done as well, if not better, for at least half that time? Were his ideas always the best? Did he really represent the views of his constituents the entire time?

State Senator George “Doc” Gunther was the longest serving member of the Connecticut Senate – serving into his 80’s. I was once told that he was the kind of incumbent that could knock on every door in his district the day before the election, make an obscene gesture to whoever answered the door and still get re-elected by a landslide the next day.

That’s great for Senator Gunther and the many public servants like him, but you have to question whether it is good for the state and the nation as a whole.

Keep in mind that elected public service is not supposed to be like every other job. You shouldn’t start young and retire old. You should start a bit later, after gaining some life experience that can be shared, and leave while you still have the energy to work at an uncommon pace.

I admit that certain benefits might be derived from the quirky nature of institutional memory, but on the other hand, good ideas and new leadership should not be forced to wait because of tradition.

As published in the Hartford Business Journal.