Criticism of Connecticut’s top utilities regulator ratcheted up again this week, after it was revealed in court that she had deleted text messages being sought by a pair of gas utilities in an ongoing lawsuit challenging last year’s cuts to gas rates.
During a hearing in that case Monday, an attorney for Public Utilities Regulatory Authority Chair Marissa Gillett said text messages on the chair’s personal cell phone were set to automatically delete after 30 days. Among the messages that were deleted, the attorney said, were texts with a state lawmaker who had penned an op-ed in the Connecticut Mirror harshly criticizing the state’s two largest utilities: Eversource and United Illuminating’s parent company, Avangrid.
The admission was first reported by the Hartford Courant, and immediately prompted a fresh round of rebukes from lawmakers.
“I think this was a part of a systematic process of not being transparent,” said House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, who called for Gillett to resign. “It speaks to a lot of the problems that have come out of that agency.”
Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, said he would like the legislature’s newly-created Government Oversight Committee to look into the matter. “I think we need more answers,” he said.
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, expressed exasperation over the controversy, saying that he’s advised lawmakers in the past to avoid discussing public business on their personal devices.
“This is the danger when you do this, you don’t have the same software and functions,” to ensure messages are properly archived, Ritter said. “I would be concerned if it were anybody, not just her.”
Representatives for Gillett and PURA did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Wednesday.
Gillett, who has led PURA since 2019, survived a tough renomination battle earlier this year in which many Republicans questioned her leadership style as well as the state’s persistently high cost of electricity. Lawmakers ultimately voted to confirm her appointment to a second, four-year term at PURA, though her tenure as chair is separately due to expire next month.
Gov. Ned Lamont has yet to say whether or not he will reappoint Gillett as chair, though he defended her Wednesday when asked about calls for her to step aside.
“It’s a little ironic that the person who is most likely to hold Eversource accountable, which is Marissa Gillett, and do everything she can to protect the consumer in terms of pricing, is the same person that they want out of there and replaced with another retired legislator,” Lamont said.
When asked specifically if he had concerns about the deletion of her text messages, however, Lamont said he was not familiar with the controversy — or auto-deletion technology, in general.
“If we think there should be no auto-deletes allowed on any, you know, government phone, we should make that a rule,” he said.
Government employees are required to abide by retention schedules for public records set for each state agency, including work-related communications on their public and private cell phones.
“We generally discourage the use of personal devices, because it can get complicated, switching back and forth,” said Colleen Murphy, the executive director of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Coalition.
The op-ed in question has become a key point of contention in a lawsuit by two of Avangrid’s gas utilities challenging the regulator’s decision last year to cut gas rates. The piece, titled “Don’t believe the utility company propaganda,” was published on Dec. 19 under the names of the two co-chairs of the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee: state Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex and state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport.
In February, the Courant published text messages from Steinberg obtained through a public records requests in which Gillett promised to send him a “draft” several days before the op-ed was published. Steinberg responded that he “should be available to review release/op Ed.”
Soon after that story was published, Avangrid’s attorneys sought additional information about the drafting of the op-ed through legal discovery, arguing that its authors showed a clear bias against the company. If Gillett played a role in drafting the piece, they argued, she should have been prevented from participating in the case that ultimately resulted in PURA slashing the utility’s gas rates by $35 million.
Both Gillett and the two lawmakers have repeatedly denied that she had a role in writing the piece. Attorneys for PURA have argued that word “draft” in her message referred to a piece of proposed legislation.
“I have said emphatically I never discussed any aspect of this editorial with her ever, other than to say after the fact that we got a good response,” Steinberg said Wednesday.
Asked whether, in hindsight, the preservation of Gillett’s texts would have avoided such a dispute, however, Steinberg said he agreed. “A lot of these things that are being alleged, at the time seemed pretty innocuous,” he said.
In a series of increasingly accusatory legal filings over the last several months, attorneys for the utilities and PURA have fought over the release of additional records, including the “draft” referenced in Gillett’s text.
In one brief filed on June 6, Assistant Attorney General Seth Hollander, who is representing PURA, said both Gillett and her chief of staff, Theresa Govert, had reviewed their work and personal phones and not found any relevant messages concerning the op-ed.
When pressed about the matter by Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik on Monday, however, Hollander conceded that Gillett’s messages with Steinberg had been subject to the auto-delete function on her phone, and that efforts to restore them from backup were unsuccessful.
“With respect to this conversation that took place on two different days, on that personal cell phone, those are not retrievable,” Hollander said, according to an official transcript of the hearing.
On Wednesday, Budzik issued an order allowing Avangrid’s attorneys to depose both Gillett and Govert within the next two weeks to determine the extent to which either “may have reviewed and/or commented upon the December 19th op-ed.” Attorneys will also be allowed to ask about the deletion of any documents subject to the judge’s previous discovery order.
A copy of the judge’s order, which was not immediately available online Wednesday, was provided to the Connecticut Mirror by Avangrid.
Representatives for both Avangrid and the attorney general’s office declined to comment publicly on the case Wednesday, instead referring to the court record.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” John Cerreta, an attorney for the utilities, said during the hearing Monday, according to the transcript. “We need to find out whether these responsive documents exist, what they are, whether they’ve been deleted, and whether they can be recovered.”
The escalation of the dispute between PURA and Avangrid came this week as Wall Street credit-rating agency Moody’s downgraded the rating of the state’s largest electric utility, Eversource, citing Connecticut’s “least credit supportive utility regulatory environment in the US.”
Executives at both Eversource and Avangrid have repeatedly complained that regulators’ decisions in Connecticut have stifled their ability to access credit necessary to make investments in energy and gas infrastructure across the state.
CT Mirror reporter Andrew Brown contributed to this article.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
