Lawmakers have finally scheduled a public hearing to discuss the renomination of Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) Chairman Marissa Gillett.
Gillett, who’s faced strong criticism from utilities and Republicans, will get that hearing on Feb. 20, a key step in her bid for a second term atop the state’s energy regulator.
The two co-chairs of the executive and Legislative Nominations Committee couldn’t be reached for comment on why the hearing didn’t happen sooner.
Some of her biggest supporters in the legislature voice frustration in the delay.
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“It's just a shame that this has been caught up in politics and a lot of innuendo,” Rep. Johnathan Steinberg (D-Westport) said.
But critics are pointing to newly disclosed messages between Gillett and Steinberg, a co-chair of the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, as a sign Gillett isn’t impartial.
They show Gillett talking with Steinberg about a draft just days before Steinberg and committee co-Chairman Sen. Norm Needleman (D-Essex) published an opinion article slamming Eversource and Avangrid.
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The messages were first reported by the Hartford Courant and obtained by NBC Connecticut under the Freedom of Information Act. Gillett also expressed concern about the messages being disclosed under FOIA.
“As the light of day is being shined on this issue and the transparency in this process, there’s concern about the impartiality,” Rep. Vincent Candelora (R-Minority Leader) said.
He said Gillett is supposed to be neutral as the head of an agency that rules on rate cases, but said the messages raise questions if she can do that.
Avangrid, meanwhile, has threatened to sue the two lawmakers if they don’t take back comments they made in the article. Neither utility responded to a request for comment.
Needleman and Steinberg both said Gillett played no role in writing their article.
“My opinion is this is a massive distraction and part of their orchestrated campaign to make sure she doesn’t get reconfirmed,” Needleman said.
The two lawmakers say Gillett has held the two utilities accountable and this is part of a campaign to derail her renomination bid.
Staffers for Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Connecticut) issued a statement echoing comments he made earlier this week supporting Gillett’s renomination.
“She deserves to be chairman,” he said after an unrelated press conference Tuesday. “She's probably one of those first people as chairman with strong regulatory experience.”
The scheduling of the hearing would seem to be a good sign that Gillett has the support to get a second term.
But Sandra Slack Glover, tapped by Lamont in 2023 for the state Supreme Court, withdrew from her bid just days after a public hearing of her own.
Glover withdrew after the resurfacing of a 2017 letter she signed in support of Amy Coney Barrett being nominated as a federal appellate judge.
Barrett was later appointed under President Donald Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court and sided with other conservative justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Glover said in her hearing that she believed the Supreme Court was wrong in that decision, but that was not enough to save her nomination.
