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Letter of the Law vs. Spirit of the Law
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Business New Haven
9/11/1995
By: BNH
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While business people are inclined to give new Gov. John G. Rowland generally high marks for his initiatives in scaling back costs and cutting red tape in Connecticut, there remains the uneasy feeling that the Rowland people, new to their elevated station in Hartford, are above
all out to get theirs.
That feeling was made tangible August 9 when
it was announced that the $300,000-per annum contract to produce the Connecticut Vacation Guide had been awarded to Connecticut Magazine, published by the Madison Avenue-based Communications International. That company is owned by Rowland's top economic and development official, Arthur Hill Diedrick.
At the time of the announcement, Diedrick was acting commissioner of the state's Department of Economic Development (DED), which awards the contract for the tourism guide. Shortly thereafter, Rowland announced that DED and the Department of Housing would be merged effective in October, and that the new, full-time, commissioner, Peter Ellef, would report both to Rowland and his new “chairman of development”: Arthur Diedrick.
Reaction to the awarding of the three-year contract was swift and unequivocal. Both the New Haven Register and the Hartford Courant editorialized against it,
the latter noting that, “The Rowland administration's cavalier attitude toward entangling
public-private sector relationships is striking.”
Diedrick's defense of the contract award served only to fan the flames. The recommendation that Connecticut Magazine be given the contract over companies like the New York Times Custom Publishing and the Hartford-based Parker Media, which previously had done a creditable job of producing the tourism guide, was made by the “independent” Connecticut Tourism Council. The final decision, Diedrick said, was made by his DED deputy, Peter N. Dibble, without input from the acting commissioner himself.
That explanation defies common sense. As the Courant editorial noted, “Although Mr. Dibble may be a man of high integrity, it's hard to imagine that he, like any loyal employee, wouldn't want to please his boss.” Both the Hartford paper and the Register made the point that, if state ethics laws permitted such an
obvious conflict of interest, they ought to be amended. And soon.
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