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Editorial: No One Else to Blame
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Business New Haven
12/22/2003
By: BNH
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If there is one thing that stands out about 2003, it is that this was a year in which corporate governance issues came to the fore in some unexpected ways.
Most of those ways were not especially positive. Nationally, the downfalls of once-high flying Worldcom, Enron, Martha Stewart and others gave greed a bad name - once again.
Locally, the crash and burn of Joe Ganim reminded us that the financial temptations of higher elective office are not always shunned by those in a position to taste them. And not elected leaders only - the leaders of once unassailable community institutions including New Haven Savings Band and Yale-New Haven Hospital demonstrated, sadly, how decades and even centuries of good will-building can be undone in the blink of an avaricious eye.
Many of these developments have brought a renewed focus on what is expected of leaders in both business and government.
When John Rowland was elected to the state's highest office in 1994, he promised to run a tight ship, and a responsible one, exercising restraint in spending and sound fiscal judgment.
Now, it appears that poor judgment in his personal financial affairs may well be his undoing. At the very least, it seems certain to undermine his effectiveness throughout the balance of his third (and presumably final) term in office - if he is permitted to complete it.
As this edition of BNH went to press a week before Christmas, that was by no means a certainty. A Quinnipiac University poll released December 17 showed state residents evenly divided in their opinions of whether Rowland should remain in office or resign.
Moreover, as so often occurs when the media smells blood, the revelations of questionable financial dealings continued to be unearthed. Shortly after entering office, the new governor became a partner in a private development consortium, First Development Group, which included a paving contractor that had been awarded a not-insubstantial amount of state work.
While this arrangement may not technically have been illegal, it underscored the governor's dubious judgment about creating the appearance of conflict. And, coming on the heels of revelations of having accepted free work on his Litchfield vacation cottage, the new story compounded Rowland's PR disaster, which now threatens to undo him.
Although Rowland issued a public apology, his instincts always are to counterattack. A tragicomic vignette took place December 17 at a Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce breakfast, when First Lady Patricia Rowland, parodying the governor's own annual parody of Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas," seemed to blame the scandal on the media, particularly the Hartford Courant and "the media stations" for their "poison pens."
Over the last nine years the Courant, many would argue, has done a terrible job of concealing the fact that it wants to get rid of John Rowland in the worst way. Atop a December 15 section of letters to the editor about the Rowland affair was the headline "Readers React: Rowland Must Go" - even though some of the letters expressed support for the embattled governor.
But the Courant didn't trick John Rowland into accepting freebies for his Bantam Lake cottage. Neither did the state's major TV stations, or the New Haven Register-owned dailies, or anyone else.
He did it all by himself. And that - above and beyond any modest personal financial gain the governor may have reaped - is what troubles us regular Connecticut folks most of all.
By the time you read this, John Rowland may have a new job: ex-governor. If that happens, it won't be due to poor judgment on the part of the Hartford Courant.
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