Gov. Ned Lamont’s office is scrambling to keep his reappointment of Connecticut’s top utilities regulator afloat this week amid a maelstrom of questions surrounding her relationships with both lawmakers and the state’s most powerful utilities.
Marissa P. Gillett, the chairwoman of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, is scheduled to go before lawmakers in a confirmation hearing on Thursday, Feb. 20 after being nominated by Lamont in January to serve a second, four-year term as a commissioner.
But her nomination hit a snag late last month when the state’s two largest utilities, Eversource and United Illuminating, filed a lawsuit accusing Gillett of abusing her authority by issuing hundreds of decisions on cases before PURA, without recording a vote of her fellow commissioners.
Then on Thursday, the Hartford Courant published emails and text messages between Gillett and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee and one of her most vocal supporters. The messages appear to show coordination over an op-ed submitted to The Connecticut Mirror in December by Steinberg and his co-chair, Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex.
Further complicating the question of Gillett’s confirmation are the desires of two lawmakers — a former House Republican and current Senate Democrat — to gain appointments to a pair of vacancies on PURA, along with the broader machinations required to make that happen and the increasingly sharp and personal rhetoric over Gillett’s leadership.
“It’s personal. It’s not even policy anymore. It’s personal,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford.
In a statement Thursday, Lamont spokesman Rob Blanchard said the governor was standing by Gillett and denied reports that her nomination was being paused to allow more time to build support among lawmakers.
“At a time when we need strong regulators, the legislature ought to act and confirm Commissioner Gillett,” Blanchard said.
As the first step in her confirmation process, Gillett must appear before the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee. Democrats currently hold a 13-8 edge on the committee, meaning they can afford no more than two defections if Republicans vote in a bloc against Gillett’s nomination.
One of those Democrats is state Sen. John Fonfara of Hartford, an influential political player with a 38-year tenure in the General Assembly, including a time as co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. Fonfara confirmed this week that he is interested in serving on PURA and that he has reservations about Gillett, who he sees as undermining grid-modernization goals by discouraging utility investment.
So far, he has declined an invitation to meet with Gillett.
“She’s been there almost five years, almost six years, and she’s got a record, and I’ve been looking at that record, and I think that tells me more,” Fonfara said.
Fonfara said his questions about Gillett are longstanding, unrelated to his desire to serve on PURA. While he declined to say whether he would ultimately support her nomination, he said he saw no need to recuse himself from the vote.
“If she’s there and I’m there, I’m not going there to pick a fight with her,” Fonfara said in an interview Wednesday night. “There’s too much to do. You know, look at my entire political career, my entire time in the legislature. I work with people that people thought I would never work with.”
On Thursday, he added a more conciliatory sentiment towards Gillett: “If I’m over there, I expect I’ll learn from her, and I think she’ll learn from me.”
Standing in Fonfara’s way is a longstanding ban against legislators accepting a job in the executive or judicial branches of government during their terms, even if they resign.
One potential workaround being discussed by lawmakers would take PURA out of the executive branch and make it a quasi-public agency. But while Lamont has expressed openness to calls to take PURA out of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and make it a standalone agency, he’s cool to the idea of making it quasi-public.
“I think generally, a lot of people don’t like quasi-publics because they’re sort of unregulated moons floating around the planet somewhere,” Lamont said earlier this week. “I think the system works pretty well.”
There are two openings on the five-member PURA board. Lamont has harbored hopes of bringing more industry or regulatory expertise to the authority, which long has been dominated by former lawmakers. Gillett, a former regulatory lawyer from Maryland, is the sole exception.
The Republican interested in a seat is former state Rep. Holly Cheeseman of East Lyme, who lost her race for a fifth term in November. Cheeseman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Cheeseman is supported by House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, who has criticized Lamont for leaving seats on PURA unfilled after lawmakers voted to expand its size from three members to five at the start of Lamont’s term in 2019. Still, Candelora said that debate is not influencing his opposition to Gillett.
“Whether Holly or John get on PURA is completely irrelevant for me. I made my pitch. I think he needs to go to five. I think he should add two more members. I think Holly would be a good contribution to Marissa, and that’s sort of where we are,” Candelora said. “And the governor, he’s got to take a position.”
Instead, Candelora zeroed in on Thursday’s story in the Hartford Courant about Gillett’s conversations with Steinberg, the Energy co-chair. In a statement, Candelora said the reporting “raises serious doubts about Chairman Gillett’s neutrality,” and he called for lawmakers to subpoena further records of those conversations before holding a vote.
The newspaper published copies of text messages between Gillett and Steinberg discussing an op-ed published in the CT Mirror on Dec. 19 criticizing claims made by the utilities that their businesses were being hurt by PURA’s regulatory approach. The piece was submitted by Steinberg and Needleman, though in one of her messages Gillett referred to “my draft” several days before the piece was published.
Both Steinberg and Needleman told the CT Mirror Thursday that the work was their own, and denied that Gillett had a hand in writing it. (Needleman, who Steinberg said wrote the “lion’s share” of the piece, said he did not recall specifics about the piece, but has generally solicited comments and edits on his writing from others, including Gillett).
In a statement Thursday, a PURA spokesperson said, “It is not unusual nor inappropriate to have dialogue with the Co-chairs of the Energy and Technology Committee or other policymakers on both sides of the aisle, as they draft and create new laws around energy. In fact, many of those conversations have and continue to occur during dozens of ‘PURA 101‘ community conversations with constituents, hosted by legislators and PURA over the past several months alone.”
Steinberg further questioned what the issue had to do with Gillett’s qualifications as commissioner or her reappointment.
Earlier in the week, Steinberg and other Democrats held a press conference in which they discussed the state’s high costs of electricity while praising Gillett’s performance at PURA. At that time, Steinberg accused the utilities of actively lobbying to block her reappointment, as well as the nomination of former state Rep. David Arconti, D-Danbury, to replace the long-serving Jack Betkoski, who retired after Lamont signaled it was time for a change. (Arconti is currently serving in an interim capacity on PURA.)
“Members of the utilities are contacting individual legislators, bad mouthing the candidates in order to undermine the votes on the Executive Nominations Committee,” Steinberg told reporters. “And I think it’s dastardly.”
In a statement this week, Eversource spokeswoman Jamie Ratliff said recent actions by PURA have led to Connecticut having “one of the worst regulatory environments in the country,” but denied that the company has pressured lawmakers to oppose Gillett’s reappointment. Lamont has said the utilities’ top leaders have made clear to him they want Gillett gone.
“We have no opinion on the makeup of PURA or who is appointed to serve, nor have we advocated one way or the other on any specific nominations — we simply want and expect the law to be upheld,” Ratliff said.
A spokesperson for UI declined to comment.
Gillett’s supporters argue that the friction between her and the utilities is a welcome sign that PURA moving on from what has been described as a historically “cozy” relationship between regulators and the monopoly interests they are tasked with keeping in check. Among the groups publicly backing her nomination are environmental advocates such as the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters.
“If the utilities succeed in dismantling PURA’s ability to regulate effectively, they will be in charge of Connecticut’s environmental future,” CTLCV Executive Director Lori Brown said in a statement this week. “That means higher costs, fewer consumer protections, and policies that prioritize profit over people & planet.”
Her opponents, meanwhile, note that after several years at the helm electric rates in Connecticut remain some of the highest in the nation, though most concede the biggest portion of electric bills is the deregulated cost of generating power, which is beyond the control of PURA or the utilities.
“We’re at rock bottom in terms of energy,” said Senate Republican Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, who serves as a member of the committee reviewing her nomination. “Based on that alone, it’s hard to get to a ‘yes.'”
Harding said he’s not sure whether or not Republicans will vote as a bloc on Gillett’s nomination, and he said he remained open to hearing what she has to say before the committee next week.
Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, the co-chair of the nominations committee, said he has not polled the members to determine whether she has the votes.
During an appearance earlier this week on WTIC’s “Brian and Company,” Lamont was asked to weigh in on the nomination fight and Gillett’s chances of remaining at PURA. Her current nomination is for another four-year term as commissioner. Separately, her two-year term as PURA chair is due to expire in July.
“I think so, but I only think so,” the governor said.
Ritter, meanwhile, expressed exasperation over the drama surrounding her nomination.
“I’ve tried to encourage people, including the governor — let’s just stop,” Ritter said. “This is not going to get better, it’s only going to get worse, and let’s find the path forward.”
This story was originally published in the Connecticut Mirror Feb. 13, 2025.