It was bad enough when former Connecticut State Senator Louis Deluca (R-Waterbury) plead pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge last year for engaging a waste management tycoon with mob connections to threaten his grand-daughter's spouse. Now it turns out that under the State Senate's ethic's laws, that solicitation should have been declared a gift from a lobbyist.
The Hartford Courant reveals:
"DeLuca decided to speak out Wednesday because a long-running ethics complaint against him was finally settled this week. In the stipulated settlement with the state ethics office, DeLuca agreed to pay $2,500 on a complaint that he essentially received a gift from a registered lobbyist when he agreed that now-convicted Danbury trash magnate James Galante would have someone "pay a visit'' to the husband of DeLuca's grand daughter because DeLuca believed that the man was physically abusing her.
Under state law, Galante was deemed to be engaged in lobbying because his trash-hauling companies were registered lobbyists in Connecticut."
Deluca also noted in his press conference that:
"...legislators were hypocrites for investigating his misdemeanor conviction last year and refusing to investigate numerous Democratic lawmakers regarding drunken driving, sexual abuse, engaging in a bar fight, witnessing a bribe, forging an application for public campaign funds, and having an affair with a legislative liaison."
The moral of the story, I suppose, is for politicians to "pay their own visits". You never know if the kids you engage to pull up your opponent's yard signs will turn out to be registered lobbyists.
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