CT to pay Miguel Cardona $250k to consult for commission he leads

Earlier this year, Gov. Ned Lamont signed an executive order creating the Connecticut Career Pathway Commission, a new advisory board tasked with helping students and workers in the state find jobs in an economy that is being shaped by artificial intelligence, automation and global competition.

In a press release, the Democratic governor announced that he was appointing dozens of education officials, business owners, labor leaders and other experts to the new commission, and he emphasized that all of those members would serve the state as “unpaid volunteers.”

But wait, what about his friends? Who’s gonna take care of them? Not to worry; Ned’s got it covered.

But documents reviewed this week by the Connecticut Mirror show that former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, who also served as the state’s education commissioner from 2019 to early 2021 and was named by Lamont to chair the commission, will be paid up to a quarter of a million dollars as a consultant for the new commission.

The records show that Lamont’s Office of Workforce Strategy entered into a contract that will pay Cardona Solutions LLC, a consulting firm created by the former education secretary, $250,000 to “facilitate” the commission’s work, analyze the state’s current career pathways and produce a report that the commission would send to the governor and General Assembly.

For context, the contract is worth more money than Cardona earned in a year serving as Lamont’s education commissioner.

State officials confirmed on Friday that the state did not solicit bids from other consulting companies prior to drafting the contract for Cardona’s business.

Connecticut law generally requires state officials to put contracts, especially larger ones such as Cardona’s, out to bid so multiple businesses can compete for the work and the state can get the best deal for taxpayers.

But Kelli-Marie Vallieres, who leads the state Office of Workforce Strategy, said her office chose to waive those procurement rules in Cardona’s case because they were in a time crunch and because Cardona was uniquely qualified for the job.

This would seem to sum it up nicely:

House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-Branford, said the Lamont administration’s explanation that they didn’t have time to seek bids from other companies is “a cop out.”

“It’s just a way of masking the fact that this is a political patronage job,” Candelora said.

More on this and our octogenarian Post Road protesters over at Greenwich Sentinel: