Richard Blumenthal

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Richard Blumenthal in 2008

Richard Blumenthal is the 23rd elected Attorney General of Connecticut.

1 Education
2 Career
3 Campaign for Governor?
4 Criticism
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Education

Blumenthal graduated with honors from Harvard College (Phi Beta Kappa; Magna Cum Laude) and Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal.

[edit] Career

Blumenthal had a brief career as a newspaper reporter for The Washington Post. He was hired by Benjamin C. Bradlee, editor of the Post, and worked on the Metro desk.

He served as United States Attorney for Connecticut from 1977 to 1981 and as the chief federal prosecutor of that state successfully prosecuted many major cases against drug traffickers, organized crime, white collar criminals, civil rights violators, consumer frauds, and environmental polluters. Attorney General Blumenthal also served as administrative assistant to United States Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff, as aide to United States Senator Daniel P. Moynihan when Moynihan was Assistant to President Richard Nixon, and as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. From 1981 to 1986, he was a volunteer counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Before he became Attorney General, Blumenthal was a member of the Connecticut state Senate from 1987-90 and the state House from 1984-87. He was first elected as the 23rd Attorney General in 1990 and was re-elected in 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006. On October 10, 2002 he was awarded the Raymond E. Baldwin Award for Public Service by the Quinnipiac University School of Law. [1]

[edit] Big East and ACC

Attorney General Blumenthal played a pivotal role in one of the biggest college athletics stories of the decade; expansion of the Atlantic Coast Conference and the departures of Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech from the Big East. He led efforts by the Big East football schools (Virginia Tech, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, and West Virginia) in legal proceedings against the Atlantic Coast Conference, the University of Miami and Boston College, accusing them of improper disclosure of confidential information and of conspiring to weaken the Big East. [2] These suits cost the schools involved over $2 million in just the first four months of litigation that proceeded for over two years. [3] The lawsuit against the ACC was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, though it was refiled later. [4] A declaratory judgement by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts exonerated Boston College in the matter. Virginia Tech accepted an invitation from the ACC and withdrew from the suit to remove themselves from the awkward position of suing their new conference.

Although all of the suits failed in court, a secret out of court settlement was eventually reached. [5] The details, that each school received $1 million, were disclosed after the Hartford Courant filed a Freedom of Information request to obtain relevant documents which were not made public by the Attorney General. [6] Although Attorney General Blumenthal insisted in a statement that the settlement protected Connecticut taxpayers "critical investment in the UConn football program", press accounts detailed that the amount of the settlement covered less than half of the legal fees that each school incurred from participating in the litigation. (e.g., "Legal fees in Big East lawsuit top $2 million" by Mickey Furfari, Charleston Daily Post, Thursday, June 16, 2006)

[edit] Regional transmission organization

In 2003 Blumenthal, along with outgoing Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, and consumer advocates from Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire, opposed "the formation of a regional transmission organization (RTO) that would merge three Northeast and mid-Atlantic power operators, called Independent Service Operators (ISOs), into a single super-regional RTO." [7] In a press release he is quoted as saying "This fatally flawed RTO proposal will raise rates, reduce accountability and reward market manipulation. It will increase the power and profits of transmission operators with an immediate $40 million price tag for consumers." [8] The opposition was due to a report authored by Synapse Energy Economics, Inc., a Cambridge-based energy consulting firm, which alleged that consumers would be worse off under the merger. [9]

[edit] Interstate air pollution

In 1997, both Blumenthal and Governor John G. Rowland petitioned the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address interstate air pollution problems created from Midwest and southeastern sources. [10] The petition was filed in accordance with Section 126 of the Clean Air Act, which allows a United States state to request pollution reductions from out-of-state sources that contribute significantly to its air quality problems.

In 2003 his office, along with eleven other states, filed suit to prevent what they claimed was the "changes that threaten to gut the New Source Review (NSR) section of the federal Clean Air Act." Specifically, they objected to the "new regulation [that] states that any modification costing up to 20 percent of the replacement cost of the unit will be considered routine maintenance – and therefore exempt from pollution controls, even if the plant modification produces much higher levels of air pollution." [11] The suit filed in conjunction with New York, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. A number of local governments, including the New York City and various Connecticut municipalities, were also plaintiffs in the suit.

[edit] Stanley Works

On May 10, 2002 both he and Connecticut State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier helped to stop the hostile takeover of New Britain-based Stanley Works, a major Connecticut employer, by filing a lawsuit alleging that the move to reincorporate in Bermuda based on a shareholder's vote of May 9 [12] was "rife with voting irregularities." The agreement to temporarily halt the move was signed by New Britain Superior Court Judge Marshall Berger. [13] On June 3 Blumenthal referred the matter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for further investigation [14] and on June 25 he testified before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means that "Long-time American corporations with operations in other countries can dodge tens of millions of dollars in federal taxes by the device of reincorporating in another country" by "simply [filing] incorporation papers in a country with friendly tax laws, open a post-office box and hold an annual meeting there" and that Stanley Works, along with "Cooper Industries, Seagate Technologies, Ingersoll-Rand and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, to name but a few, have also become pseudo-foreign corporations for the sole purpose of saving tax dollars." Blumenthal stated that "Corporations proposing to reincorporate to Bermuda, such as Stanley, often tell shareholders that there is no material difference in the law" but said that this was not the case and was misleading to their shareholders. [15] In order to rectify this situation he championed the Corporate Patriot Enforcement Act to close tax loopholes. [16]

Blumenthal's work was not without criticism. On May 9, 2003 the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial stating that "Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and GOP Congresswoman Nancy Johnson will no doubt now want to take some responsibility for the company's decision this week to lay off 1,000 workers and close nine facilities." [17]

[edit] MySpace

In May 2007 Blumenthal demanded that the social networking site Myspace turn over a list of known sex offenders who used the site. After initial refusal, MySpace turned over a list of 5,000 names, including 100 from Connecticut. Blumenthal planned to turn this information over to law enforcement to ascertain if any probation violations had occurred. [18] A Blumenthal critic, Republican state chairman Chris Healy, praised this effort.

[edit] Interstate 84

In 2007, Blumenthal became involved in the controversy over a botched highway reconstruction project in Waterbury and Cheshire. The original contractor for the job went out of business and it was later revealed hundreds of storm drains were improperly installed. After the U.S. Department of Transportation threatened to withhold funds on April 24, 2007. [19] Blumenthal announced a lawsuit by the end of the day against the former contractor and an engineering firm that inspected the project. [20] Blumenthal had already settled all claims with the project's bonding company a month earlier for only $17.5 million of the project's $54 million cost. [21]

[edit] Gay Marriage

In 2004 Blumenthal offered an opinion that Connecticut law did not permit gay marriage. [22] While he has personally argued many high profile appellate cases in the past, on May 14, 2007 he sent a subordinate to argue the state's case before the Connecticut Supreme Court on this issue. [23]

[edit] Terrorist Surveillance Program

In October 2007 Blumenthal was among only four state attorney generals to lobby Congress to reject proposals to provide immunity from litigation to telecom firms that cooperated with the federal government's terrorist surveillance program following September 11, 2001. While suits against telcom firms were favored by the ACLU and Moveon.org, they were opposed by both the Bush Administration and moderate Democrats such as Diane Feinstein. [24] [25]

[edit] Auto use

In May 2008, it was reported that Blumenthal had put nearly 70,000 miles on his state owned Ford Crown Victoria over the past ten months; far more than other state officials."I feel somewhat embarrassed about driving a car that is so fuel inefficient," he said." In response, Blumenthal said he would switch to a Honda Civic hybrid. [26]

[edit] Campaign for Governor?

Blumenthal has frequently been considered a top prospect to run as the Democratic Party candidate for Governor of Connecticut but declined the opportunity to challenge Republican Governors John G. Rowland or M. Jodi Rell in the elections of 1998, 2002, or 2006. This reluctance to seek higher office has raised parallels with the previous presidential ambitions of Mario Cuomo. On March 18, 2007, Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie reported Blumenthal was now seriously interested in running for Governor in 2010. [27] Blumenthal has frequently been compared to former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. In light of Spitzer's unpopular tenure as Governor, some Connecticut observers believed this association did not enhance Blumenthal's credentials to serve as Connecticut's Governor, [28] even prior to Spitzer's links to a high priced prostitution ring.

[edit] Criticism

On January 24, 2007, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released their report on the The Nation's Top Ten Worst State Attorneys General. Blumenthal was listed at number 1, beating out Bill Lockyer of California and Eliot Spitzer of New York. CEI is a pro-business group skeptical of the use of litigation to promote policy change.

Blumenthal has attracted national attention for his hyperkinetic approach to seeking publicity for himself and his legal initiatives, leading one prominent online journal to remark "The most dangerous place in Connecticut is between Dick Blumenthal and a TV camera." [29]

In a landmark Connecticut Supreme Court decision, Blumenthal v. Barnes a unanimous court determined that Blumenthal sued the owner of a charter school while lacking authority to bring the suit. Justice Peter T. Zarella concluded in this 2002 opinion that the office - of the attorney general is "a creature of statute that - is governed by statute and, thus, has no common-law - authority." [30][31]

Connecticut Republicans have criticised Blumenthal for campaigning for Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez while Perez was being investigated for alleged ethical improprieties. [32]