Conn. can halt Diamantis' pension, but can't revoke his health insurance

As paymaster and healthcare administrator for state employees and retirees, Connecticut Comptroller Sean Scanlon moved swiftly to stop the auto-deposit on Kosta Diamantis' pension check on Sept. 17, and issued a statement about it less than two hours after the convicted former state budget official failed to show up in federal court for sentencing.

"No one who has been convicted of defrauding the taxpayers and is now fleeing justice should continue receiving a pension," Scanlon said in a news release the morning Diamantis' lawyer told a judge he had fled to Greece.

But what about that health plan? Diamantis, a former seven-term state legislator and later deputy state budget chief, had earned the state's coveted, gold-plated medical coverage in 20 years of service. That fact did not escape Scanlon in his role as the healthcare overseer. He turned his attention to it that same day.

Could the state revoke Diamantis' healthcare coverage? Certainly it could go after his $79,000-a-year pension, under a 2008 law aimed at public officials convicted of crimes related to their duties, such as embezzlement and bribery, as my colleague Paul Hughes reported last week.

A federal jury in Bridgeport convicted Diamantis in October 2025 of 21 counts of bribery, extortion, conspiracy and lying to investigators.

After some discussion, the answer came clear this week: Nope. Connecticut cannot pull coverage for Diamantis and and dependents who remain on his plan. He has two young adult daughters who could be eligible to participate in his insurance under state rules.

"I don't have the authority. There is no statute that is similar to the revocation on the healthcare," Scanlon told me late Wednesday.

No state agency can do it, including the attorney general, who has the authority to bring lawsuits to yank pension payments from convicted former state officials. Ultimately, a judge must decide on the pension cases, as we expect will happen with the $6,615 monthly outlays we the people are paying Diamantis.

"I think it's a gap and something we should take a look at to have the standards be matching," Scanlon said, referring to health coverage. "I don't know that it makes a ton of sense to have a law that says we're going to take away the pension of somebody that commits public crimes but we're going to let them keep their health insurance."

He added, "It's certainly something that I'm going to be having conversations about with people in the legislature heading into the next session."

It's safe to assume lawmakers will craft a proposal of some sort, and debate it. But whether a law would revoke Diamantis' health coverage retroactively would clearly depend on how it's written.

Health insurance, which can be worth tens of thousands of dollars a year to a family, presents sticky problems that Scanlon recognized on that first day when Diamantis' lawyer, Norm Pattis, announced his client had hightailed it to Greece, where he holds dual citizenship.

"One thing that's uniquely American is, we don't punish people for the sins of their fathers," Scanlon said to me. "I have a tough time thinking about removing healthcare from people's children, as a dad."

On the other hand, dependents do lose coverage if a retired state or municipal employee dies, under the rules of the state health plans. Scanlon, in fact, worked on a bill to address family coverage for cops, and later firefighters and medical first responders, killed in the line of duty.

The "Fallen Heroes Fund" gives $100,000 and five years of medical coverage to the surviving dependents of first responders killed on the job.

"This came out of the wake of the tragedy in Bristol where the two police officers were shot and killed," Scanlon said, referring to the 2022 ambush homicides of Sgt. Dustin DeMonte and Officer Alex Hamzy.

"Kids and wives of killed police officers are who should be getting this plan, not the children of convicted criminals," Scanlon said.

The bill allowing the state to seek to revoke pensions was years in the making and clearly, an extension to include health coverage would require long discussions. Could it, for example, revoke coverage for the convicted person but not his or her dependants?

For now, Diamantis, whose given name is Konstantinos, remains covered under an Aetna managed care pan, like other Connecticut retirees. It's not clear whether he can access medical care under the state plan in Greece.

He told me in a phone interview Sept. 18 that he's living in an apartment in an undisclosed location, in good health, prepared to work to support himself. Authorities are looking for him and would need to extradite him under a U.S.-Greece treaty to bring him back to Connecticut, where he faces a possible prison sentence of nearly 13 years.

Last week, Diamantis, through Pattis, filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to stop Scanlon and Attorney General William Tong from actions to revoke his pension, my colleague Lisa Backus reported.

Scanlon used his authority not to withhold payment, he told me, but to cut a check and hold it in his office rather than sending it to Diamantis' bank for deposit. "He can come get it anytime he wants," Scanlon said.

Tong did not file a lawsuit to revoke the pension but said in a written statement, "State law requires that my office take action to revoke or reduce the pension of state or municipal officials convicted of corruption-related charges. We are reviewing all legal options to fully enforce the law."

Pattis, in the lawsuit, said Diamantis cannot have his pension revoked yet because a judgment is considered to be entered into the record only after sentencing - which didn't happen after Diamantis failed to appear in court. Tong and Scanlon denied Diamantis due process by not giving him a chance to oppose their actions, the lawsuit said.

It's obvious that revoking health coverage, especially if children and spouses are involved, would be rife with disputes of this sort. But Scanlon said, "This is a conversation that we need to have."

dhaar@hearstmediact.com

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