Jon Lender: Joe Aresimowicz is latest House speaker to go through ‘revolving door’ into lobbying — as 6 of 7 speakers since 1989 have done

When House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz’s final term ended Jan. 6, he quickly landed a big-time lobbying job — and joined a parade across the decades of former speakers and other ex-leaders who’ve capitalized on their contacts and knowledge of government operations to make lots of money influencing legislative and executive branch decisions.

A “revolving door” statute bars Aresimowicz for one year from lobbying his longtime legislative colleagues at the state government level, so he has not registered with the Office of State Ethics as a lobbyist for 2021.

But the Berlin Democrat, colorfully nicknamed “Joe A-to-Z,” will spend that year “focus[ed] on business development and municipal and federal issues on behalf of the firm’s clients and will supplement the services we provide to them,” according to a Jan. 15 announcement by the New Britain-based government-relations firm that hired him, Gaffney Bennett and Associates.

Five of the six people who preceded Aresimowicz as speaker, dating back to 1989, later became Connecticut lobbyists for at least some period of years.

The five, all Democrats, are: Richard Balducci of Newington, speaker from 1989 to 1992; Thomas Ritter of Hartford, 1993 to 1998; James Amann of Milford, 2005 to 2008; Christopher Donovan of Meriden, 2009 to 2012; and Brendan Sharkey of Hamden, 2013 to 2016.

The only speaker since 1989 who didn’t become a lobbyist was Moira Lyons, D-Stamford. Lyons held the top House position from 1999 to 2005, then got a job at Norwalk Community College but soon retired and now collects a $28,000-a-year state pension.

Now Aresimowicz makes it six out of seven.

Balducci, Amann and Sharkey currently have active registrations on file with the Office of State Ethics to lobby for clients during the 2021-2013 term of the General Assembly, while Ritter and Donovan do not.

Ritter, a partner at the prominent law and lobbying firm of Brown Rudnick, has lobbied actively since he stopped being speaker but has not registered with the ethics office to lobby locally since 2016, records show. Other lobbyists from Brown Rudnick continue to be registered. Ritter’s son, state Rep. Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, has succeeded Aresimowicz as the new speaker of the House.

Donovan spent years as lobbyist for the Connecticut Education Association after finishing as speaker, but retired from the CEA lobbying job last year.

One former high-ranking House Republican, Lawrence Cafero of Norwalk, who was minority leader from 2007 to 2014, has served since 2016 as executive director, general counsel and lobbyist for the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Connecticut.

Also, this past week, former Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen and his law partner, Perry Rowthorn, registered with the state ethics office to lobby executive branch officials for the health insurer Anthem through the end of this year. Their registration says they will lobby the offices of the governor, comptroller and attorney general, as well as the departments of Public Health, Insurance and Correction. Jepsen, a Democrat, was attorney general for eight years ending in 2019.

Major business clients

Aresimowicz did not seek reelection last year in his 30th House District, where he had squeaked by with only a 50-vote margin in the 2018 election. With him off the ballot this past Nov. 3, Republican Donna Veach easily defeated Democratic and Working Families nominee JoAnn Angelico-Stetson to flip the seat from blue to red.

Aresimowicz’s new employer, Gaffney Bennett, is the state’s highest-earning lobbying force with $10 million in reported client fees during the past two years.

The firm boasts a business-heavy roster of at least 75 current lobbying clients including: Eversource, which anticipates paying up to $275,000 to the firm from now through the end of 2022, according to a report filed with the Office of State Ethics; Frontier Communications, which has a $115,000 contract with the firm covering 2021 and 2022; and Walmart, which has agreed to pay the firm $75,000 from now through the end of 2022.

Aresimowicz wasn’t a favorite of the business community during a legislative career of 16 years, the last four as speaker, in which he built a liberal record and generally sided with labor unions. For example, in 2019 his successful efforts to pass liberal initiatives — including a minimum wage hike, as well as family and medical leave mandates — helped to earn him only a 33% score from the Connecticut Business and Industry Association.

On top of that, Aresimowicz’s regular job outside the part-time legislature has been as education coordinator for a big state and municipal employees union, Council 4 of AFSCME. But now he has quit the union to work for Gaffney Bennett.

Aresimowicz said in telephone interview Friday that he doesn’t think he’s turning his back on what he has stood for. “I always tried to listen to all sides ... to get what I believed was fair” as he brokered agreements on what would go into the final language of a bill, he said. Sometimes that meant breaking with the unions and liberals, he said, as when he supported a state budget bill that called for layoffs.

He said he can use the same approach of “getting to fair” in representing clients’ interests, once he starts actual lobbying in 2022 after the 12-month waiting period.

Asked how he would respond if somebody said he’s gone over to the “dark side” by representing private interests at the Capitol, Aresimowicz said: “I don’t think people who know me as a person would say that. I have a very strong moral compass ... I always want to ‘get to fair.’”

He added: “If I entered into the world of labor relations ... and became a negotiator for management,” then “I think that criticism would be totally fair” because it would be such a drastic change of loyalties.

The ex-speaker is now acting on written advice he solicited from the Office of State Ethics, whose general counsel, Brian O’Dowd, told him in a Dec. 29 email that it wouldn’t violate the revolving door ban on state government lobbying during the next 12 months if he communicated “with members of Connecticut’s Congressional delegation about issues before them on the federal level, or with municipal officials concerning municipal issues.”

O’Dowd wrote that “[s]uch conduct at the municipal and/or federal level would not constitute ‘Lobbying’ ” and noted that the one-year ban is “limited to compensated attempts to influence legislative or administrative action at the state level in Connecticut.”

Aresimowicz said he also can help Gaffney Bennett with matters outside Connecticut by working with people he’s met through his participation as House speaker in national legislators’ organizations. “I have a lot of contacts around the entire country,” he said.

One thing that won’t change, Aresimowicz said, is that he’ll continue in his role as the longstanding head coach of Berlin High School’s football team.

From Congress to lobbying

The issue of ex-legislators’ lobbying has drawn attention in states across the country, and also has arisen at the federal level. Several former members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation appear on a national ”Revolving Door” list published online by a good government group, the Center for Responsive Politics.

Above the online list is this introduction: “Dick Armey. Tom Daschle. Tom Foley. Trent Lott. Once, these politicos ranked among Congress’ most powerful members. Today, they share another distinction: They’re lobbyists (or “senior advisors” performing very similar work). And they’re hardly alone. Dozens of former members of Congress now receive handsome compensation from corporations and special interests as they attempt to influence the very federal government in which they used to serve.”

Two former Democratic U.S. senators from Connecticut appear on the list of paid advocates in the nation’s capital: Democrat Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent. Former U.S. House members from Connecticut who have lobbied at the federal level, according to the list on group’s opensecrets.org website, include Democrats Barbara Kennelly, Toby Moffett, and Bruce Morrison.

Jon Lender is a reporter on The Courant’s investigative desk, with a focus on government and politics. Contact him at [email protected], 860-241-6524, or c/o The Hartford Courant, 285 Broad St., Hartford, CT 06115 and find him on Twitter@jonlender.

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