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HARTFORD — Attorney General William Tong wants to expand state regulations that date back to the scandals that forced a governor from office nearly 20 years ago, and allow his office to respond to construction fraud in state projects, including schools and other public works.
Tong's office is currently limited to probing possible fraud in state contracts for health and human services, and he believes that taxpayers are losing out on the possible collection of millions of dollars in fraud that he cannot currently investigate.
Tong this week asked the legislature to expand the state's false claims law, in a proposal supported by state labor unions but opposed by construction companies.
Ed Hawthorne, the head of the state AFL-CIO, said that if the attorney general had the expanded power, Connecticut regulators would likely have spotted the corruption that led to the resignation of Gov. John G. Rowland well before the impeachment investigation that led first to his resignation in the summer of 2004, then his first federal felony conviction later that year.
Then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell, the lieutenant governor who succeeded Rowland, signed the current law in October of 2009, allowing whistle blowers to be rewarded for tips that lead to the prosecution of fraudulent contractors in the realms of health and human services contracts.
During a Monday news conference, Tong, the state's top civil lawyer, said that about $181...
stage at the Ninth Circuit, where pharmaceutical companies say a momentous new ruling "illustrates perfectly" the constitutional concerns of U. S. Supreme Court justices regarding FCA enforcement. ...