Two years ago, Connecticut lawmakers inserted millions of dollars in earmarks for local organizations in the final state budget.
Earmarks allow influential legislators to direct funds to organizations they support in their areas. However, detractors claim that these budget carve-outs circumvent public scrutiny and provide lawmakers the ability to allocate monies in private discussions with minimal evidence of their involvement.
Why one such earmark, for a youth workforce program, went to a nonprofit with limited funding and a short lifespan is still a topic of silence among legislative leaders.
According to documents Connecticut Public was able to get, the only recipient of an appropriation from the state’s prior two-year budget for the Department of Education was an organization called SHEBA Resource Center, Inc.
According to records, the same group is currently the focus of a comprehensive federal investigation into grant funding. The probe is looking at the relationship between the nonprofit’s founder and state senator Doug McCrory, as well as his involvement in obtaining state funding for nonprofit organizations.
Days before the budget was approved, funding for the earmark was included. Because state budget deliberations are cloaked in secrecy, the genesis is still unknown. No public accounting of who pushed for the money to be spent or how it was supposed to be utilized is included in budget documents.
The allocation controversy, according to Republican Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, highlights the opaqueness of Connecticut’s budgeting process.
According to Harding, “there are hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds going to seemingly endless nonprofit organizations that no one seems to know anything about, with little to no follow-up by our state government.”
As a result of the legislature’s oversight, Earmarks
The young workforce initiative received a one-time appropriation of $100,000 from the 2023 budget that lawmakers authorized. The funds were allotted under the education department’s budget’s Other Expenses line item, which serves as a catch-all for various projects that don’t fit into another main area.
When Democratic Governor Ned Lamont presented his budget package in February 2023, he suggested allocating roughly $2.1 million to cover this line item.
However, in the version that lawmakers ultimately approved, it increased to $8.9 million, partly because 23 earmarks for groups throughout the state were added. They included everything from a Bridgeport youth sports league to a Long Island Sound summer camp that taught marine science.
Almost every earmark identifies a particular group that is receiving funding. However, the budget merely said that funds would be available for a Youth Summer Workforce program, saying nothing about the youth employment plan.
Probed relationships
The nonprofit Society of Human Engagement and Business Alignment, or SHEBA, was the beneficiary of the financing, according to documents retrieved through a Freedom of Information request.
Sonserae Cicero, a consultant mentioned in two grand jury subpoenas issued to state officials in recent weeks, is in charge of the organization. Subpoenas show that investigators are examining material to see if a federal crime has been committed; they are not charging documents.
According to the subpoenas, investigators are examining, among other things, whether Cicero had any non-professional or personal relationships with McCrory.
Parts of Hartford, Bloomfield, and Windsor are represented by McCrory, a powerful Democratic legislator. In addition to serving on an appropriations subcommittee on funding for primary and secondary schools, he chairs the Senate’s Education Committee.
Several requests for comment have not received a response from McCrory or Cicero. In an earlier interview with CT Insider, McCrory said he had committed no crimes. He and Cicero both claimed that their connection had not been advantageous.
Deliver the money to them.
The SHEBA Resource Center offers minority businesses guidance, training, and technical support, per documentation it submitted to the state. According to a document, Cicero first registered the nonprofit in the state in January 2022.
By the end of its first year of operation, the organization’s tax return stated that it had no cash, savings, investments, or other assets. Only $150,000 from the state is mentioned, which is presumably a reference to money the organization got for its small business accelerator program from the Minority Business Initiative Advisory Board.
However, documents indicate that one of the state’s most influential lawmakers became aware of the group. Co-chair of the Appropriations Committee and state senator Catherine Osten instructed the commissioner of education to allocate grant funds to the NGO in a letter dated 2023.
Osten sent Cicero’s contact details and stipulated that the young summer workforce initiative’s funds should go to the SHEBA Resource Center.
According to Osten, who included Cicero’s name, phone number, and email address, the goal of this line item was for the Connecticut State Department of Education to enter into a contract with the organization listed below in order to give them the funding they needed to carry out this programming.
Youth Workforce Program
SHEBA intended to utilize the funds for a youth empowerment program that would teach high school kids about technology, coding, video game design, and entrepreneurship, according to a grant application submitted in August 2023.
According to the application, SHEBA encourages and supports an atmosphere where innovative ideas are developed to lower high-risk behaviors, increase youth resilience, enhance protective factors, build basic life skills, and create a pattern of behaviors that eventually lead to successful choices and a healthy life.
Students would present a program or product they built in a pitch competition at the end of the 10-week curriculum, which aimed to teach them project management techniques.
According to the application, it would also help kids with the college application process and offer grants or scholarships of up to $1,000. It also suggests that students would thereafter be given tours of HBCUs, or historically black schools and universities.
The education department paid the nonprofit $100,000 in two installments of $50,000 each in October 2023 and April 2024, according to records.
Questions that remain unanswered
How Osten chose to designate the young group as the beneficiary of funds allocated in the budget earmark is unclear.
Osten stated in an interview with Connecticut Public that she cannot remember how she was informed of the organization’s name. According to Osten, politicians often send requests for earmarks to the Senate and House leaders. According to Osten, she obtains the contact details of the groups listed in the earmarks and gives them to state agencies after the budget is passed.
Osten admitted that she doesn’t always recognize the groups on the list.
“That sounds to me like that was a list that was put in by leadership,” she continued.
According to a number of additional people with knowledge of the budget process, politicians usually petition the Senate and House leadership for earmarks or consult with governor’s office officials. The earmarks that are approved are influenced by political connections and seniority.
A lawmaker’s support for the budget or other projects, such legislation that is encountering obstacles, can also be obtained by funding.
Most of the time, negotiations are conducted behind closed doors, and financial choices are occasionally made just a few days before a vote by lawmakers to approve the budget.
An query from Connecticut Public regarding the education funding given to SHEBA Resource Center was not answered by a Lamont representative.
Matt Ritter, the Democratic Speaker of the House, refused to comment on how the appropriation ended up in the state budget. A spokesperson said Ritter is unable to discuss it because the earmark is not a House budget item.
Several requests for interviews were not answered by Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff or Democratic Senate President Martin Looney.
State Rep. Toni Walker, a Democrat who co-chairs the Appropriations Committee, also did not respond.
Lawmakers deny any involvement.
According to two local MPs, they are not in charge of included the earmark in the budget and are unaware of it.
“I’ve never had any request or involvement at all with anything like that, said Sen. John Fonfara, who represents Hartford.
Sen. Saud Anwar represents East Hartford, where the nonprofit has a registered address. Anwar said he has never requested funding for the SHEBA Resource Center and didn’t ask for it to be in the budget.
“I do not have anything to do with it, Anwar said.
An email obtained by Connecticut Public shows a Senate staffer transmitted a partial list of groups getting state money to the Appropriations Committee after the budget was passed. The list includes the SHEBA Resource Center.
Waiting to hear back from some of our Senators on other items but here is some information, wrote Theresa Govert, a former policy analyst in the Senate Democratic Office.
Govert, who has since left the position, told Connecticut Public she doesn t remember the origin of the list.
“I don’t recollect exactly how that information was conveyed to me, she said.
It s unclear whether the earmark is now under review by federal authorities. Documents released thus far show investigators arereviewing economic development fundingreceived by SHEBA Resource Center and other Hartford area nonprofits.
Staff at the state Department of Education did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A grants administrator at the department referred questions to legal counsel.
Tom Carson, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney s Office in New Haven, did not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. Carson said his office only provides comment on criminal matters when it comes forth with charges.
