Good journalism is a vital public service. Your donation makes our work possible. Support a good cause, and get better journalism delivered to your inbox.
Your contribution is appreciated.
News, investigations, opinion. Get the most important content in your inbox.
Your contribution is appreciated.
Stay in the know with our free emails
News and investigations you can’t find anywhere else. Subscribe to our free newsletter to get the latest news delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday and Sunday morning.
Support our work
As a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on contributions from readers like you to fund our journalism. Donate today and your support will help make tomorrow’s news possible.
Thanks for your support! Keep an eye out for a tax receipt (donations are tax-deductible) and our sincere gratitude for making better journalism possible in Connecticut.
Connecticut Inside Investigator
Journalism by humans, for humans.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) indicated it has located the much sought after “draft” discussed in text messages between PURA chairman Marissa Gillett and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, that have since been deleted from Gillett’s phone and, the utility companies believe, pertain to an op/ed lambasting Eversource and Avangrid.
If the draft in question is the op/ed it would be the strongest evidence yet produced backing up the utility companies’ claims that Gillett is biased against them and exercising her authority in an unfair way. The draft was requested via Freedom of Information Act since “at least January,” according to the motion filed in court, but PURA has failed to produce any responsive documents of consequence.
“At a hearing that took place last Monday, June 23, counsel for PURA represented to the court that documents that were likely responsive to the court’s April 16th discovery order were deleted from Chairperson Gillett’s electronic devices,” attorney for CNG and SGC John Cerreta wrote in a motion filed today. “That was PURA’s representation to this Court one week ago. But on Friday, June 27, counsel for PURA disclosed that, as it turns out, “PURA reports that it has identified documents relating to the ‘draft’ that Chairperson Gillett ‘finished,’ was ‘waiting for Theresa and others put eyes on,’ and was planning to send to Rep. Steinberg and Sen. Needleman ‘hopefully later’ on December 15.”
However, PURA and Assistant Attorney General Seth Hollander said they need even more time to produce the documents, despite having been ordered to do so in April. According to the filing and emails produced as evidence, Hollander says they will get the draft documents to the plaintiffs by July 7.
Because Gillett’s text messages had been deleted, SCG and CNG were set to depose Gillett and her Chief of Staff Theresa Govert. PURA attorneys are requesting a discovery extension again so that PURA can get them the documents and they can be reviewed.
According to an email from Hollander to Cerreta, the draft in question was “related to a project,” and indicated the delay is due to “late-filed hearings for the UI rate case,” and because of the holiday weekend approaching during which Hollander is going on vacation.
PURA’s discovery of documents related to the draft in question comes the day after Gov. Ned Lamont reappointed Gillett for the position of PURA chair, but also indicated he would be appointing two additional commissioners to give PURA its full roster of five commissioners as required by statute. Gillett has come under heavy criticism over the past year and barely made it through the nominations process.
That criticism intensified when it was recently revealed that she had deleted the text messages sought after by not only the utility companies but also the media and lawmakers in the General Assembly. Gillett claims her phone was set to auto-delete text messages after thirty days – but only revealed this information seven months after the initial FOI requests were made.
Gillett and Steinberg have insisted that she had no hand in writing the op/ed “penned” by Steinberg and his co-chair on the Energy and Technology Committee Norm Needleman, D-Essex, and that the draft in question was related to a piece of draft legislation.
While the discovery of the draft made as part of CNG and SCG’s rate case in superior court, it will also affect a much larger lawsuit brought by Avangrid and Eversource in January of 2025 against PURA. The utility companies claim Gillett has been issuing motion decisions alone under the guise of the full authority – something the agency has admitted to in some cases in court – and is therefore acting outside of her statutory authority.
The late night rate filing by UI was to adjust their natural gas rates by $105 million and was lambasted by Attorney General William Tong in a press release in which he urged PURA to reject the request, calling it a “bad faith maneuver,” in a press release and “an insult to the Connecticut families and businesses who can barely afford to keep their lights on right now.”
Connecticut has had some of the highest electricity and utility rates in the country for many years. During Gillett’s tenure, however, the public benefits charge on ratepayers’ bills, which pays for government-mandated programs, has spiked to over $1 billion per year. Those mandates cover the nuclear energy procurement deal with Millstone, green energy programs, energy efficiency programs, the Connecticut Green Bank, and coverage for low-income residents and those who don’t pay their bills.
Eversource and Avangrid have both faced ratings downgrades due to Connecticut’s regulatory environment. Steinberg and Needleman claimed in their op/ed that the companies were colluding with the rating agencies to wage a political war against Gillett and PURA.
The text messages between Steinberg and Gillett occurred just days before the op/ed was published in December of 2024 and, according to documents produced in court, Gillett emailed the op/ed to her staff , telling them to “enjoy” it.
“PURA, however, has now announced that, notwithstanding its repeated representations to the contrary, the agency does possess documents responsive to this Court’s prior orders after all,” Cerreta wrote. “In light of this extraordinary development, The Connecticut Natural Gas Corporation (“CNG”) and The Southern Connecticut Gas Company (“SCG”) respectfully move for a seven- day extension of the deadlines for (a) deposing Chairperson Gillett and Chief of Staff Govert, and (b) seeking leave to take additional discovery, if necessary.”
Thank you for your support!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you may republish CII articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here are some guidelines for sharing our original publications, including any metadata:
CII must be credited with reference to the author and to Inside Investigator, and there must be included a verifiable and effective way to contact you either preceding or succeeding the CII shared content. We request that you retain all original links throughout the article (if any), include a visible statement preceding the shared story that reads: “The following article was originally published on Inside Investigator,” and include a link to the original article on the CII website.
For shares to social media, please tag CII in your posts, or link back to the original article if tagging CII is not applicable.
If you intend to share our content on pages hosting advertisements, such advertisements shall not be sold against our content, and there shall be no implication that any donations or revenue from the advertisements is received in support of CII.
Our content shall not be used to populate any third-party website(s) and shall not be shared or republished automatically. In the event you would like to revise or edit our original content, including translating out of the original language, or would like to use any images, photographs, illustrations, or video content, please email [email protected] with such request(s) and we will contact you with our decision.
CII retains are rights to sell, license, syndicate, and otherwise represent itself as the sole owner of all material found on the CII website. CII also reserves the right to contact you and request removal of previously authorized shared CII content from any site(s) to which you shared.
If you have any other questions, contact us at [email protected].
by Marc E. Fitch, Connecticut Inside Investigator
July 1, 2025
Marc was a 2014 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow and formerly worked as an investigative reporter for Yankee Institute. He previously worked in the field of mental health and is the author of several books… More by Marc E. Fitch
Your email address will not be published.
Sign in by entering the code we sent to , or clicking the magic link in the email.
https://insideinvestigator.org/privacy-policy/. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Get the best of Connecticut Inside Investigator directly in your email inbox.
Sending to: