Melissa Bailey Photo
Harp: Donors have no sway.
One day after their company lost a lucrative city contract due to fraud, nine out-of-town doctors ponied up $1,000 apiece to the mayoral campaign of frontrunner Toni Harp.
The donors work for Hamden-based Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists. Their company took in around $800,000 this past fiscal year as authorized orthopaedic caregivers for New Haven government’s workers’ compensation plan, according to the city.
On July 25, city workers received a letter informing them that they could no longer go to doctors from that firm for treatment of work-related injuries under that plan.
The city canceled the outfit’s contract after one of its doctors, Patrick Ruwe, admitted to improper handling of a workers’ compensation case. Ruwe, who lives in Branford, had treated a public works employee for a shoulder injury. He authorized the employee to return to work on light duty for eight hours a day. Then he subsequently signed a form stating that the city should limit the employee to four to five hours of work a day. He signed the form after the employee requested it in order to work a second job, not because he actually needed the hourly restriction, Ruwe admitted. He admitted there was no medical reason for the restriction. (Click here for a full account of that case.)
On July 26 Ruwe (pictured), a prominent physician (named by Connecticut magazine in both 2011 and 2013 as one of the state’s top docs), donated the maximum $1,000 allowed to the campaign of Toni Harp, one of four Democrats running at the time in a Democratic Party mayoral primary. Harp won that primary Tuesday. She is now running in the Nov. 5 general election.
Harp’s latest campaign-finances filing shows eight other doctors from the firm also donating $1,000 apiece on the same date: firm CEO Glenn Elia of Milford; John Aversa of Woodbridge; John Bener of Madison; Peter DeLuca of Branford; Norman Kaplan of Milford; John Kelley of Branford; Thomas Moran of Branford; and Enzo Sella of Branford.
Harp’s campaign filing identifies six of the nine as working for Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists. It leaves the “employer” box empty for three of them.
The episode touches on two broader issues: the relevance of financial contributions to the mayoral campaign; and efforts by the city to get workers’ compensation costs under control.
Money In Politics
Harp’s last remaining opponent in the mayor’s race, Justin Elicker, has made the role of money a central campaign issue.
Elicker participated in the city’s voluntary public-financing program, the Democracy Fund, in the primary. That means he agreed to limit individual contributions to $370 (rather than $1,000) and swear off donations from political committees in return for matching public money. He can’t participate in the fund in the general-election campaign; but he has agreed to continue abiding by the limits.
Harp did not participate in the fund — and has led the pack in fundraising, thanks both to bundles of $1,000 contributions like those from Connecticut Orthopaedic; and from political action committees.
Harp has consistently argued that donors won’t influence her decisions if she becomes mayor. In a campaign debate last week, she called the Democracy Fund a waste of public money that could be better spent on young people in hard economic times. Elicker and other public-financing proponents argued that the system keeps government more honest and can save taxpayers more money in the long run by preventing wasteful contracts or other spending on behalf of large donors. (Click here and on the video for more on that debate.)
Elicker specifically mentioned Connecticut Orthopaedic and four other bundlers in a flyer released Sunday night. (Read about that in the bottom half of this article.)
“Why is Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists donating so much money to the Harp campaign?” he asked in the flyer (pictured at the bottom of this article).
Toni Harp said in an interview Thursday that she had no idea that the firm had had a city contract. In fact, she said, she had never heard of the firm before.
“Frankly when somebody mentioned them, I was really kind of perplexed why they would give to a municipal campaign,” Harp said.
She disagreed with Elicker’s argument about the Democracy Fund limiting the influence of donors. She said she sees no difference in the ultimate potential influence on a candidate if he or she receives multiple $370 donations from people who work for the same company, or multiple $1,000 donations.
Harp said campaign donations have never influenced her decisions over her 26 years as a state senator and alderwoman. And her donors know that, she said.
“I always raised money from people. The reality is that it never had any impact on me. I always do what I think is right,” she said.
“You do what you think is right. You do what you think is fair. It’s transparent. People see your thinking. I think people who give don’t expect a quid pro quo. They just want a meeting, maybe, to give their point of view. But they don’t expect you necessarily to go along with it or to give them any special favors. Even the people that I’ve spoken with have made it clear that they don’t expect a quid pro quo.”
A 2nd Chance — With Strings Attached
City of New Haven
The city canceled the contract with Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists (COS) — and with another doctor, Stephen Piserchia, who took in about $80,000 in the past fiscal year —as part of an ongoing effort to crack down on workers’ compensation abuse and skyrocketing costs.
By the 2009 – 2010 fiscal year, annual workers’ compensation claims had doubled in under a decade. A City Hall working group has succeeded in lowering that rate of increase since then (see the yellow line in the accompanying chart) and is continuing to target fraud. It is also pursuing a policy of finding more light-duty assignments for employees with physical injuries rather than have them remain out of work altogether.
Workers’ compensation claims cost the city $11.4 million in that peak 2009-10 fiscal year, according to the city. The figure dropped to $9.6 million in the fiscal year that ended
Since the July 25 letter to city employees, COS sought to have its contract reinstated. The group’s CEO, Elia, met with city officials to discuss the matter. It acknowledged Ruwe’s misstep, called it a departure from the company’s overall performance. The city agreed to reinstate the firm in the city workers’ compensation provider network — under the condition that Ruwe, a Yale College and cum laude Yale School of Medicine graduate, not be included. And that the firm’s doctors won’t again keep city workers sidelined for non-medical reasons. Elia also promised to assign a staffer to work with the city “to return injured employees to full-time employment as soon as it is medically appropriate,” according to a letter Elia wrote to the city on Sept. 3.
The city’s still tallying the costs for which COS will reimburse it, according to Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts.
Elia wrote in the letter that his firm “acknowledges and accepts the city’s position regarding” the city worker whom Ruwe helped get time to work the second job. (The city fired the employee. A city union appealed the firing to the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration. The board upheld the firing.)
“[T]his was clearly an isolated event, and COS has a long standing history of providing high-quality and cost effective medical care to city employees,” Elia wrote.
Elia and Ruwe could not be reached for comment for this story.
The head of the city firefighters’ union, Jimmy Kottage, came to COS’s defense after learning of the original July 25 letter announcing the decision to cut the firm from the provider network. In a note to Rob Smuts, Kottage vowed his union would “advocate aggressively against this prohibition.” He argued that the prohibition would “unduly penalize fire fighters and their families. This prohibition will effect care, therapy and our award winning work hardening program that rehabilitates injured fire fighters.”
City employees received a new letter this Tuesday informing them that some COS surgeons have been reauthorized to treat them for work-related illnesses.
Piserchia remains banned from treating workers. He could not be reached for comment for this story.
“Patients under your treatment are unusual in not often being released to light duty, which is likely a major contributor to the length of time they remain out of work and total cost to the City for their claims,” City Hall’s Rob Smuts wrote to Piserchia in a Sept. 4 letter about the decision.
Since then, Smuts reported, “Dr. Piserchia has told me he is gathering some data to refute the analysis from CIRMA [the Connecticut Interlocal Risk Management Agency, which administers the city’s workers’ compensation plan] that was the basis for his exclusion, but right now he is still excluded.”
Piserchia’s name, by the way, does not show up on Toni Harp’s contribution lists.
