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Richard Blumenthal

Richard Blumenthal is the 23rd elected Attorney General of Connecticut.

Contents
1 Education
2 Career

2.1 Interstate Air Pollution
2.2 Stanley Works
2.3 Regional Transmission Organization

3 External links
4 References

Education

Blumenthal graduated with honors from Harvard College (Phi Beta Kappa; Magna Cum Laude) and Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal.

Career

Blumenthal served as United States Attorney for Connecticut from 1977 to 1981 and as the chief federal prosecutor of that state successfully prosecuted many major cases against drug traffickers, organized crime, white collar criminals, civil rights violators, consumer frauds, and environmental polluters. Attorney General Blumenthal also served as administrative assistant to United States Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff, as aide to United States Senator Daniel P. Moynihan when Moynihan was Assistant to the President of the United States, and as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. From 1981 to 1986, he was a volunteer counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Before he became Attorney General, Blumenthal was a member of the Connecticut state Senate from 1987-90 and the state House from 1984-87. He was first elected as the 23rd Attorney General in 1990 and was re-elected in 1994, 1998, and 2002. On October 10, 2002 he was awarded the Raymond E. Baldwin Award for Public Service by the Quinnipiac University School of Law [1]

Interstate Air Pollution

In 1997, both Blumenthal and Governor John G. Rowland petitioned the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address interstate air pollution problems created from Midwest and southeastern sources [2]. The petition was filed in accordance with was filed Section 126 of the Clean Air Act, which allows a United States state to request pollution reductions from out-of-state sources that contribute significantly to its air quality problems.

In 2003 his office, along with eleven other states, filed suit to prevent what they claimed was the "changes that threaten to gut the New Source Review (NSR) section of the federal Clean Air Act." Specifically, they objected to the "new regulation [that] states that any modification costing up to 20 percent of the replacement cost of the unit will be considered routine maintenance – and therefore exempt from pollution controls, even if the plant modification produces much higher levels of air pollution." [3] The suit filed in conjunction with New York, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. A number of local governments, including the New York City and various Connecticut municipalities, were also plaintiffs in the suit.

Stanley Works

On May 10, 2002 both he and Connecticut State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier helped to stop the hostile takeover of New Britain-based Stanley Works, a major Connecticut employer, by filing a lawsuit alleging that the move to reincorporate in Bermuda based on a shareholder's vote of May 9 [4] was "rife with voting irregularities". The agreement to temporarily halt the move was signed by New Britain Superior Court Judge Marshall Berger [5]. On June 3 Blumenthal referred the matter to the SEC for further investigation [6] and on June 25 he testified before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means that "Long-time American corporations with operations in other countries can dodge tens of millions of dollars in federal taxes by the device of reincorporating in another country" by "simply [filing] incorporation papers in a country with friendly tax laws, open a post-office box and hold an annual meeting there" and that Stanley Works, along with "Cooper Industries, Seagate Technologies, Ingersoll-Rand and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, to name but a few, have also become pseudo-foreign corporations for the sole purpose of saving tax dollars." Blumenthal stated that "Corporations proposing to reincorporate to Bermuda, such as Stanley, often tell shareholders that there is no material difference in the law" but said that this was not the case and was misleading to their shareholders. [7] In order to rectify this situation he championed the Corporate Patriot Enforcement Act to close tax loopholes [8].

Blumenthal's work was not without criticism. On May 9, 2003 the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial stating that "Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and GOP Congresswoman Nancy Johnson will no doubt now want to take some responsibility for the company's decision this week to lay off 1,000 workers and close nine facilities." [9]

Regional Transmission Organization

In 2003 Blumenthal, along with Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly , Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, and consumer advocates from Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire, opposed "the formation of a regional transmission organization (RTO) that would merge three Northeast and mid-Atlantic power operators, called Independent Service Operators (ISOs), into a single super-regional RTO" [10]. In a press release he is quoted as saying "This fatally flawed RTO proposal will raise rates, reduce accountability and reward market manipulation. It will increase the power and profits of transmission operators with an immediate $40 million price tag for consumers" [11]. The opposition was due to a report authored by Synapse Energy Economics, Inc., a Cambridge-based energy consulting firm, which alleged that consumers would be worse off under the merger [12].

External links

References

Last updated: 01-04-2007 01:18:57
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