H ad John G. Rowland ever once offered to do penance with his apologies, I would not write this letter. I am certain that Mr. Rowland learned about penance while a student at Waterbury's Holy Cross High School, because I graduated from Holy Cross, too. I know that institution's expectations of young Christians, and I doubt much changed in the span between our enrollments.

Now it is your cross to bear to determine Mr. Rowland's punishment for the admitted crime of "conspiracy to steal honest service." I ask you to sentence him to the fullest extent of the law Ð five years imprisonment Ð and that he serve every day of that term for his high crime of betrayal of the public trust.

As it stands, five years is shorter than the duration of Mr. Rowland's abuses of power. Since 1995, when he treated his children to free military surplus gear, Mr. Rowland has demonstrated a tendency for serial ethical lapses. By 1997, he was the first sitting governor in Connecticut history to pay an ethics fine for receiving free concert tickets. In 1997, the White Memorial Foundation gave him a sweetheart deal on the lakeside cottage that became his undoing. For almost 10 years, Mr. Rowland violated his constitutional oath and used his position as the state's senior elected official for an acknowledged personal gain of $107,000.

Surely, the penalty for such conduct, the lesson he must learn, should be longer than four semesters in jail. If Mr. Rowland robbed a bank at gunpoint for $107,000, how much time would he receive? And if he made that sum from selling powder cocaine, what would his sentence be? Or if it was crack cocaine he peddled for profit, I believe federal guidelines impose five-year mandatory minimums.

Can we compare violent crime or non-violent consensual crime with political corruption and its attendant repercussions? I saw some consequences of this chicanery in the fall and winter of 2001 and 2002, when the state Department of Children and Families contracted with the organization I worked for. I was to teach writing to young female inmates at the Long Lane School in Middletown. At the time, the state was facing court orders to offer girls more services, and DCF was near completion on the construction of the Connecticut Juvenile Training School, the $57 million jail that is the heart of the Rowland administration's bid-rigging.

The conditions at Long Lane shamed me. The state placed criminal young women there in the hopes of rehabilitating them. But the living conditions I witnessed created anger, distrust and hatred towards the DCF, rather than the nurturing bond that these at-risk youth needed to overcome lifetimes of adversity.

These troubled teen girls at first lived in minimum-security, drafty old dorms with rodents and cockroaches. Once the boys left Long Lane for CJTS, the state shuffled the girls into the vacant high-security wing at Long Lane. The walls of the solitary confinement room bore unhappy adolescent etchings like "F$%# You Bitch" and "I want to die." Shortly after I brought this to my superior's attention, I was not invited back to Long Lane. While girls complained about cold showers and a lack of constructive activities, Governor Rowland lounged in his free, lakeside hot tub. When he deigned it necessary, he would visit a successful youth development program to show he cared.

Mr. Rowland's neglect will impact Connecticut's at-risk youth for generations. CJTS barely serves young men, and young women remain dispersed across the state in inadequate facilities. As you ponder the sentence for our wayward servant, please inspect the sordid history of the DCF under John Rowland, and see that my experience barely scratches the surface of suffering youth endured under his leadership.

In November 2004, you gave a Mr. Herman James concurrent 66-month prison terms for crimes of counterfeiting U.S. currency and being a felon in possession of a handgun. Which person deserves more time for the detriment they caused to Connecticut's civil society? A criminal so stupid as to pay for his driver's license renewal with three fake $10 bills, or a governor so corrupt as to sell our collective democratic hopes for champagne, cigars and vacations?

Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to reading headlines declaring your 60-month sentence for John G. Rowland.

1/19/05

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