When running for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket with Tom Foley in 2014, Heather Somers privately urged the Foley campaign to aggressively exploit a vulnerability of the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Somers wanted to loudly call out the Malloy administration’s policies that allowed inmates more opportunities to earn early release, an approach that did not go well in a few cases when some ex-cons committed serious crimes.

Foley, however, was playing things safe, convinced that if he avoided controversies he would be the new governor because Malloy could not overcome his poor approval ratings. Foley’s campaign did not make the law-and-order play that Somers was sure could have picked up some votes for the Republican ticket in high-crime urban areas.

Foley’s cautious strategy failed and Malloy narrowly won re-election.

It is not without some irony, then, that Senator Somers — elected in the 18th District in 2016 — found herself at a press conference Wednesday criticizing the Malloy administration for failing to adequately protect the health of prisoners and for a lack of transparency on the issue.

“The legislature is now obligated to step in and speak up for those who have suffered from these inhumane conditions. We need to know the full story so we can determine the best course to prevent this tortuous neglect,” said Somers at the Republican-only event.

There is a difference, certainly, between the policies that dictate when a prisoner is released and how they are treated while incarcerated. And Somers, as co-chair of the Public Health Committee, is in the right position to push for answers.

Still, it’s an interesting role reversal. Malloy, who has pushed prison reform and more “second chances” for ex-cons is under attack from a Republican law-and-order candidate concerned about the treatment of prisoners.

Somers, joined at the press conference by Republican Senate leader Len Fasano of North Haven, has a good case.

In a recent special report, The Connecticut Mirror noted that the Office of the Attorney General has, in the past decade, logged more than 1,000 complaints and lawsuits from inmates about the health care they did or didn’t receive. There are numerous pending lawsuits.

A report done for the Department of Correction reviewed 25 cases related to health care problems, including eight prisoner deaths.

After a Feb. 13 incident, in which a female inmate gave birth inside a York Correctional Institution prison cell in Niantic, the department placed two nurses on leave.

Unlike 35 other states, Connecticut has no quality monitoring system to assess the adequacy of prison health care.

The Hartford press conference featured the family of inmate Wayne World, serving time for manslaughter. World raised concerns in 2012 about a rash. Doctors never properly diagnosed or treated it. World recently learned he has advanced stage, life-threatening skin cancer.

In response to the problems, DOC last month ended its long-time relationship with UConn Health to provide care and moved services in-house.

Somers and Fasano complain the legislature remains uninformed about the details and root causes of the problem and have demanded a public hearing on the prison medical care system.

And they want to see the $63,000 consultant study that examined the 25 cases and eight deaths. The Malloy administration has refused to provide access, citing attorney-client privilege and contending its release would undermine the DOC’s legal strategy. The Freedom of Information Commission backed the DOC’s refusal to release it.

The department has also held up the release of a second consultant study that cost $600,000.

While this is not your typical Republican issue, Somers needs to keep pushing. The legislature should perform its oversight duty. The Democrats don’t appear eager to do so.

Paul Choiniere is the editorial page editor.

The state health department would take over inspections, an outside panel would monitor conditions, and workers would be legally required to report mistreatment in a bill born of the patient-abuse scandal at the maximum-security Whiting forensic facility.

The measures would be a first step in changing a culture behind Whiting’s walls — a climate that tolerated what amounted to the torture of patient William Shehadi, the patient’s brother, Albert Shehadi, said in remarks prepared for the legislature’s public health committee at a hearing Friday.

Federal and state lawsuits filed by Albert Shehadi allege a pattern of physical abuse, all caught on video and perpetrated under the noses of management. Ten Whiting employees have been arrested on felony cruelty charges, and a total of more than 30 workers have been fired.

Most of the patients at Whiting are either being evaluated to see if they can stand trial or have been acquitted of criminal charges by reason of insanity.

Mental Health Commissioner Miriam Delphin-Rittmon testified Friday that she is trying “to change the environment” at the psychiatric hospital in Middletown by adding managers, opening new lines of communication for staff members and increasing training. But many legislators and advocates were stunned and enraged that unprovoked abuse of a patient could go on for weeks, and play out on video monitors at the nurse’s station and other locations, and go undetected until a whistleblower came forward.

Whiting is hampered by a “one-size-fits-all treatment” regimen, has a staff that is “inadequately trained” and management “that is largely absent outside of daytime shifts,” Albert Shehadi said.

“There are no internal controls,” said Shehadi, who lives in Greenwich and is the chief lending officer at a health care capital firm in New York City.

The outside panel or task force contemplated in the bill should have subpoena power so it can go after internal records and compel testimony, said one of the bill’s architects, Sen. Heather Somers, a Republican of Groton, and co-chairwoman of the public health committee.

She said that while the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services requires patient-care workers to report abuse, they are not included in the group of professionals — teachers, police officers, doctors, nurses, social workers — that could face criminal prosecution if they fail to report suspected abuse or neglect. The bill would put forensic-treatment workers and some other Whiting employees into that category, Somers said.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy earlier this year signed an executive order separating Whiting from the rest of the campus at Connecticut Valley Hospital. Under the bill discussed Friday, Whiting would officially become a hospital, and it would be licensed and inspected by the state Department of Public Health.

The agency would conduct unannounced visits whenever a complaint was received, Health Commissioner Raul Pino told the legislative committee.

When legislators noted that problems can occur on all shifts, Pino said his inspectors would come at odd hours, including weekends and late at night, and not confine themselves to the day shift when most of the Whiting bosses are around.

Mystic — A panel of Stonington fishermen and fishing industry lobbyists repeated their perennial cries against the federal government’s fishing quotas at an event hosted by state Sen. Heather Somers on Wednesday night, telling an audience at the Mystic Luxury Theatre that the regulations could cause the demise of their industry.

Somers invited Stonington and Rhode Island fishing veterans to speak about the effects of a regulatory system used by the National Marine Fisheries Service that is meant to prevent overfishing but that they say is strangling their industry. She also arranged for the screening of a commercial fishing-themed episode of a show produced by the conservative digital website CRTV at the theater.

“We people up here in Connecticut got the dirty end of the stick,” said Joe Rendeiro, a retired full-time commercial fisherman. “We’re just a bunch of people trying to make a living.”

Stonington fishermen like Rendeiro have long bemoaned the government’s attempts to regulate fishing by instituting quotas for species like fluke — also called summer flounder — in regions along the East Coast from the mid-Atlantic to New England.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, on which Connecticut has no representation, regulates fluke and other species for the East Coast, along with a larger body, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Fishing industry advocates say the quota system allows Connecticut fishermen to land far less fish than other states such as North Carolina, even though most of the fish are caught in federal and not state waters.

The two groups adjusted their limits this year to allow Connecticut fishermen to catch more summer flounder and not as much sea bass in 2018, but Stonington fishermen say the effects of the changing quotas would be nominal given an unfair system.

The quotas and the monitors employed to enforce them, cheap imported fish, the development of wind farms on the Atlantic coast and the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act were all the target of criticism from the speakers at Wednesday’s event.

The panel also included Mike Gambardella, who runs his family’s fish wholesale business at the Town Dock and who has led an effort to print and sell bumper stickers with a message for President Donald Trump urging him to “Make Commercial Fishing Great Again.”

Atlantic fishermen say the quotas that govern the amount of fish they’re allowed to bring in are based on inaccurate measurements of fish populations, and have long claimed that they see higher numbers of various species on their daily trips than the NOAA scientists count on their periodic trips to assess the populations on which they base their quotas.

“The stock assessments are wrong,” said Tom Williams, a Stonington fisherman who spoke Wednesday and was featured in the CRTV piece hosted by conservative blogger Michelle Malkin.

Somers invited Meghan Lapp, a fishing industry advocate and a representative for North Kingstown, R.I.-based fishing company Seafreeze to speak at Wednesday’s event.

“Fishermen are the farmers of the sea,” she said. “They … provide a clean, healthy sustainable source of protein.”

m.shanahan@theday.com

Citing a crisis in medical care behind prison walls, legislative leaders on Wednesday called for an inquiry, and renewed a request for a report on 25 botched medical cases, including eight inmate deaths, that the Department of Correction has refused to release.

State Sen. Len Fasano of North Haven, the Republican president pro tem, said at a news briefing that someone at the DOC “needs to have the guts to look us in the eye” and say whether “that report will ever see the light of day.”

He stepped aside and allowed Carrie World, the mother of a state inmate whose lymphoma went undiagnosed for three years despite bloody rashes covering his body, to describe the “20 times” she demanded information about her son’s lack of medical care. The family is now pressing a medical-malfeasance lawsuit, one of a growing number of cases alleging substandard care.

The widow of a former longtime state employee, World said her son, Wayne World, was brought up to face the consequences of his actions.

He’s been in prison since 2006 on a manslaughter conviction, “but he has been given a second sentence that could cost him his life.”

The Courant reported in June that the prison agency, citing attorney-client privilege, had refused the newspaper’s request for the publicly funded report, completed by a consultant who is a doctor and a lawyer. The agency also declined a request for the report by the state’s auditors, who had criticized the relationship between UConn Heath, which provided the medical care, and the DOC, which paid the bill of more than $100 million a year for the no-bid contract. The auditors said the arrangement lacked quality controls and oversight.

Last month, the state ended its agreement with UConn Health and moved the administration of medical care inside the DOC — but Fasano, who was also denied the consultant’s report, said questions are beginning to multiply about apparent lapses in care.

Fasano, Sen. Heather Somers, a Republican of Groton, and Sen. George Logan, a Republican of Ansonia, called for a public hearing during this shortened legislative session on the operation of medical care inside prisons and an explanation of why it is going wrong.

Fasano said the attorney-client protection is a sound legal principle, but that it was possible it should be waived in this case. Attorney General George Jepsen’s office has said it commissioned the consultant’s report to help the Department of Correction defend against lawsuits in some or all of the 25 medical cases.

Somers, who with Logan is a co-chair of the public health committee, likened what she said she is learning about “systemic failures” in prison health care to the patient abuse scandal at the Whiting Forensic Division. Ten workers were charged with cruelty and the state is facing federal and state lawsuits.

Somers said the prison care contract had been “blindly awarded” to UConn Heath year after year, essentially as a subsidy, and that certain situations, such as an inmate going without medication for five months, were intolerable.

She said in some instances, “this would be considered torturous neglect.”

And Logan, noting the auditors’ findings about a lack of quality control said, “As a result, taxpayers are subsidizing UConn, which has failed to provide an acceptable standard of care.”

The lawmakers said a date has not been set for the public hearing.

“These inmates have no choice” but to rely on prison medical care, Fasano said, “and that heightens the state’s responsibility. How can the legislature fix the problem if it doesn’t know what it is? That’s our responsibility and we can’t delegate it to anyone else.”

Three Republican lawmakers Wednesday called for a public hearing and “full transparency” to assess allegations of poor health care in state prisons.

“Today we are asking lawmakers in this building to call for a public hearing in front of the Public Health Committee, to have full transparency with respect to the health care in our prison system,” said Senate Republican leader Len Fasano, who was joined by Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, and Sen. George Logan, R-Ansonia, during a press conference at the State Capitol complex Wednesday. Somers is the Senate Republican co-chair of the Public Health Committee and Logan is a vice-chair.

Fasano, of North Haven, called for the release of a report that could offer insight into specific problems in the prison system.

“In particular there was a report done by the Department of Correction in which it reviewed the 25 cases, including eight deaths, related to the health care — eight deaths of prisoners in our custody. The DOC has not provided the report. The commissioner, I’ve talked to him on the phone — he was kind enough to give me a letter to indicate that there’s attorney-client privilege.”

That report, which cost $63,000, is one of two outside assessments of prison health care sought by Correction Commissioner Scott Semple. Because the report might reveal the department’s legal strategy in future litigation, the report’s entire contents are exempt from public disclosure, Semple has said.

The Mirror reported earlier this month on the limited outside oversight over health care for inmates.

Fasano was joined at the podium by the mother of an inmate, Wayne World, who is suing the state, saying it failed diagnose and properly treat his skin cancer, which has since spread, for more than three years after he began complaining of a rash in 2012.

“Wayne wears inmate number 277511, and he has been in jail since 2006 on a manslaughter conviction,” said Carrie World. “Wallace and I raised Wayne to face the consequences of his actions,” she said, referring to her late husband, “but in serving his time, Wayne may have been given a second sentence of inadequate medical care that could cost him his life.”

Fasano made clear he wasn’t putting the blame on Semple. “I have a great deal of respect for Commissioner Semple. I think he’s a great guy. I think that these issues were not necessarily his issues.”

Fasano blamed a “no-bid contract” arrangement with UConn Health, which has provided prison health care for years. Last month the state announced it was shifting management of correctional health from UConn Health to the Department of Correction in July, motivated primarily by findings of a consultant’s report released Tuesday.

Fasano said he thought the power to waive the confidentiality of the report probably was the governor’s rather than the commissioner’s.

Either way, Fasano said, ” someone has to stand in front of this committee, have the guts to stand up and say, ‘I am not going to release this report, I’m invoking attorney client privilege and you’re never going to know the […] truth of what’s happening to the prison inmate health care’.

“And I’m gonna say that I think that a mom has a right to know what is going on, and every mother and every son and every daughter of every prisoner in our system needs to know that right of what’s happening to their loved one.”

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, when asked whether he’d consider waiving the confidentiality of the document, told reporters, “I’m not gonna waive anything that I’m not fully briefed on. A while ago the commissioner brought his concerns to me about health care. It’s led to a number of things that we’re doing at corrections and he’s doing in particular and we’re in the process of moving from one system to another and I have a lot of faith in the commissioner and his ability to get that job done.”

With the 2018 state and federal elections looming in the not-too-distant future, it isn’t too early to take a look at the record of a sitting state senator, namely Heather Somers, who represents Groton and on up the northeast corridor of Connecticut. Sen. Somers has done a remarkable job in so many ways during her term. She has made herself accessible in ways almost unheard of by conducting regular rotating coffee hours around her district and reaching out to constituents in need or just with questions about the future of our befuddled state. Somers has strong views (not all of which I agree with) but is not uncompromising or ideologically-driven like so many other candidates for public office today. She believes in the desperate need for state fiscal responsibility and for slashing unnecessary government expenditures and departments. She wisely points out that various proposed solutions to the budget crisis have serious ramifications. Sen. Somers also helped to save the Medicaid-Medicare insurance program for the disabled and elderly after the veto of the governor nearly killed it permanently. Her hard work, compassion and due diligence deserve recognition. Any prospective candidate who attempts to denigrate her for her political leanings should take a careful look at his/her own campaign.

Peter Wilson, Groton

Mystic — State Sen. Heather Somers, R-18th District, will hold a public forum and panel discussion about the challenges facing the state’s commercial fishermen, along with a viewing of the film “Fishing Wars; Drowning in Regulations” on Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Mystic Art Theatre in Olde Mistick Village.

The panel will include Somers, local commercial fisherman and various officials.

“Our local fishermen’s livelihood is critically threatened by overreaching regulations created by Washington bureaucrats who in many cases have never stepped foot on a fishing vessel,” said Somers. “Commercial fishing has been an integral part of Southeastern Connecticut’s way of life since before there were colonies. Local families going back generations have worked the sea to provide fresh seafood and feed the Eastern seaboard. These small proud family businesses are now on the verge of closing forever. I am looking forward to this panel discussion so that we can bring awareness to the problem, listen to first-hand experiences and work together to take steps to remedy it and help fishermen prosper in our state again. I want to encourage residents in Southeastern Connecticut to come to this free, open forum event.”

For more information, please contact Erika Pocock at (800) 842-1421.

Griswold Town Attorney Michael Zizka told state officials that the town was prepared to launch legal action against the state if it persists in its plan to build a state police firearms training facility adjacent to Pachaug State Forest.

“You may be facing litigation if you try to ram this project through,” Zizka told members of the State Assembly’s Joint Committee on Public Safety and Security, at a March 6 hearing in the Legislative Office Building.

He testified alongside Griswold First Selectman Todd Babbitt, as a packed house of local residents, many sporting “Save Pachaug Forest” buttons, sat in the gallery.

The hearing was called to address House Bill 5304, which calls on the state Department of Administrative Services and the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection to conduct a study examining all potential sites for the project. State Rep. Kevin Skulczyck and State Sen. Heather Somers co-sponsored the bill.

Zizka said that the state is violating the spirit of its own law by bypassing the Office of Policy and Management’s statewide long-range facilities plan. That plan requires proposed building projects to pass muster with the state Property Review Board.

But State Solicitor General Jane Rosenberg told the committee that the state facilities plan was an “advisory document” which does not impact projects funded by bonding. The DAS is planning to finance the projected $7 million cost of the project through bonding. The legislature has already approved a bond package which includes the first phase of gun range project, she said.

Both state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection Commissioner Dora Shriro and Department of Administrative Services Commissioner Melody Curry spoke in support of the project, echoing the stance they took during public hearings on the project in Griswold in 2016.

Shriro said that recent mass shootings underscore the need to train state troopers in the use of long rifles and in situations that more closely mimic those they encounter in the field.

“The state police must have a training facility to prepare for these threats. Delays would cost the state more money, and it could cost lives, including those of first responders,” she said.

Opponents of the project said they agreed, but contended that the state is once again using eastern Connecticut as a dumping ground for undesirable projects, bypassing its own watchdog agency and spending money it can ill afford in a tight budget climate.

“The people of Griswold are tired of living in the dark in regards to this project,” said Griswold Board of Finance member Steve Mikutel, a former state representative.

He called for an independent agency to conduct the site assessment, rather than the state agencies.

“I do not believe that the DAS can be objective,” he said.

Several speakers who testified questioned the fiscal logic of building a new gun range in a climate where state grants to towns have been slashed to bolster the state budget. Babbitt said that loss of state grants to the town may spell a two mill tax increase for next year, despite a level-funded budget.

“The state thinks bond money is free money,” Somers told the committee. “Don’t be fooled by what you have been told. If you follow the square footage [on cost estimates], we’re looking at $30 million.”

The committee heard suggestions for several alternative sites for the facility, including Congressman Joe Courtney ‘s proposal to use the existing National Guard firing range in East Haven. State officials countered that the East Haven range was not available for enough training days, and surrounding wetlands preclude expanding it to include shooting scenarios required by state troopers.

Steven Douglas, of Save Pachaug Forest, suggested that the state investigate using virtual reality systems designed for law enforcement as a training tool instead.

“There’s no live ammunition and no gun range accidents,” he said.

After shopping the project around to 11 different towns in eastern Connecticut in 2016, the state settled on property on Lee Road in Griswold as its preferred site for the gun range. The property, a vacant farmstead owned by Lewis Button, Jr., who works for the Secretary of State’s office, is surrounded on three sides by Pachaug State Forest.

Local residents say that the noise, lead pollution, and traffic from the facility will destroy the ambiance of the forest, lower property values, and adversely affect the environment.

The committee has two weeks to act on the bill, after which it could go to the House for consideration and possible vote.

In January, Rep. Christine Conley, D-Groton, found herself with more than 50 postcards from patrons of Beer’d Brewing Company. It was part of a grass-roots effort to get state lawmakers to lift the limit on the amount of beer a manufacturer can sell to one person on one day, which currently is 9 liters.

At the Capitol on Tuesday, the Joint Committee on General Law heard several hours of testimony on House Bill 5036, which would lift that limit.

Conley, state Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, and Beer’d co-owner Precious Putnam were three of many at the hearing to offer testimony in support of the bill. The nearly 70 pieces of written testimony submitted were overwhelmingly in favor, but wholesalers came in person to oppose the measure.

“Why are we limited on selling a product that we’re producing?” Putnam questioned in a video Somers posted to Facebook on Tuesday. “It’s like going to a farm and trying to get eggs and saying, ‘Oh, you can only have 10, but you can go to a grocery store and buy unlimited.’ It’s ridiculous.”

Conley pointed out that many breweries sell 16-ounce cans. Nine liters is about 304 ounces, or 19 cans, so breweries can’t sell a full case of 16-ounce cans.

After receiving the postcards, Conley went to Beer’d for a tour. She heard about how the brewery had started offering matching 401(k) plans, and about its plans for a second location in Groton.

On Jan. 24, she asked the General Law Committee to raise a bill eliminating the limit.

The directive ended up included in a larger bill from Gov. Dannel Malloy, one that also discussed wholesale prices of wine, and bottling. Conley is co-sponsor of this bill.

The bill “is a bit controversial. We call it an aircraft carrier bill,” Somers said in the video she posted. “There are things in there that people like and that they don’t like, so we are going to push to have the microbrewery and craft brewery sections separated out and passed as its own individual bill.”

Somers also toured Beer’d in January, and on Feb. 8 she held a “Pints and Policy Office Hour” there.

“Each time you pass a bill like H.B. 5036, small businesses pop up in the wake,” Drew Rodgers, owner of Barley Head Brewery in Mystic, said in written testimony he submitted. “Not just breweries, but hopyards to supply the hops, cattle farmers to absorb the spent grain, and most recently, Connecticut’s first maltster.”

A brewery owner makes the trek from Massachusetts

Esther Tetreault, co-founder of Trillium Brewing Company in Boston and Canton, Mass., spoke to the Joint Committee on General Law about how Trillium has been able to thrive without the constraints of direct-sale limits.

Trillium has gone from selling 300 barrels when it was founded in 2013 to 20,000 in 2017, and the company now has more than 100 employees, growth Tetreault said is “primarily due to our ability to sell directly to consumers without limits.”

Tetreault has a stake in Connecticut law because Trillium is looking to build a production facility on farmland in southeastern Connecticut, and she said the 9-liter limit would significantly inhibit the business model.

Tetreault originally is from Connecticut, and she and her husband, co-founder JC Tetreault, got married at Saltwater Farm Vineyard in Stonington.

They have expressed interest in opening a brewery in North Stonington.

First Selectman Mike Urgo referenced them in his written testimony by saying the town has “a well known brewery from Massachusetts considering locating their operations here in town. This would be an incredible opportunity for the town and a great fit for the local area. Without this bill 5036 breweries like this are not likely to call Connecticut home.”

Wholesalers express opposition

Jude Malone, executive director of the Connecticut Beer Wholesalers Association, is troubled by breweries’ ongoing requests to increase how much they can sell.

In 2005, the General Assembly passed a bill allowing beer manufacturers to sell beer for off-site consumption. In 2012, a law passed raising the limit from 8 to 9 liters of beer, thus allowing for the purchase of a case of 12-ounce beers.

A 2015 act created a farmers’ market beer sales permit, and a 2017 law increased the amount of beer that could be sold to a person per day at a farmers’ market.

Malone feels that removal of the 9-liter limit would continue an ongoing erosion of Connecticut’s three-tier system of suppliers, wholesalers and retailers. She believes comparisons to Massachusetts are unfair, saying it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison because of different permits required in the Bay State.

Malone believes the impact is “a slow death” for wholesalers.

In Rhode Island, a 2016 law allowed manufacturers to sell up to 288 ounces of malt beverages, which is the equivalent of two dozen 12-ounce beers, or one case.

Jennifer Brinton, owner of Grey Sail Brewing in Westerly, said she doesn’t have a personal interest in seeing that raised.

“Our package stores have been extremely supportive of us since day one,” Brinton said. She added, “We have no intention of being a resale shop that competes with our liquor stores, but that’s because that’s our model.”

e.moser@theday.com