Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [53]
With the newspaper questioning the NLDC’s finances, Claire decided to question Downes’s billing. On July 14, she met with the firm’s president, Joe Desautel, and asked for a detailed explanation of the work and services Downes had provided. The next day, Desautel faxed her a two-page memo, listing twenty-four action items. He included the negotiation of a $20 million bridge loan for the agency; acquiring buildings and business for the NLDC; demolishing properties; drafting the municipal development plan for the peninsula; orchestrating a $16 million bond issue; and securing approvals and permits for all sorts of construction items, from the sewage-treatment facility upgrade to other developments along the waterfront.
Claire wasn’t satisfied. “It didn’t say hourly rates,” she said later. “It didn’t say who performed the work, when it was done, who supervised.”
She insisted she wouldn’t release payment until the firm sent her a more detailed, annotated bill. Her refusal to pay didn’t sit well with the Downes Group. The state didn’t like it either. Claire received a call from a member of the Department of Economic Development. She later recalled a very direct, testy conversation.
“You have state money, and we order you to pay the bill,” Claire said the state official told her.
“I’m happy to pay the bill,” Claire responded. “But I have to sign that I know state money is being appropriately spent. And I don’t believe the bills are appropriate.”
The governor had been monitoring the freedom-of-information dispute between the NLDC and the Day. It didn’t take long for word about the tiff between Claire and Downes to reach his administration’s attention. Claire appeared ready to fire one of the most powerful construction-consulting firms in the state.
“The governor was furious with me on a number of occasions,” Claire later recalled. “It’s the old thing: ‘Are you going to do exactly as I tell you? Then I’m going to keep liking you.’ It got very ugly. I think they thought I’d be dumber than I was because I was an academic.”
After lawyers got involved and the standoff was on the brink of spilling into a public dispute that threatened to embarrass the NLDC, the Downes Group, and the Rowland administration, the three sides came to a truce. “They sent a different bill that was more explanatory,” Claire recalled. “I paid the bill and I fired them.”
But now Claire was clearly on the governor’s blacklist.
Connecticut College history professor Fred Paxton had barely returned from a sabbatical in Cairo when he received word that Claire intended to appoint him director of the school’s Center for International Studies and Liberal Arts. Paxton had long had his eye on the leadership post at the center, which Claire had founded shortly after becoming president of the college. Under her leadership, the center had quickly emerged as the college’s signature program. The directorship promised prestige and a chance to work with top students and scholars.
The appointment surprised Paxton. As the former chair of the faculty steering and conference committee, he had the credentials, but he didn’t have a particularly close relationship with Claire, who treated the program like her baby and tightly controlled its leadership reins. Nonetheless, when she asked to meet with him to discuss the position, he willingly agreed.
In his customary tweed blazer over a form-fitting, collarless shirt that matched his stylish corduroy pants and L. L. Bean shoes, Paxton dressed the part of a professor at a liberal-arts school in New England. Yet at forty-eight, he had the looks of a distinguished Hollywood actor. His receding hairline gave way to a modestly tanned forehead and face, along with a neatly trimmed gray beard. He expected Claire to be dressed provocatively for their meeting. Beyond that, he didn’t know what to expect.
She did not disappoint on the dress. Claire invited him