The bonuses federally bailed-out insurance giant AIG issued one year ago caused not only a populist furor nationally, but in Connecticut, home to the company’s now infamous Financial Products division.
Last March Democratic Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and the co-chairs of the legislature’s Banks Committee, relying heavily on newspaper accounts, subpoenaed around one dozen Fairfield County residents who reportedly received the controversial payouts.
Ultimately AIG sent an attorney and some low-level staffers to the Banks Committee hearing, which met with mixed results.
Republicans in the General Assembly complained it was a show trial that unfairly publicized the names of bonus recipients, resulting in protest bus tours past their homes and potentially putting their families in danger.
Rep. John Hetherington, R-New Canaan, demanded Blumenthal issue a public apology, alleging the Attorney General mistakenly targeted one of his constituents. That apology was never issued.
But Banks Committee Co-chairs Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk and Rep. Ryan Barry, D-Manchester, argued they uncovered important data about the bonuses.
Duff and Barry did warn “there may be additional pay outs in 2010″ and that shoe dropped this week with the news AIG is issuing a $100 million round of bonuses.
So now Blumenthal, Duff and Barry are again condemning bonuses and urging the Treasury Department to take “aggressive action to establish basic fairness and equity to Wall Street compensation.”
I asked Duff tonight if we might see a repeat of last year’s Banks Committee hearings and he left the door open, saying he and Barry have been trying to wrangle additional information out of AIG for months.
“We recessed the hearing. We never adjourned,” Duff said. “If we wanted to we could always reconvene the hearing.”
If that happens, there will be one huge difference between last year and this – Blumenthal is running to succeed retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, who was blamed for weakening a provision dealing with executive pay in the economic stimulus package that paved the way for bailed out companies like AIG to award bonuses.
If Blumenthal was accused of mounting a political show trial last year, just imagine the firestorm that will erupt this year.
