All of the local politicians gathered for a photo op at Griffin Hospital Tuesday could agree on one thing: it’s good that the state provided $1.3 million to the fund research at the hospital’s Multiple Sclerosis Research Center.
But what the money — and the eve-of-election timing of its release — means in the bigger picture depends on who you ask.
Sen. Joseph Crisco, who organized Tuesday’s event with Democratic state Reps. Theresa Conroy and Linda Gentile, called the funds a “miracle” windfall for Griffin and two other state hospitals, the result of hard work by he and others on behalf of Griffin.
But Rep. Themis Klarides, who sits on the hospital’s board of directors and essentially crashed Tuesday’s photo op, lambasted the Dems for leaving her off the event’s invite list — and for what she describes as hypocrisy with respect to hospital funding.
“Since 2012 those three members of the delegation have voted for budgets that have cut Griffin Hospital over $10 million, including this year’s budget,” Klarides said afterward.
Check Presentation
The four politicians were joined by hospital officials for a symbolic check presentation of $1.3 million to Griffin drawn from the state’s Biomedical Research Trust Fund.
The money was included as part of the 2017 budget, which also includes payouts from the trust fund of $1.3 million for the Yale School of Medicine’s Children’s Diabetes Research Program, and $1.3 million the University of Connecticut Health Center’s Clinical and Translational Breast Program and Bladder Cancer Institute.
Griffin Hospital President and CEO Patrick Charmel, Multiple Sclerosis Treatment Center Director Joseph Guarnaccia, and Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center Deputy Director Beth Commerford thanked the officials for the money.
Charmel noted that the hospital’s research agenda is an ambitious one.
“We may need more than the million three,” he joked to the lawmakers.
Guarnaccia said the state funds will be used “to investigate new dimensions of care for our patients, design care effectiveness studies, and continue patient advocacy for patients suffering from this complex disease.”
Click here to learn more about the MS Treatment Center at Griffin and Guarnaccia.
In prepared statements, the Democratic lawmakers said they fought to preserve the funding for Griffin while putting the state budget together.
“As long as there are great medical research centers in Connecticut like Griffin Hospital and Yale and UConn, I think we should be supporting them and the work they do for thousands of people,” Crisco said. “Afflictions like MS and diabetes and cancer, they just won’t go away by themselves. We have to work hard to find cures, or find ways to live life fully, even with these illnesses. That’s what these state grants help our researchers do, and I’m very proud to have fought to preserve this funding in the state budget.”
“I am so happy to be able to provide Griffin Hospital with this check that will be used for important multiple sclerosis research,” Gentile said. “Medical research is so important for understanding and treating diseases. It gives medical professionals the knowledge they need to diagnose and prescribe an appropriate treatment protocol. We are lucky to have this hospital right here in our community.”
“Griffin Hospital is a vital healthcare provider and economic hub for the Valley,” Conroy said. “Even in a budget year where we had to scour every square inch for savings, we stood with Griffin Hospital. I am proud of Sen. Crisco and Rep. Gentile for standing up and coming through with this funding.”
But the budget discussions wrapped up months ago.
So, the Valley Indy asked, wasn’t Tuesday’s check presentation really a re-election campaign stop by another name?
Not so, Crisco said.
He said the disbursement followed a “typical process” involving sign-offs from a multitude of officials like Attorney General George Jepsen and the state’s budget chief, Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes.
“There’s a whole process that doesn’t change just because it’s that time of year,” Crisco said. “Whether you do it now or next June, it’s the same process, and it’s a lengthy process.”
He also said he’s been making phone calls every day in an effort to get the state to release the money to Griffin.
Klarides: ‘Seems Very Coincidental’
Klarides shared a less charitable view, noting that the $1.3 million payouts promised in the budget to Yale and the UConn Health Center have not reached those institutions yet.
She speculated that’s because the state lawmakers representing those hospitals’ districts aren’t in “rough” re-election campaigns, while Crisco and Conroy are.
“Coincidences don’t usually happen in politics,” Klarides said. “It seems very coincidental to me that two people very rough races, Sen. Crisco and Rep. Conroy, just happen to get this money a week and half before (the election).”
She also said she only found out about Tuesday’s event because she sits on the hospital’s board of directors.
But Klarides didn’t vote for the budget which included the money disbursed Tuesday, the Valley Indy noted.
So why would she be invited?
“I didn’t vote for the budget, obviously, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t parts of the budget that were good,” she said. “There wasn’t enough structural changes in it to effect any changes in the state … I think it’s inappropriate to leave out one member of the delegation because they’re a member of another party.”
Conroy’s opponent is Klarides’ sister, Nicole Klarides-Ditria. But the Republican House Minority Leader said she’d be making the same critique whether or not that were the case.
She said Democrats were essentially trying to have their cake and eat it too by voting with Gov. Dannel Malloy to make painful cuts throughout the state’s healthcare system, then congratulating themselves for salvaging some of the funding.
“Whether it’s Griffin Hospital or Milford Hospital or Middlesex Hospital, any hospital throughout the state, I’m saying the same thing,” Klarides said. “It’s not just because of my sister.”
Asked to respond to Klarides, Crisco said in a prepared statement that Klarides wasn’t invited Tuesday because she “did not vote for the state budget bill which provided this grant to Griffin Hospital – a hospital where, ironically, she sits on its Board of Directors.”
He went on to say that it was Klarides, not Democrats, who were being politically opportunistic.
“But it was nice to see Rep. Klarides smile and pose for the check-passing photograph now that the good news has arrived for Griffin Hospital – one of the largest employers in Derby — and the thousands of Valley residents that they serve,” Crisco said.
He said the GOP hasn’t followed through on its rhetoric by raising their own budget for a vote — though with Democrats holding large majorities in Hartford, any such effort would likely be doomed.
“Rep. Klarides and her Republican counterparts in Hartford talk a lot, but they have not voted for a Democratic budget in the past five years, nor have they raised, debated or voted on their own alternative Republican budget in the past five years.”
The Valley Indy reached out to the Republican candidates running against Crisco, Conroy, and Gentile requesting comment on Tuesday’s presentation.
