Edwin S. Greenberg, Chairman
AGO 2019-4
No. 2019-04
Connecticut Attorney General Opinions
Office of the Attorney General State of Connecticut
May 31, 2019
Edwin
S. Greenberg, Chairman
State
Properties Review Board
450
Columbus Boulevard, Suite 202
Hartford,
CT 06103
Dear
Chairman Greenberg:
You
have requested a formal legal opinion on the scope of the
State Properties Review Board's ("Board")
statutory authority to review certain state contracts. In
particular, you seek clarification regarding the standards
applicable to the Board's review of four types of state
contracts under (i) Conn. Gen. Stat. § 4b-91(g) (No-Bid
Construction Contracts); (ii) Conn. Gen. Stat. §§
4b-23(i) and 4b-55 through 4b-59 (two types of No-Bid
Consultant Contracts); and (iii) Conn. Gen. Stat. §
4b-24b (Design Build Contracts) (collectively, the
"No-Bid Construction, No-Bid Consultant and Design Build
Contracts"). You further ask whether the Board's
statutory review of these state contracts is "in any way
limited." Because the Department of Administrative
Services (DAS) and the Board are not in complete agreement
regarding the applicable review standards for No-Bid
Construction, No-Bid Consultant and Design Build Contracts,
clarity regarding the review standards will assist both DAS
and the Board in fulfilling their statutory functions. Upon
review of the statutory language, the Public Acts and the
legislative history, we conclude that the Board is limited to
its statutory authority, but within that statutory authority,
the Board's scope of review of the state contracts is
broad.
Background
The
legislature established the Board in 1975 as a watchdog
entity to ensure that the State's real estate
acquisitions and leases would be in the State's best
interest and free from "political patronage, cronyism,
personal spoils systems, and friendship." See
Final Report of the Sub-Committee on Leasing, Joint Standing
Committee on Appropriations, p. 30, January 7, 1975. While
DAS remains responsible for managing the state's real
estate, the legislature has vested the Board with independent
decision-making authority and charged it with reviewing real
estate acquisitions, sales, leases and subleases proposed by
the DAS Commissioner. Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 4b-1,
4b-3(e), 4b-3(f), and 4b-23(e). The Board reviews similar
transactions by the Chief Court Administrator and the
Department of Transportation (DOT). Conn. Gen. Stat. §
4b-3(f). The No-Bid Construction, No-Bid Consultant and
Design Build Contracts at issue here all require Board
review.
From
its inception in 1975, the Board has been granted a broad
scope with respect to the Board’s review of state
contracts. Specifically, as currently enacted, subsection (f)
directs in pertinent part that:
Such review shall consider all aspects of the proposed
actions, including feasibility and method of acquisition and
the prudence of the business method proposed. . . . The board
shall have access to all information, files and records,
including financial records, of the Commissioner of
Administrative Services and the Commissioner of
Transportation, and shall, when necessary, be entitled to the
use of personnel employed by said commissioners.
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 4b-3(f). See P.A. 75-425,
§ 1(f) for similar operative language. See also
Conn. Op. Atty Gen. 2010-006, 2010 WL 5088187 (Conn. A.G.,
Dec. 9, 2010) (Attorney General Opinion upholding the
Board’s broad authority under § 4b-3(f)).
Analysis
Summary
Your
question requires us to construe multiple statutes that have
been repeatedly amended for more than forty years. In
construing a statute, its meaning “shall, in the first
instance, be ascertained from the text of the statute itself
and its relationship to other statutes.” Conn. Gen.
Stat. § 1-2z. “If, after examining such text and
considering such relationship, the meaning of such text is
plain and unambiguous and does not yield absurd or unworkable
results, extratextual evidence of the meaning of the statute
shall not be considered.” Id. “When a
statute is not plain and unambiguous, [the Court] also
look[s] for interpretive guidance to the legislative history
and circumstances surrounding its enactment, to the
legislative policy it was designed to implement, and to its
relationship to existing legislation and common law
principles governing the same general subject matter.”
Marchesi v. Board of Selectmen of Town of Lyme, 328
Conn. 615, 628 (2018). “It is a basic tenet of
statutory construction that the intent of the legislature is
to be found not in an isolated phrase or sentence but,
rather, from the statutory scheme as a whole.”
Williams v. City of New Haven, 329 Conn. 366,
378–79 (2018) (internal citations omitted).
Applying
these rules, we look first at the statutes’ text. The
baseline standard for the scope of the Board’s review
is established by the broad standard set forth in Conn. Gen.
Stat. § 4b-3(f) (above), requiring review of “all...
