A federally-funded program created during the Covid-19 pandemic designed to provide Connecticut”™s corrections officers with hotel accommodations was repeatedly abused by the officers, according to a state investigation.
CT Mirror reported the Department of Correction created the $6.4 million Temporary Emergency Lodging Program to enable corrections officers to stay at a hotel if they were worried about contracting Covid at a state prison ”“ where infection rates were extremely high ”“ and transmitting the virus to their families. However, an ongoing investigation found corrections employees taking extreme advantage of the program by booking hotel rooms for weddings and New Year”™s Eve festivities; some corrections employees wound up living full-time with their families in the hotels.
More than 50 hotels across Connecticut were part of the program, where at least $144,000 in questionable costs were incurred.
“The lack of internal controls increased the risk of program misuse or abuse,” state auditors reported. “Without the limitation of the number of days for a hotel stay, employees could stay at the hotel for longer than necessary. Without the employees”™ verification and certification of their hotel stays, incorrect or double billing could occur without detection.”
While this was taking place, at least 30 incarcerated people in Connecticut died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began. However, the Department of Corrections insisted that no prisoner was “compromised by the actions of the small number of individuals” who misued the hotel program. And Collin Provost, president of the AFSCME Local 391 Connecticut State Prison Employees Union, told the CT Mirror that he didn”™t believe “that anybody knew the parameters of the program right off the bat when it first started.”
