Lewandowski and the other staff at the state ethics office do not play any role in enforcing ethics laws within municipalities or any other local governments in Connecticut. “If you are signing invoices for matters involving your company or your immediate family’s company, that’s a clear conflict,” said Peter Lewandowski, who serves as the executive director of Connecticut’s Office of State Ethics. Still, ethics experts said Bruneau’s involvement in the contracts and the payments to his family’s company represents a direct conflict of interest, no matter how the procurement process worked or how many companies submitted bids.
He said the company was awarded the contract because no other business responded to an advertisement that was placed in the West Haven Voice, a hyper-local newspaper that is published every other week. Stephen Scafariello, the chief of the West Shore Fire District, said Bruneau’s Garage was chosen in July 2020 to maintain the department’s fire engines and other equipment following a public bidding process. That placed him in a position where he was verifying the parts and services that his family’s business was billing the fire district for.Īs the chairman of the board of fire commissioners, Bruneau has significant influence over West Shore’s $11 million annual budget, and he helps to decide what contractors do business with the fire district, which operates independently of the city government in West Haven. The records highlight how Bruneau - who was also recently singled out in a state audit that examined questionable spending by the West Haven city government - signed off on more than half of the 46 invoices that were submitted to the fire district over the past two years. The invoices show Bruneau’s son billed the fire district a flat fee of $1,500 per month to cover labor costs and tens of thousands of dollars more to supply belts, batteries, hydraulic hoses, brake pads, air filters, oil filters, water pumps and door latches for the fire trucks. That money was reportedly paid to the garage in return for the company repairing and maintaining the fire district’s plow truck, its rescue boat, its blue and white fire engines and the backup generators at its two fire houses.
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