Hartford - The State Elections Enforcement Commission has fined a University of Connecticut professor $2,000 for using publicly paid graduate students to help him draft and conduct a poll for former Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s exploratory committee in the spring of 2009.

The commission accepted the fine and a consent agreement with Kenneth Dautrich, a professor of public policy and a polling expert at UConn, whose secret role as a political adviser to Rell’s chief of staff, M. Lisa Moody, coincided with the period when he was being paid by the administration’s budget office to conduct studies on how best to streamline state government.

The commission also voted to take no action on complaints that alleged Rell and her political committee had accepted an improperly valuable in-kind contribution from Dautrich -- in the form of his polling work and other political advice -- and that the committee had failed to properly disclose that transaction.

The election commission’s investigation found there “wasn’t a substantial reason to take further action” against the governor or her committee, said Charlie Urso, an investigator for the SEEC.

Investigators said they determined that neither the governor nor her staff knew about the most substantial election law violation their investigation uncovered: that Dautrich had used graduate students who were being paid by the university to work on the poll he designed for Rell in 2009, a fact that had the effect of defraying the cost of the poll to Rell’s exploratory committee.

The committee paid only $6,000 for the poll -- the amount charged by Braun Research, the firm that conducted the phone bank for the poll -- and Dautrich told investigators he volunteered his effort to assist Rell’s committee.

The commission investigation came in response to a complaint filed by former state representative Jonathan Pelto of Storrs, a Democrat, who charged that Dautrich’s polling services constituted an improperly valuable in-kind contribution to Rell’s committee, and that the committee should have reported his service in its campaign finance filings. The commission dismissed those charges.

Pelto filed his complaint after The Day reported that Dautrich, a professor of public policy and a polling expert at the University of Connecticut, had given extensive political and messaging advice to Rell.

Dautrich's aid to the governor included convening secret focus groups in late 2008 to test voter attitudes as Rell prepared a new state budget. Dautrich also helped design and analyze the political poll for the governor's exploratory committee the next spring.

An internal UConn audit found that Dautrich violated the university’s code of conduct by mingling partisan political activity with his professional responsibilities at the public university. Any disciplinary action by the university has been delayed until the conclusion of the external investigations into Dautrich’s work for Rell.

Still pending is a joint investigation by the office of the Attorney General and the state Auditors of Public Accounts, which is examining whether any of the work Dautrich did for the Rell administration, including under the $225,000 contract with Rell’s budget office to study state government structure, constituted improper partisan activity backed by public funds.