Gov. Ned Lamont did his best this week to try to change the subject — announcing a promise of juicy tax cuts — as the state's scandal machine cranked out some really bad headlines for the governor and his bid for reelection.

It turns out federal authorities are investigating state spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on schools construction and a remake of State Pier in New London, big-money programs overseen by Lamont's trusted former deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, Konstantinos Diamantis.

It was two years ago that Lamont, in front of television cameras at a news conference, practically slapping his associate "Kosta," as he called him by his nickname, on the back, presented him as the able supervisor of the State Pier project, someone who could keep costs at their budgeted $157 million.

Kosta had "gone over the numbers real tight," Lamont said of Diamantis.

By the spring of 2021, the cost of the project, originally estimated at $93 million, had soared well past the $157 million promised at the news conference, with new projections of $223 million.

Lamont signed on for the head-spinning increase, maybe happy Kosta was still keeping the numbers tight, as they soared. Indeed, Diamantis stayed on the project through much of the rest of 2021, and wasn't finally eased out of the Lamont administration until subpoenas from a federal grand jury regarding the pier and school projects spending began to fly.

Until we know more about that scandal, we can at least conclude that Lamont showed extraordinary bad judgment in keeping Diamantis in charge of one of the state's major spending projects, as the cost spun wildly out of control.

It could be, before we know more about the federal probe into work overseen by Lamont's deputy secretary, that another State Pier scandal may drop and, who knows, perhaps embarrass the governor even more.

The Connecticut State Contracting Standards Board is scheduled at its meeting Friday to discuss a new report on its review of the Connecticut Port Authority, the quasi-public agency running Lamont's cost-spiraling remake of State Pier.

Given the authority's reluctance to cooperate, with Lamont administration and port authority officials carping publicly at the standards board and even refusing initially to provide its documents without redactions, it is safe to assume Friday's discussion may be charged.

Gov. Lamont even cut funding for the standards board, undermining the intention of the legislature to amply staff it, as it reviewed contracts relating to the governor's pet project, the expensive remake of the pier to suit utilities Eversource and Ørsted.

The board was created in the wake of the scandals that brought down former Gov. John Rowland. And it was troubling, even before we learned of a federal grand jury investigating the port authority's project, that the current governor was trying to cut the funding legs out from under this important watchdog agency.

Cutting the standards board funding is just one of the troubling Lamont responses to the unfolding scandals at the port authority.

Lamont's deputies, as the first port authority scandals began to unfold, offered hush money to a departing port authority employee if she signed an agreement not talk to the news media.

Lamont's hand-picked chairman of the port authority, David Kooris, once balked to the governor's chief of staff at providing information to state auditors investigating a whistleblower complaint about a $500,000 success fee to the company of a former port authority board member.

That sweet deal, as well as contracts awarding the port of New London to the politically connected operators of the competing port in New Haven — like giving a state-owned McDonald's to Burger King — have all been under review by the contracting board.

I am very curious what the board will have to say about them during its meeting Friday.

Who knows. Maybe it will be a game of connect the port authority scandal dots. There are a lot of them.

In any case, I suspect it may round out a really bad week for candidate Lamont and his campaign.

After all, no one wants to run for reelection while the feds are investigating spending of hundreds of millions of dollars by your administration.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com