It is, of course, preposterous that Connecticut lawmakers are not addressing the continuing draining of unknown amounts of state money for the project at New London’s State Pier, which Gov. Ned Lamont’s team says is now partially complete.

Honestly, it’s true. Lamont’s pet corruption machine, the Connecticut Port Authority, still under two criminal investigations by federal grand juries, is continuing to spend unknown amounts of money on the state’s fat credit card, with no estimates at all about where it is all leading.

How can you claim one phase of the entire project, which according to the last estimates has more than doubled in cost ― more than $250 million― is done when you can’t say how much it cost or how much more will be spent on the next phases?

Such outrageous fiscal behavior can only happen in the banana republic known as Connecticut, where Democrats run the show and gladly allow the governor to keep blindly spending unknown amounts of money on a project under criminal investigation by the feds.

Of course, some of what the feds are investigating is the many millions of dollars of unexplained and continued spending on construction, with the lead construction manager hiring itself as a subcontractor, according to news reporting, even though there were lower bids from outside companies.

Wouldn’t you think somewhere in Hartford someone would blow a whistle and ask for some answers? There are crickets from lawmakers.

As the unexplained spending continues, I took stock lately at just some of the goodies that have been extracted from this project and wondered if anyone will ever be held to account in the criminal probes.

One of my favorite political treats handed out to chosen players by Democratic insider and former port authority Chairman Scott Bates ― whose stint on the board ended when even Gov. Ned Lamont got fed up ― was the $78,000 paid in legal fees to the Chicago-based law firm of former Democratic congressman Toby Moffett.

Moffett complained to me back in 2019, when I suggested there was no good reason for a Connecticut agency to hire a Chicago law firm, when it has one here, except to reward a former congressman from the state.

When I spoke to Moffett he said he couldn’t explain why his firm was uniquely qualified to represent the port authority but that someone who could would get back to me. No one did.

Then there were all the little goodies passed out in the Bates era, like the purchase of artwork from the photographer daughter of a board member, or the hiring of a friend of the director’s wife to design the offices at a cost higher than local companies bid.

Bates hired former associates, presumably friends, for consulting work and a management job. The manager, Andrew Lavigne, hired with no relevant experience, was working as the port authority ethics officer when he was cited by Office of State Ethics for taking improper gifts.

He is still in management at the agency, where ethical violations evidently don’t disqualify you. After all, there is still a board member with an expired term, John Johnson, whom Lamont has declined to replace, who regularly votes on State Pier issues even though the ethics agency said he has a conflict and shouldn’t.

Then there was the saga of a $523,000 “success fee” paid to the company of a former board member, which Attorney General William Tong has been “investigating,” to no conclusion, almost as long as he’s been in office.

The worst of the scandals, in my mind, was the way the port authority put out a request for bid proposals to run New London as a dual-use port for traditional cargo and wind assembly.

Bates and the director didn’t even meet with the longtime operators of the city port, who submitted a dual-use proposal, as requested. Instead they gave it to the politically connected operators of the competing New Haven port, which submitted a bid to close the union-run port here to traditional cargo and create a non-union shipping monopoly for themselves.

Stay tuned and join me in wondering if justice will ever be served here and seeing when the governor will finally tell us how much he has been spending on this federally scrutinized cesspool of corruption.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com