WNPR's John Dankosky.

The legislature voted against it.

The attorney general has declared it illegal.

Clean-energy advocates oppose it.

Yet Gov. Jodi Rell, in what some consider an abuse of executive power, has somehow managed to push it through.

Taking a page from the Bush playbook, Rell is using what amounts to a signing statement to ignore a piece of clean-energy legislation she signed last year.

The state will auction off carbon permits to power plants on Sept. 25, making them pay for the CO2 they pump into the air. Over time the number of permits for sale will shrink, forcing polluters to clean up their act.

A state law, which Rell signed in 2007, says money from the sale must go to conservation and renewable energy programs. During the dog days of August, the Rell administration pushed regulations through a special committee that ensures a portion of money will go back to ratepayers in the form of a rebate. A very meager rebate.

Nobody knows exactly how much the carbon credits will sell for, but early estimates by the state put the price at $3 to $5 per ton. At $5 a ton, the sale would raise $50 million. The law says all proceeds are to go toward renewable energy. Rell's rules say anything over $5 will go back to ratepayers. As a rebate, the overage amounts to something like $3 per ratepayer per year. Pooled together, though, it would mean $10 million more for clean energy projects.

The General Assembly voted against Rell's rebate scheme this past spring. The House of Representatives voted 101-43 to kill legislation that would have given carbon-sale proceeds back to ratepayers as a rebate. The attorney general was asked to weigh in and ruled a rebate would be illegal.

The administration's going ahead with the sale anyway, against the explicit directive from the General Assembly and against the advice of the state's top legal official.

"If the legislature passes a law and the seven-member Regulation Review Committee doesn't like it, can they ignore the legislation?" asks Roger Smith of Clean Water Action. "No one should be above the law."

Smith and his allies are in a tough spot: Do nothing and risk setting a dangerous precedent for executive abuse. Or, sue and risk derailing the entire carbon sale, a key piece of Connecticut's commitment to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an effort by a coalition of states committed to fighting global warming.

Rell's office was asked numerous specific questions about the conflicts raised by Blumenthal and Smith, and responded with this statement: "The governor believes that her provision is the extra step we need to take to soften any unexpected costs that may result from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. She wants to provide real relief at a time when families are under enormous economic pressures and are struggling just to cover the basics — gas, food and heat. A bipartisan committee that represents the state's legislative body adopted the legislation for the RGGI regulations in July and interpreted the Governor's measure to be within the scope of the legislative act."

Real rate relief. A whole $3 worth. The price to democracy is far steeper.

Cheat the Press

Gov. Jodi Rell never met a talk radio show she didn't like. Except maybe John Dankosky's.

The host of WNPR's local affairs show "Where We Live," Dankosky's tried in vain for two years to get Rell on his program for the full hour and to take unscripted calls from listeners. His latest entreaty came last week, but again Dankosky and WNPR listeners were denied. In fact, Rell is the only high-level state elected official never to take calls on Dankosky's show.

Meanwhile, the governor maintains her furious pace of call-ins to commercial radio morning shows like WPLR's Chaz and AJ or WDRC's Jerry Kristafer, averaging one a day, where she often fields politically-friendly questions or takes part in goofy drive-time bits.

Two days after Sarah Palin's fib-filled acceptance speech at the GOP convention, Rell went on Kristafer's show to field softballs about what the host called a "very inspirational" speech.

"When she came on stage," Rell told the host, "I got this little shiver. I thought, 'My God, we're actually doing it. We're nominating a woman to run for vice president.' I thought, 'Wow, go get 'em girl. You can do it.'"

Rell hits the morning shows for five to 10-minute slots on average once a day, according to her official calendar, sometimes hitting three or four a morning.

Dankosky launched "Where We Live" in June 2006 with the ambitious goal to interview every statewide elected official from the governor on down, all five members of Congress, both Senators, leaders in the state House and Senate and commissioners of all major state agencies — "and do that multiple times." Two years later, Dankosky's bagged all but one guest.

Dankosky even coaxed Sen. Joe Lieberman into the studio — twice — during the contentious 2006 Senate campaign, when Lieberman might have preferred not to subject himself to NPR listeners' questions. Rell's been on the show, but never for the full hour and she's never taken live calls.

Dankosky's show is the anti-drive-time radio. He talks about issues other talk shows won't touch, such as property tax reform and state immigration trends. He's a respectful, engaged host who's always fair with his guests. Dankosky's direct, but you'd never describe him as antagonistic or overly aggressive, which makes the governor's apparent avoidance even more puzzling.

"We have an extended, in-depth conversation," Dankosky says. "I always try to get listeners involved because they ask intelligent questions and are often much more insightful about subjects than I am. Our calls are screened and (our callers) will ask anything — sometimes things that make guests comfortable and sometimes things that make them uncomfortable."

Dankosky's last pitch to Rell's office went straight to the top — the governor's chief of staff, Lisa Moody. "We had a very nice conversation," Dankosky says.

If he had Rell on, Dankosky says he'd ask her "anything and everything. I give (my guests) a chance to talk about things they are trying to push at the moment. But then I will talk."

The same goes for Rell on some of the drive-time shows, albeit in much shorter bites, and often mixed with silly gags. Chaz, co-host of WPLR's "Chaz & AJ in the Morning," says he presses the governor to "cut, cut, cut and not raise" taxes, but admits they "don't beat her up" when she comes in the air.

"We throw her some softballs, then give her some questions she would get walking around on the streets," Chaz says.

Rell does take calls on Chaz & AJ, where, as Chaz describes it, listeners are "half saying, 'Great job, thank you for doing this,' and the other half are, 'Hey, you're killing me with this.'"

Chaz tried to get her on last week to talk about state spending cuts — Rell's economic advisers project a $145 million budget deficit and the governor says she's not raising taxes to close it — but he never heard back from the press office.

"This week was the first time we didn't get a call back from her office," he says. "Usually when she can't make it we'll get a call saying, she can't do it for X,Y and Z reason. She's running a state. I can't blame her."

Rell's press office didn't get back to us either about why the governor hasn't appeared on "Where We Live," despite numerous attempts to find out.

Guess she's not taking our calls either.¦

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