Pedro Segarra said Gov. Dannel Malloy knew more than he let on about the stadium.
For a year, Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra has taken criticism that his minor league baseball stadium plan was hatched in secret without state input. But now new details are coming out about who knew what and when -- stoking tension between Segarra and Gov. Dannel Malloy.
The mayor and the governor used to agree on one thing.
"We've not asked for state participation, and it's totally our own local project," Segarra said when he announced the project in 2014.
"I did not engage in discussions with the team management, ownership, or Hartford," Malloy said at a press conference after the project was made public. The governor was in the middle of his own reelection campaign. He wasn't exactly eager to get into a fight between Hartford and New Britain -- the city from which Hartford was poaching its baseball team.
But on Thursday, Segarra said Malloy knew more than he was letting on.
"The state was approached before the development was even announced," Segarra said on WNPR's Where We Live, revisiting the issue with host John Dankosky. "There was an election going on at the time, and I think that the governor's decision was to sort of stay out of it."
"I didn't know that," Dankosky said. "So, you took it to the governor before we knew about the ballpark plan?"
"During that period of time, just around that period of time, it was presented in terms of: this is what we want to do; we would like to get some state support," Segarra said.
"What I heard from the state was they hadn't been approached at all by the city of Hartford," Dankosky said.
Then, there was an uneasy pause.
"There was an election going on at that time," Segarra said.
Now, Malloy's people agree that there was in fact a meeting before the official rollout. They said Segarra presented a few drawings of what a stadium could look like. But it was all pretty vague.
Which leaves this uncomfortable political knot.
Last year, it was Malloy who didn't want Segarra dragging him into a political fight. And this year, it's Segarra who -- faced with criticism that he didn't involve the state at all -- pointing a finger at the governor and saying that, actually, Malloy knew what was happening all along. But he didn't want to get involved.
