Sean Corbett

Flip through a few pages of Gov. Jodi Rell's official schedule and you might start considering a career in politics.

This was her schedule Nov. 14. Her day unfolded like this:

7:08 – 7:57 a.m. Phone in to three morning radio shows to discuss the crappy economy and the dreadful choices you'll have to make to balance the books.

9 – 9:30 Tape audio for a public service announcement on diabetes awareness — by phone.

10 – 10:30 Meet with Congressman John Larson, a Democrat, at the Governor's Residence.

11:05 – 11:15 Call in to another radio show, Stu Briar of WICH in Norwich.

1 – 1:30 p.m. Meet with your social services commissioner in the Governor's Office for an update on your faltering state health care program.

2 – 2:05 p.m. Call John Frey, the Republican whip in the state House of Representatives.

And the rest of the day is clear.

On paper, Jodi Rell has what looks like the greatest job in the state. The governor, who earns $150,000 a year, packs her days full of friendly radio interviews and ceremonial events that take her all over the state to cut a ribbon here or stick a shovel in dirt there.

Scheduled meetings with commissioners, legislative leaders and budget staff are short and sweet (almost never more than two hours) and her chief of staff and budget director appear to take the bulk of them.

[Ed. Note:  View more of Gov. Rell's schedule at the bottom of this story.]

Since taking office four years ago, the Republican Rell has remained the most popular governor in recent history with her status quo governing style, her moderate positions and her nice-as-pie demeanor. She's also employed a relentless public relations strategy that puts her on the radio as many as nine times a day for mostly lightweight interviews, and has her criss-cross the state to wave off troops at Bradley Airport or headline a women's luncheon at the Aqua Turf Club in Plantsville.

Finding her at the Capitol, some Democrats in the legislature say, can be a lot harder. Almost a dozen Democrats, some in leadership positions, and even two Republicans told us Connecticut has an absentee governor who spends more time on the road cultivating her public image than overseeing the day-to-day operations of the sprawling $18 billion corporation known as Connecticut state government.

The result, Rell's critics say, is a hands-off management style that leads to public works projects going millions over-budget, half-baked public policy and an unwillingness to meet face-to-face with adversaries, community leaders and even one of her own agency heads.

Rell's spokesman and supporters will tell you that's all hogwash, that the governor's a fully engaged leader who's hard at work "24/7." Plus, she's not nearly as absentee as those part-time Democrats.

THE SPEAKER SPEAKS

The sharpest criticism comes from Jim Amann, the outgoing Speaker of the House and a Democratic candidate for governor in 2010. Amann diagnoses Rell thus: "She's still in lieutenant governor mode. Her title changed but what she's doing is pretty similar. She likes events, likes cutting ribbons and talking to families when they're leaving to go overseas. But the everyday mixing it up, rolling up your sleeves as the governor, I don't think she wants to get engaged unless she really has to."

Harsh words. But is Amann right? Judging by the guv's appointment book, the answer would have to be "quite possibly."

The Advocate reviewed four and a half months' worth of Rell's daily schedule, which are public records, going back to April of this year and found something revealing if not altogether surprising: Loads of drive-time radio chats, bill-signing ceremonies and public events. Not so many meetings with her commissioners, her senior staff or serious journalists.

This fall, with lawmakers out campaigning for re-election and the state's fiscal house getting foreclosed on, Rell scheduled 13 meetings with her budget team, three with her economic advisors, five with legislative leaders and one with private-sector CEOs, according to her calendar.

During that same period, from Sept. 1 to Nov. 18, Rell scheduled 69 radio interviews (seven to 10 minutes apiece) and 45 ceremonial events, including dedications, speaking engagements, ribbon-cuttings, proclamations, ground-breakings, photo-ops, facility tours and retirement parties. Rell scheduled more talks with conservative radio hosts Brad Davis and Jerry Kristafer than she did with the commissioners running the state's chronically troubled transportation and children and families agencies. Or with legislative leaders, for that matter.

That made it hard to get the state budget worked out in the final days on the 2009 legislative session, Amann says, because Rell didn't personally attend budget talks until a few days before adjournment.

"The governor and I have a good rapport," Amann says. "We've worked well on budgets together. But those budgets — things could move a lot quicker if she got engaged a lot earlier. All of us should be at the table at the same time. I don't need to talk to underlings about the budget process."

Amann's gone after Rell before (there was the time he called her a "very dishonorable human being") and as a candidate for governor in 2010, he's certainly got motive to do it now. But as House Speaker, he's also in a position to know, with a level of access to the governor enjoyed by few other people.

And he's hardly the only one describing Rell as AWOL.

State Sen. Andrew McDonald, a Stamford Democrat who co-chairs the Judiciary Committee, says he usually discerns Rell's positions through her press releases. When the governor suspended parole for violent offenders and pushed a three-strikes law after the brutal Cheshire murders in 2007, McDonald says Rell proposed sweeping changes to the criminal justice system without bothering to consult his committee. He learned about her plans from newspaper articles.

"There's not a lot of individual engagement that I've seen," McDonald says. "I tend to find it more efficient to sit down across the table and hash out a problem even if it takes time, as opposed to shooting press releases across each others' bows. It's inherently inefficient."

RELLPOLITIK

Rell spokesman Chris Cooper rejects that characterization of his boss and says her appointment book can be misleading. Rell's at the Capitol "nearly every other day" unless she ends one day close to where she's starting the next one, Cooper says.

The appointment book's just a list of meetings known about in advance, he says. It's not a diary and it doesn't reflect spontaneous meetings and appointments that take place every day.

It wouldn't include, for example, if the governor's reading a bill and calls a commissioner into her office to explain a certain provision, Cooper says. "There's a lot of that."

As to comments about the governor being AWOL, Cooper refutes them with a mix of denial, outrage and relativism.

"If you were to ask your colleagues in the Capitol press corps who they see more often, they will tell you they see Gov. Rell more often than they see Speaker Amann," Cooper says. "You could come to Capitol any time from June to January and be hard-pressed to find a couple of legislators in the building."

Asked about Amann's story that the governor ran the clock out on budget talks until the last two weeks, Cooper says: "There's an appropriate time for the governor to meet with them. There's an appropriate time for them to do the work they are charged with doing. This building is notorious for them being in session for five months and spending the last two weeks working every night until two in the morning."

The bottom line, Cooper says, is that Rell's on top of state business. She meets with legislative leadership, the four Democrats and two Republicans who run the state House and Senate, "pretty close to weekly or bi-weekly," Cooper says. Her 30 or so agency heads meet monthly at the Capitol, and "most times, the governor attends, unless there is a conflict," Cooper says.

That's not how Jennifer Aniskovich remembers it. Aniskovich, who served as Rell's culture and tourism director from 2004 to 2006, says the governor never once attended the monthly commissioners meeting, sending her chief of staff, Lisa Moody, instead. That's in stark contrast to former Gov. John Rowland, who Aniskovich says rarely missed a cabinet meeting and would often show up with his dog in tow to check in on his agency heads.

More surprising, Aniskovich doesn't recall ever having a business meeting with Rell, despite requesting them. Aniskovich — whom Rell dismissed in December of 2006 in part for her ties to Rowland — says she'd request a sit-down with the governor and instead get Lisa Moody.

"Look, Jodi's probably very well-intentioned. However, she's fostered a culture of hands-off leadership that says to commissioners and deputies under them, 'If you succeed, the governor will take credit for it, and if you fail, the governor will hang you out to dry,'" says Aniskovich.

WHAT'S A GUV SUPPOSED TO DO?

In fairness to Rell, by its nature the job of governor comes with a lot of ceremonial duties. But past governors have at times performed far fewer of them, or squeezed them into a busier schedule of business meetings.

Former Gov. Lowell Weicker, who served as an independent from 1991-94, remembers the crush of ceremonial events but also recalls frequent meetings with individual legislators.

"Any governor has a lot of ceremonial stuff to do. That goes with the job," Weicker says in a phone interview from his home in Virginia. "But it's a question of, you know, what is out there that needs your attention? And as you know, we are in a life and death [struggle] for the financial stability of the state."

Weicker said he wouldn't weigh in on the job Rell is doing or whether she's doing ceremonial events at the expense of other state business. Asked how often Weicker met with senior staff, commissioners and legislative leadership, however, Weicker says, "almost every day."

"We were meeting in my office, over at the governor's residence, over dinners," Weicker says.

So was Rowland. The one-time "boy wonder" of Connecticut politics hyper-scheduled his days in office (6 minutes to walk from the Capitol to the Legislative Office Building, for instance), according to his official calendars, now on file in the dungeon-like basement of the Connecticut State Library in Hartford. Before Rowland was a convicted felon who sold out his office for state contracts and vacations, he was an ambitious young governor with an aggressive agenda for the state. Rowland too packed in the photo-ops and ribbon-cuttings, but just as often his days looked like this, from April 2, 1997, during his first term:

9:15 - 9:30 a.m.: Travel time to Capitol

9:30 - 10:30: Legislative leaders meeting

10:30 - 11: Meeting with Rep. Lyons and Rep. Jepsen

11 - 11:30: Call into WSTC/WNLK/WLAP with host Deborah Gilbert

11:30 - noon: Meeting with Sen. Upson

Noon - 1 p.m.: Lunch

1 - 1:30: Meeting with Art Marquardt, President and CEO of Connecticut Natural Gas

1:30 - 1:45: Flex time

1:45 - 2: Meet and greet Ms. Senior Connecticut

2 - 2:30: Meeting with Ken Decko and John Rathgeber of Connecticut Business & Industry Association. Topics include: budget, health care and corporate responsibility

2:30 - 3: Senior staff meeting

3 - 3:30: Meet and greet Sacred Heart High School boys' varsity basketball team. Note: They recently won the title of state champions in the Class M division

3:30 - 4: Meeting with Rep. Gelsi

4 - 4:45: Meet with [governor's staff]

4:45 - 6: Open

6:45 - 7:30: Travel time to Middlebury

7:30 - 10:30: Dinner with Mike McDonald and his wife.

Rell might have days like this but she certainly isn't planning them out ahead of time.

HINTS OF 2010

Democrats in the legislature need Rell to pass state budgets and many high-ranking ones were loathe to go on record with their critiques. But with the 2008 election over, Rell will soon start taking shots from another quadrant: Democrats who want her job in 2010.

Democratic talking points for the governor's race, still two years away, are starting to make the rounds and Rell's management of state government plays a starring role.

Listen to the critique by Roy Occhiogrosso, a Democratic strategist who worked for Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy in the 2006 gubernatorial primary and says he might do so again if Malloy makes a run in 2010:

"Mismanagement at the state level is a direct result of a couple of things: not actually understanding how state government works, not being interested in how it works, not putting the right people in charge," Occhiogrosso says.

Evidence of Rell administration mismanagement is everywhere, Occhiogrosso says. Screwed up jobs such as the drain ditches to nowhere on Interstate 84 by a Department of Transportation contractor (extra cost to taxpayers: $15 million); the over-budget railroad maintenance facility in New Haven (extra cost to taxpayers: $900 million) and the botched land surveys that delayed rebuilding Route 7 (extra cost to taxpayers: $15 million).

"Mistakes always get made, but hundreds of millions of dollars worth of mistakes?" Occhiogrosso asks.

"SHE IS EXTREMELY CAUTIOUS"

The Democrats can go after Rell for incompetence all they want, and sometimes they'll be right. But Rell's doing something right in the eyes of the people. Her sky-high popularity is unprecedented in state history, never once dipping below 65 percent in more than four years.

Amann, the House Speaker, says that's just the point. Someone with a mandate as big as Rell's could be pushing the state boldly into the 21st century, governing as gutsy trailblazer rather than risk-averse steward.

"Sometimes I do get frustrated with the governor because I know if you have the people behind you, you can really shake things up, move things, be bold and courageous in your ideas," Amann says. "There are areas — early reading success, the transportation bill — she could have taken to a new level if she chose to. Or maybe we could have $2 billion in the rainy day fund. Maybe instead of 2,000 plus jobs we could have had 7,000 new jobs.

"But she is extremely cautious," he adds. "And I think it's because she looks at that popularity poll."

Amann ends with this thought:

"It's like you have this very charming woman with great personality, but she's very content to not shake up anything in government. Status quo is OK. Pay the bills."

A big bill is fast coming due: The state budget is projected to plunge $6 billion into the red in the next two years. And you can't ribbon-cut your way out of a bind like that.

Click here to listen to Andy Bromage on WTIC News Talk 1080's Afternoon Drive.  Andy discusses Gov. Rell and this cover story with host Colin McEnroe.  From 12/3/08.

CLICK TO VIEW A 2-WEEK SAMPLE OF GOVERNOR RELL'S SCHEDULE  (Opens in PDF)