I would say Mark Kohler, the interim secretary of the state appointed by Gov. Ned Lamont to fill the remaining term of Denise Merrill, who resigned abruptly last month, has failed his first integrity test.

Kohler has “absolute confidence” in Deputy Secretary of the State Scott Bates, a spokesman for the new secretary of the state told me this week, when I asked whether he would continue to employ Merrill’s deputy, despite new reports of corruption at the Connecticut Port Authority at the time Bates led it.

You would think Secretary of the State Kohler might want to hear more about the unfolding reports of illegal gifts at Bates’ port authority before expressing any kind of “absolute” endorsement.

After all, as a longtime deputy secretary of the state, Bates would have been the logical choice for Lamont to appoint to replace Merrill for the remaining months of her term.

But of course Lamont could hardly have appointed Bates secretary of the state, since the governor himself had demanded his resignation from the port authority board back in 2019, when it was learned that he had agreed to allow the agency to buy decorative artwork from the daughter of another board member.

Bates subsequently denied, in sworn testimony before the General Assembly’s Transportation Committee, that the governor had asked for his resignation.

Merrill continued to support her loyal deputy after he resigned from the authority.

The revelations about the artwork were part of a firestorm of disclosures about the corrupt atmosphere at the quasi-public agency when it was led by Bates, making deals with insiders and uncontrolled spending on lavish restaurant meals and hotels by the executive director and others.

State auditors subsequently concluded there weren’t even adequate records of how money was spent.

The port authority also turned out to be an employment agency for Bates’ cronies, spending many tens of thousands of dollars to hire as consultants people he used to work with.

One of those former Bates’ associates, hired with no experience at all in port management, is still on the payroll at the port authority.

As a federal grand jury and Attorney General William Tong actively continue to investigate the agency, the Connecticut Office of State Ethics last week announced $10,000 in fines against consultants hired during Bates’ tenure to find a new port operator in New London.

The ethics fines were for giving illegal gifts to two employees and a board member of the authority. The ethics enforcement agency said it could not name the recipients of the gifts or say whether other investigations related to them are underway.

Two Republican lawmakers have demanded of the governor and port authority chairman the names of those taking the gifts and questioned why the legislature was not told about the ethics probe.

I reached out to Bates by email this week to ask if he knows who the employees and board member were who accepted gifts and hospitality from the consultants his agency eventually hired. It sure seems like he would.

I didn’t hear back from him.

I continue to be surprised by the continuing coverup of port authority corruption, and I am appalled that Secretary of the State Kohler seems so disinterested in getting to the bottom of a newly disclosed ethics probe into an agency run by his deputy.

Corruption at that agency led to the governor’s demand for his resignation, a demand the deputy secretary of the state failed to disclose to the legislature when asked.

And these are the folks who are supposed to guarantee the honesty of our elections.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com