Conn. Workforce Office Gave Cardona $250K No-Bid Contract

Connecticut’s Office of Workforce Strategy awarded an up to $250,000 no-bid contract to former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to work for the same state commission he chairs. The Connecticut Mirror revealed the contract Friday.

The deal comes despite the fact that when Gov. Ned Lamont created the Connecticut Career Pathways Commission in April through executive order, his office said in a news release that its members would all be unpaid volunteers. An email chain posted by the Mirror, which the Office of Workforce Strategy also shared with Inside Higher Ed Monday, shows the office was considering paying Cardona even before the executive order. Lindsey P. Leung, an attorney for the office, wrote that office leader Kelli-Marie Vallieres and Cardona first discussed entering into a personal services agreement “on or around March 30, 2026.”

Cardona was former President Joe Biden’s education secretary and previously served as Connecticut’s K–12 education commissioner. He and his company didn’t respond Monday to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed. A Lamont spokesperson also didn’t respond to a request for comment. The Office of Workforce Strategy provided a copy of the contract, signed July 30.

The office told Inside Higher Ed in an email that “the short turn around on reporting deadlines named in the Executive Order and his extensive and unique experience in this space were contributing factors to soliciting Dr. Cardona, through Cardona Solutions, as a non-competitive award.” It said Cardona “is not being paid to be the Commission chair, but for tasks beyond the chair duties.”

“The specific services require a large amount of stakeholder engagement with commission members and the broader public that includes representation from business and industry, secondary and post-secondary educational partners, students and jobseekers,” the office wrote.

On June 12, Leung wrote to Brian J. O’Dowd, the Office of State Ethics’ general counsel, seeking the ethics office’s opinion on “whether there are ethical concerns that would preclude this arrangement.”

She initially wrote that the contract would be “for the work that Dr. Cardona will be doing as chair of the Commission.” But when O’Dowd questioned her further, Leung wrote that she didn’t believe the agreement “is compensating Dr. Cardona for serving as [commission] chair but for work that goes beyond what is required by the EO [executive order] of the chair and what is typically required of commission/board/council chairs.”

Leung wrote that her office “is essentially responsible for the work asked of” the commission in the executive order, but the office “does not have the staff capacity to complete this durational work on its own.” O’Dowd then sent her an informal opinion saying that as the commission chair, Cardona doesn’t generally appear to be subject to the code of ethics for public officials and could enter into the agreement.