This is both darkly humorous and rather telling…

State Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, has been a strong advocate of giving consumers a choice besides cable for television service. But his letter inviting constituents to an AT&T-sponsored event Friday celebrating its new U-verse TV service may have gone too far, some critics say. A letter sent by Fonfara on April 1 to residents on several streets in Hartford’s Behind the Rocks neighborhood encouraged them to attend the event marking the local U-verse launch.

The mailing, paid for with state money and printed on official Senate letterhead, described U-verse as an “exciting new technology” and listed a website for potential customers to check for availability. Fonfara, co-chairman of the legislative committee that deals with cable and telephone regulation, said the letter was meant to highlight a cable TV alternative. “I am promoting the fact there’s competition coming to my district, where so many people said it would never happen ,” Fonfara said at the event at Rocky Ridge Park.

Fonfara’s decision to highlight U-verse in official state correspondence crossed the line, said state Rep. Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport, co-chairman of the government administration and elections committee, which writes and oversees ethics law. Caruso said the letter doesn’t violate state ethics laws or legislative mailing rules, but mailings discussing the advantages of a new product should be sent out by the company, not legislators. “That is a promo piece,” Caruso said. “John is a good friend of mine, but I won’t have written the letter.” The letter was also criticized by Edwin Vargas Jr., a former Democratic town committee chairman who is considering challenging Fonfara for the party nomination this year for the 1st Senate District, which includes parts of Hartford and Wethersfield.

Fonfara “may have gone too far”? He “crossed the line”?

There is no line left to cross here, folks. The so-called ‘line’ between the power of the corporation and that of the state has long been obliterated. Fonfara’s real transgression wasn’t that he turned his public office into an advertising division of AT&T, it was that his clumsy actions (clumsy from a power management perspective) simply made that condition more readily visible to the normally unobservant eye of the general public.

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There’s more on Mr. Fonfara’s ‘gaffe’ Here from The Hartford Courant