Republican House Leader Lawrence Cafero said Wednesday that someone in Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's office should apologize for the release of the names and low-digit license plate numbers of dozens of political insiders, and then should "move on."
Six days into what's being called the "PlateGate" controversy, Cafero told reporters at the state Capitol: "You know what would go a long way to make this thing go away? A simple 'I'm sorry.'"
But Malloy senior adviser Roy Occhiogrosso, who last week released a Department of Motor Vehicles list of information at the request of Courant columnist Kevin Rennie, reacted to Cafero's call for an apology by saying "it's been done already."
"The governor has said - I've said - that we regret what happened, that it shouldn't have happened, and won't happen again," said Occhiogrosso. He has said he wasn't aware the license plate information is protected by state and federal privacy laws when he released it after Malloy's chief of staff, Tim Bannon, obtained it from the DMV.