A former school bus driver and pizza restaurant chef, hired into the state's permanent civil-service workforce as an agricultural inspector last July by the Republican administration of then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell over higher-rated candidates, was told Tuesday that she will lose her $61,664-a-year job a few days short of completing her six-month probationary period, officials said.
Debra Hinman, 55, of Burlington, had been hired last July 16 by F. Philip Prelli, Rell's appointee as commissioner at the state Department of Agriculture. Hinman is the mother of Jamie Hinman, who worked several years ago in the governor's office as an aide to Rell's powerful chief of staff, M. Lisa Moody. But both Moody and Prelli now are gone - and the newly inaugurated Democratic governor, Dannel Malloy, has named his own commissioner, Steven K. Reviczky, who is on the job while awaiting legislative confirmation.
Malloy had criticized the Hinman hiring after the Courant first reported about it in late September, and he said that, if elected, he would have his agency heads look into such cases. Monday's action is the apparent result.