However, for reasons including the city’s well-documented financial problems, Hartford recruited the CRDA, a quasi-public state agency, to handle a public request-for-proposals process last year for the Dillon project, and, beyond that, the city also wants the CRDA to manage the renovated Dillon Stadium on a contract basis — the same way the CRDA manages Rentschler. Freimuth said that was enough of a role by CRDA to require an answer as to whether the three-way contract is a “state contract” by virtue of the state quasi-public CRDA being one of the three parties to it. “The CRDA position was that Bruce et al. would have to self-report and get a definitive ruling from SEEC,” he said, and that’s where the matter has now stuck, pending the outcome of SEEC’s current investigation.