January 2010

Rep. Matthew Lesser Three thoughts are animating Themis Klarides these days: A soldier can never have too many socks, the New York Yankees are the best baseball team ever, and the Republican Party is the way of the future. But if you followed the deputy House minority leader on the popular social networking sites Facebook […]

an independent source of news and information about our state’s government, politics and public policy. From dealing with Connecticut’s budget crisis to choosing its top officials, 2010 will be a year of critical decisions. We hope you’ll be with us as we cover it all. Our goal is to bring you in-depth coverage of the […]

The Republican field for governor is about to grow by one: Oz Griebel, a Greater Hartford business leader, intends to announce his candidacy at noon Thursday on the north steps of the State Capitol. Griebel is the president and chief executive officer of the Metro Hartford Alliance, which serves as the region’s chamber of commerce. […]

Two state Senate leaders want Connecticut to become the third state in the country to set standards for how high schools handle athletes with concussions. With the support of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, the senators today proposed legislation requiring that athletes with suspected concussions be benched until getting medical clearance. “The mantra has become, […]

A national survey released today found that nearly 15 percent of households in Connecticut struggled to buy food in 2009. The report by the Food Research and Action Center says that 18.7 percent of households with children said they did not have enough money to adequately feed their families. The findings are consistent with statistics […]

As magnet schools sprouted across the state following the court order to desegregate schools in Hartford, so did a patchwork of financial formulas designed to pay for them. The state also has developed formulas to pay for charter schools and suburban school choice programs, two other strategies for promoting school integration. Here are the latest […]

As parents strolled among rows of displays at a recent magnet school fair in Hartford, those who stopped at a booth for the city’s Classical Magnet School heard an appealing sales pitch. Tim Sullivan, the school’s high-energy principal, told them about the prep-school atmosphere at Classical Magnet, a place where college-bound teenagers study Latin, read […]

U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman today endorsed the re-confirmation of the suddenly embattled Federal Reserve chairman, Benjamin Bernanke. On this score, the independent from Connecticut is standing with the Obama administration. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is running to succeed the retiring U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, is among the Democrats distancing themselves from Bernanke. […]

Who has a state legislator on the payroll? Three public employee unions have one. So do Northeast Utilities, the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce, Tweed-New Haven Airport, municipalities and non-profits that rely on state funding, and single-issue advocates like the Marijuana Policy Project. About 70 percent of legislators hold jobs outside the General Assembly, bringing both […]

State ethics laws provide only limited transparency into the financial dealings of Connecticut’s part-time legislators. To whom do they owe money? Disclosure is voluntary. How much stock do they own? Impossible to say. By contrast, Congress and a dozen states require lawmakers to disclose within ranges the amount of outside income they receive and the […]

Connecticut’s Sheff vs. O’Neill desegregation court ruling led to a spurt in education funding, a $2 billion expansion of magnet schools and renewed attention to the state’s troubled urban districts. But did it help children learn? Yes, says University of Connecticut researcher Casey Cobb-and not just for inner city students, but for their suburban classmates […]

On the left, there were gay-rights activists like Anne Stanback. On the right, there were Democratic soldiers like James Wade, who ran William A. O’Neill’s campaign in 1986, the last time Connecticut elected a Democratic governor. The same things brought them Sunday to Elizabeth Park in West Hartford: a thirst for a candidate who can […]

The Connecticut General Assembly began its regular annual session on Feb. 3, when Gov. M. Jodi Rell delivered her budget address to a joint session of the legislature. Its constitutional adjournment deadline is midnight May 5. Balancing the state’s budget is sure to be the most contentious issue of the session, and the task will […]

Services critical to thousands of state residents may soon face the budget axe in the coming weeks as the economy staggers and the state’s deficit mounts to an estimated half-a-billion dollars. Three out of every $10 the state spends goes directly to the Department of Social Services – $5.4 billion of the state’s $18.6 billion […]

While the national health care reform debate rages in Washington, Connecticut is proceeding with its own plan to provide coverage for thousands of uninsured state residents. The work is the result of action by the state legislature last year creating a panel to devise a public health insurance plan, called SustiNet, that will be available […]