April 8, 2011

The Department of Transportation released $40 million in high-speed rail funding to Connecticut Friday morning, just before hitting a deadline when the planned-on funding could have been taken back. Over the last couple of weeks, Connecticut and federal officials worked with Amtrak to iron out some last-minute glitches that seemed to put the promised funds-allocated […]

WASHINGTON–Democrat Richard Blumenthal is a freshman senator at the bottom of the Senate’s seniority ladder, without a seat on either the spending or budget committees. But suddenly, an issue that Blumenthal has been the most vocal about since joining the Senate–abortion–appears to be at the crux of the fight over the 2011 federal budget. And […]

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that the state can cut off medical assistance to legal noncitizens who have been in the country fewer than five years, clearing the way to implement a 2009 budget cut that had been stalled because of legal action. Since the 1996 federal welfare reform law, states have been prohibited […]

With the largest budget gap in Connecticut history looming just 12 weeks away, state government doesn’t have any money to save right now. But that hasn’t stopped state officials from debating how to reform government’s savings habits to steer clear of more fiscal potholes down the road. Should government be allowed to keep as much […]

State employee unions spent hundreds of thousands of dollars last year to elect Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Now, they must decide if it is worth $1 billion in concessions to make him a success. Malloy’s political future is in their hands, just as it was in the frantic final days of the 2010 campaign when […]

Facing uncertain prospects at the Capitol as the legislature deals with the state’s budget deficit, University of Connecticut officials have one political edge: The compensation of the school’s president has dropped several notches in national rankings. Former President Michael Hogan’s $615,000 package put him at No. 2 among the nine “peer institutions” against which the […]

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposed transfer of the state’s vocational-technical schools, combined with criticism in recent years of the management and operation of the vo-tech system, has slowed applications to the 16 schools, education officials said this week. “We have noticed that falloff,” Superintendent Patricia Ciccone told the State Board of Education in explaining a […]

With a potential federal government shutdown hours away, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy addressed reporters and television cameras Friday afternoon, saying he hoped to allay residents’ fears about what it could mean for them. “I have decided to treat this as any other crisis or potential crisis that might face the people of Connecticut, and that […]

Mark Twain is credited with saying, “Climate lasts all the time, weather only a few days.” A new study finds that the day’s weather can influence people’s belief that global climate change is real, Jeanna Bryner reports at LiveScience.” Researchers at Columbia Business School’s Center for Decision Sciences surveyed participants in the United States and […]

With a federal government shutdown looming, House Speaker John Boehner may not be keynoting the Connecticut Republican Party’s annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner tomorrow night. Boehner is scheduled to headline the Stamford event, a major fundraiser for the state GOP. And he’d caused a bit of a stir by asking it be closed to the […]