April 25, 2011

The landmark Citizens’ Election Program represents the most comprehensive and successful effort to remove special interest money from the political system undertaken by any state in U.S. history. With the two initial runs of the program, the state has made enormous progress, transforming our state from “Corrupticut,” an example of rampant wrongdoing after years of […]

Missing from the 467-page budget agreement announced last week was a plan to reorganize the state’s public colleges and universities–and now there’s disagreement between the Malloy administration and some top Democratic legislators over whether a deal for the restructuring has been reached. “There were some outstanding issues that needed to be resolved before the House, Senate […]

Connecticut can be a prototype for the country in implementing federal health reform and transforming the health care system, a key Obama administration official said during a visit to the state Monday. Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the state can do so by “getting everyone around […]

WASHINGTON–Frank A. Corvino, the CEO of Greenwich Hospital, is still reeling from the fiscal punch from Hartford, in the form of a proposed new tax on hospitals across Connecticut. Now, he’s girding for a second hit from Washington, where federal Medicare officials are fine-tuning a cut to hospital reimbursement rates. The two blows, Corvino and […]

Frank Calder remembers the 38-mile drive from Karl Chevrolet in New Canaan to his home in Oxford just before Christmas last year in his new electric car – a Chevrolet Volt, the first one sold in Connecticut. “Coming home on the Merritt Parkway, it was bumper-to-bumper,” Calder said. It was also cold and he knew […]

Raise taxes on the rich and they’ll move out of state! That’s one of the principal arguments against increasing tax rates on the highest earners–what is commonly referred to as a “millionaire tax.” But is that really the case? After studying tax and migration patterns in New Jersey, which bumped its top rate for filers […]

Pratt & Whitney officially has a monopoly on one of the largest defense contracts ever-building engines for the Joint Strike Fighter plane. The Department of Defense today officially announced that it had terminated its contract with General Electric and Rolls Royce, which had been collaborating on an alternate engine for the JSF. GE and Rolls […]

If not exactly bullish on Connecticut, Standard & Poor’s at least is predicting that the state’s governor and legislature will resolve its structural budget problems this year. The rating agency today affirmed the state’s AA bonding rating. Here is S&P’s bad news, good news view of the state: “The stable outlook reflects our expectation that […]

With gas prices hitting record levels in advance of the summer vacation season, many lawmakers are ratcheting up their rhetoric on the issue. On Friday, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, took aim at Wall Street speculators who he said have unfairly driven up prices, creating spikes that are not connected to oil supply or other […]