Kevin Deame of Ellington doesn’t like that he has to pay taxes on his winnings at the casinos in the state, but cannot write off his losses.
“This is very unfair and certainly discourages me from going to any casino,” he wrote the governor recently.
Thousands of people from across the state wrote Gov. Dannel P. Malloy after he asked residents to inform him of obsolete, burdensome, or otherwise ineffective state regulations.
On Friday, the governor’s office released the 1,240 pages of responses he received over the last two months. Some were whimsical and brief. Others offered detailed rationale for eliminating paperwork required to launch and operate small businesses.
Here are some of the requests:
- Do away with the requirement that vehicles have a front license plate, “Just one more law we don’t need,” T.L. Schroeder wrote.
- Eliminate the annual $250 tax that both large and small businesses must pay. “I have avoided starting a business and registering as an LLC because I am unsure how long it would take me to recoup the $250,” wrote Greg, who gave no last name.
- Eliminate the prohibition on displaying a website address on vehicles used by a day-care facility. “This requirement seems random and unnecessary,” wrote Janet Settle with Little House in the Country Child Care.
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David Rouleau of Seymour was one of hundreds of residents who told Malloy they want to repeal the prohibition on carrying a handgun in state parks, saying it would enhance self-defense. “Many of the trails on these parks and forests can go several miles away from civilization. These locations often have little to no cell phone reception,” he wrote.
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Kevin thinks that, “Testing water supplied by public water companies for lead every 2 years seems excessive.”
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Juleen Flanigan with Education Connection in Litchfield is asking that regulations be changed so that parents with children with developmental delays do not have to continue to pay recently enacted fees to receive services through the Birth to Three program. “We continue to lose families in this system because the fee is too high,” she wrote.
- Other requests were broader and straight to the point: “Stop spending money we do not have and do not raise taxes,” wrote John Harding of Cornwall Bridge.
- Jean of Suffield complains that the state is making it nearly impossible to start a transportation service for handicapped older adults in Simsbury: “It took us 60 days to provide the 33 pieces of info to submit an application. Much of the info was really none of the states business like our business plan, where were we getting the start up money etc. Fingerprint approval took 4 months. Now we are told it will be 2 months until we have a required HEARING to make sure nobody objects to our business.”
And then there is Carl Milano of Seymour who had two words for the governor for soliciting feedback.
“Thank you,” he wrote in November.
Read all the requests here.