A lack of funding again is plaguing state government’s “Clean Contracting” system, this time hindering an oversight board’s ability to determine when state agencies can hire private-sector workers. Faced with an ongoing disagreement between the Department of Transportation and the union representing about 1,000 state engineers, planners and safety inspectors, the State Contracting Standards Board […]

Though neither Gov. M. Jodi Rell nor the legislature did much to reduce the record-setting deficit bearing down on Connecticut 12 months from now, there’s no great mystery about how to solve it, according to Oz Griebel. Griebel, who is fighting for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in the Aug 10 primary, says Medicaid-funded health care […]

The General Assembly’s chief investigative panel will spend much of this summer and fall trying to find ways to get state transportation projects done quicker and under budget. But while advocates of the Program Review and Investigations Committee study are hopeful it will lead to positive change, they also concede it likely won’t be enough […]

When Connecticut officials debate taxes, particularly the income tax, the arguments inevitably lead to comparisons with border states. Anticipating a watershed debate in the 2011 legislative session as Connecticut confronts a mammoth, $3.4 billion budget deficit, legislators and gubernatorial candidates have stressed the importance of matching the neighbors. In other words, if taxes have to go up, make […]

Democratic gubernatorial contender Dan Malloy revisited his middle class roots as he re-introduced himself to voters in the first statewide televised ad of his campaign, released today. Standing outside of his childhood home in Stamford to open the commercial, Malloy, the youngest of eight children, recalled seeing his father leave for work in the morning […]

A federal judge has rejected the Connecticut nursing home industry’s request for an injunction that would have shielded it from further budget cuts next year as state government grapples with a budget deficit of historic proportions. U.S. District Court Judge Peter C. Dorsey also dismissed one of the two arguments raised by the Connecticut Association […]

Tom Foley insists he can eliminate what effectively amounts to the largest state budget deficit in Connecticut history without raising taxes. To get there, he concedes, will require breaking some new political ground, a polite way of describing what others would call long-shots: repealing binding arbitration; getting employee unions to accept concessions for both current […]

Connecticut’s soon-to-be-consolidated probate courts now expect to run more cost-efficiently than ever, projecting a deficit for the next fiscal year that’s one-third of what the General Assembly anticipated before it overhauled the 300-year-old system in 2009. The $4.3 million structural deficit built into the $30.4 million system budget also is less than half of the […]

Gov. M. Jodi Rell tapped the former head of the state’s homeland security agency, James M. “Skip” Thomas, to serve as acting commissioner of the Department of Public Safety for the remainder of her administration. Thomas, 63, who retired from state service in 2009, replaces John A. Danaher III, who resigned from his post at […]

A controversial system for exposing state budget deficits that the Democrat-controlled legislature forced on Gov. M. Jodi Rell last year could come back to bite Democrats this fall – less than three weeks before Election Day. Commonly known as the “consensus revenue” law, the statute requires the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis and the […]

Connecticut, and especially the Stamford metropolitan area, might be a far more attractive site for a new Major League Baseball franchise than state politicians and business leaders might think, according to the latest quarterly economic report from the University of Connecticut. Despite being locked between two of the country’s oldest – and arguably most passionate […]

Former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., who drove the adoption of the state income tax as one of the chief solutions to state government’s fiscal crisis in 1991, will make a rare public appearance later this month to discuss how he would resolve Connecticut’s current economic woes. Weicker, a three-term U.S. senator who was elected […]