The CT Mirror (https://ctmirror.org/author/mpazniokas/)
The House of Representatives voted 76-72 Tuesday to approve and send to the Senate an affordable-housing bill sought by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to push two dozen Connecticut communities to end their prohibition on multi-family housing. The bill was stripped of financial penalties before passage. Continue Reading →
House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said Tuesday he intends to call a vote next week on legislation making an initial commitment to implementing electronic highway tolls, despite Republican opposition that could brand Democrats as the party of tolls. Continue Reading →
Not so long ago, the man now poised to become the first black chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court was grabbed by a white clerk in a Litchfield County hardware store on a suspicion he was a shoplifter. It was a misunderstanding, one that left Richard A. Robinson livid and humiliated. It was fodder Monday at Robinson’s confirmation hearing, which focused at times less on Robinson than the role of race in America and in the courts of Connecticut. Continue Reading →
NEW HAVEN — A sharp moment in an otherwise collegial candidate forum Sunday probably reflected the current pecking order in the crowded Democratic race for governor: Invited to challenge any rival with a question, Susan Bysiewicz targeted Ned Lamont, the decisive winner of a recent Connecticut AFL-CIO straw poll. Continue Reading →
Two weeks after winning a straw poll at an Connecticut AFL-CIO political convention, state Rep. Michael D’Agostino, D-Hamden, ended his exploratory campaign for attorney general Friday. He instead will seek a fourth-term in the House of Representatives. Continue Reading →
Democratic and Republican legislators offered competing visions for the next state budget Friday, but both effectively dipped into this spring’s unexpectedly high income-tax revenues to salvage key programs for towns and social services, drawing a sharp rebuke from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Continue Reading →
The House of Representatives overwhelming approved a bipartisan pay-equity bill Thursday that would place Connecticut in the small but growing ranks of states that bar employers from asking applicants about their pay history. It now goes to the Senate, where a similar measure died last year without a vote. Continue Reading →
NEW CANAAN — The fifth and final episode of a road show produced by Connecticut Republicans and starring an evolving cast of gubernatorial contenders came to an end Wednesday night without resolving a key plot point: Is the GOP any closer to settling on a front runner? Continue Reading →
House Democratic leaders tried Wednesday to jump-start stalled efforts to address the crumbling concrete foundation crisis in eastern Connecticut, joining two rank-and-file Republicans at an unusual press conference with potential implications for the last weeks of the 2018 session and the campaign for control of the General Assembly. Continue Reading →
Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, ended her exploratory campaign for governor Wednesday and declared her candidacy for re-election to the state Senate seat she won in 2008. She made a similar exploration in 2014, then ran for re-election. Continue Reading →
Attorney General George Jepsen strongly warned the legislature Tuesday against allowing the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes to jointly develop a casino in East Windsor without the approval of the U.S. Interior Department, a condition of the 2017 law permitting the project to compete with MGM Springfield. The opinion is likely to be the final blow in this legislative session to any hopes by the tribes to circumvent the requirement for Interior Department approval.
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On a day when the New York Times and The New Yorker shared a Pulitzer Prize for public service for the reporting that forced a searing assessment of sexual harassment, the Connecticut General Assembly examined its own policies on sexual conduct, none of which prohibit romantic relationships between lawmakers and their employees. Continue Reading →
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin ended his exploratory campaign for governor Monday, a concession to the inherent conflicts facing a Democrat advocating at the State Capitol for a city in desperate need of state assistance while also pursuing a personal agenda of political advancement. Continue Reading →
President Lyndon Johnson signed the federal Fair Housing Act on April 11, 1968. Fifty years later, discriminatory lending and rental practices persist, as the Connecticut Fair Housing Center discovered sending fair-housing testers out to pose as renters or homebuyers over three years ending in 2015. Our Sunday conversation is with Erin Kemple, an attorney who lives in an integrated Hartford neighborhood and is executive director of the center. Continue Reading →
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy added another 14 names Friday to the final class of judges he is nominating to a Superior Court system heavily populated his nominees. Malloy has sent 30 trial-judge nominations to the legislature in recent weeks, while he is leaving open nine judgeships that are funded in the current budget. Continue Reading →