The Office of State Ethics is taking the rare step of seeking authority to subpoena personal financial information that Insurance Commissioner Katherine L. Wade has failed to provide the lawyer responsible for determining if Wade has a conflict of interest ruling on the merger of Anthem and Cigna. Wade’s lawyer says she has been responsive and suggests the conflict question is moot, because the state’s review is suspended until a federal anti-trust suit is resolved.
Mark Pazniokas
Mark is the Capitol Bureau Chief and a co-founder of CT Mirror. He is a frequent contributor to WNPR, a former state politics writer for The Hartford Courant and Journal Inquirer, and contributor for The New York Times.
Posted inPolitics
Working Families Party cross-endorses 90 Democrats
The Connecticut Working Families Party announced Monday the cross-endorsements of 92 Democrats and no Republicans for seats in the General Assembly and Congress, a step that gives the candidates a place on two ballot lines this fall.
Posted inJustice
Malloy: Reforms help shrink prison population to a 20-year low
Connecticut’s prison population briefly fell below 15,000 inmates this month for the first time in nearly 20 years, a drop Gov. Dannel P. Malloy attributes to the bipartisan passage last year of lowering penalties for drug possession, a reform aimed at reducing incarceration without compromising public safety.
Posted inHealth
State allows L + M Hospital to join Yale New Haven system
Over the objections of unions opposed to a further consolidation of the hospital industry, state health regulators Thursday approved an affiliation agreement that makes Yale New Haven Health Services Corporation the owner of the struggling Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London. The approval comes a day after Gov. Dannel P. Malloy modified an executive order imposing a moratorium on hospital consolidations.
Posted inTransportation
ConnDOT offers a plan, and a mea culpa, for I-84 in Hartford
Can the same state agency that bulldozed vibrant neighborhoods and bisected Hartford with the construction of I-84 a half-century ago knit the city back together? As it designs a replacement for an aging section of elevated highway, ConnDOT insists the answer is yes.
Posted inEducation, Justice, Politics
Judge strikes down state education aid choices as ‘irrational’
In a broad indictment of how Connecticut supports its poorest schools, Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher ruled Wednesday that the state’s method for distributing education aid is irrational and unconstitutional, while declining to second-guess the General Assembly on the ultimate level of state spending.
Posted inEducation
Malloy celebrates a DCF milestone, undeterred by other setbacks
MIDDLETOWN — Gov. Dannel P. Malloy delivered a vote of confidence Tuesday to Joette Katz, his only commissioner of children and families. Five days after the suspension of two DCF workers, Malloy joined Katz to celebrate a record in placing at-risk children with family members, instead of foster homes.
Posted inPolitics
Libertarian Party qualifies for presidential ballot in Connecticut
Connecticut on Monday officially became the 48th state where the Libertarian Party has qualified to place a presidential candidate on the ballot.
Posted inPolitics
Pelletier pressures Jepsen to accept unionization without vote
HAMDEN — Lori J. Pelletier, the president of the Connecticut AFL- CIO, used a Labor Day unity meeting Friday to urge labor leaders to pressure Attorney General George Jepsen to drop his neutrality and embrace an effort by AFT-Connecticut to unionize 196 lawyers in his office.
Posted inJustice, Politics
Bridgeport shootings bring Malloy to Ganim’s side
BRIDGEPORT — The body language seemed strained while photographers were briefly allowed in a room crowded with local, state and federal law enforcement called to talk to about street shootings. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy sat next to Mayor Joseph P. Ganim, never quite making eye contact with the mayor whose election he once opposed as an embarrassment to Connecticut.
Posted inPolitics
Connecticut voters to have at least one minor party alternative
Jill Stein, the presidential nominee of the Green Party, qualified Thursday for the ballot in Connecticut, while the state remains one of four yet to certify petitions collected on behalf of the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.
Posted inTransportation
For Malloy and transportation, the campaign never ends
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy promoted improvements to Metro North two weeks ago in New Haven. Last week, he delivered an I-84 widening update at a construction site in Waterbury. On Tuesday, he visited a CTfastrak station in Hartford to mark the system’s four millionth passenger trip.
Posted inJustice, Politics
CT Supreme Court rules in FOI case involving Ritter, CRRA
A unanimous ruling Monday by the Connecticut Supreme Court in a case involving a prominent lawyer-lobbyist, former House Speaker Thomas D. Ritter, seems to narrow the circumstances when a lawyer’s business or political advice is protected by lawyer-client privilege.
Posted inPolitics
Malloy chats with LePage: ‘He didn’t challenge me to a duel’
A conference of New England governors and eastern Canadian premiers became the awkward venue Monday for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to present incarceration statistics that he says contradict Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s assertions that his state’s heroin crisis is the fault of out-of-state minorities.
Posted inPolitics
Malloy: Maine’s LePage ‘sounds racist’ on minorities, heroin
WATERBURY — Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Friday that Maine Gov. Paul LePage “sounds like a racist” when suggesting his state’s heroin epidemic largely is the fault of outsiders, specifically blacks and Hispanics from places like “Waterbury, Conn., the Bronx and Brooklyn.”