It’s not necessarily more popular as a Sunday afternoon activity, but gay marriage gets more support in Minnesota than the prospect of publicly financing a new stadium to keep the Vikings. The same PPP survey asked about both issues. A constitutional amendment legalizing same-sex marriage is supported by 48 percent of repondents, while only 46 […]
News
Posted inPolitics
Bysiewicz lags in fundraising: $273,000 in 4Q
Former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz reported today that she raised $273,000 in the last quarter of 2011 for her U.S. Senate race, the fourth straight period in which she badly trailed her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy. Murphy has at least doubled Bysiewicz’s financial take every quarter. On […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Money
DEEP hires first procurement manager
Connecticut Thursday became the second state in the nation to have a power procurement manager — with the announcement that the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection had hired Jeffrey Gaudiosi. The position was mandated in the huge energy bill passed during the last legislative session as way to get cheaper and cleaner energy to […]
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Dispatch from Davos: Maturo is ‘boneheaded’
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy phoned home from snowy Davos, Switzerland, today to talk about networking with corporate leaders at the World Economic Forum and to take issue with analysts who say he is now running a slight deficit. He also pronounced Joseph Maturo, the embattled mayor of East Haven, “boneheaded” for his clumsy response to […]
Posted inNews
DOD considering base closures, cuts in subs, fighters
Washington — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s vision for a “smaller, leaner” military could put the Naval Submarine Base New London on the chopping block and trim billions of dollars from Connecticut’s defense industry. Panetta on Thursday said the Pentagon will absorb $487 billion in defense cuts over the next 10 years by shrinking ground forces […]
Posted inNews
State pays high price for incarcerating mentally ill
Spurred by a new study showing the high costs of treating the mentally ill in prison, the Malloy administration is searching for ways to treat nonviolent offenders outside the prison system. It costs Connecticut nearly double to both incarcerate and treat an offender with serious mental illnesses, compared with the price of treatment alone, according […]
Posted inNews
Do education grants work? State rarely checks
Business leaders offered a simple, if politically sensitive suggestion Thursday on how to pay for many of the things needed to improve education in the state: link the laundry list of grants that the state dishes out each year to performance. “It is time to gather the will to fundamentally assess whether we are spending […]
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Manufacturers say Obama plan would have mixed impact in Connecticut
Washington — Precision Combustion Inc., a manufacturing firm in North Haven that builds catalytic converters and uses green technology, is the kind of company President Obama wants to help. “We don’t have much of a policy right now to help manufacturing,” said Kevin Burns, Precision Combustion’s president. “So I think it’s really good (Obama) is […]
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Yeah, but did they adjust for inflation?
Americans think it’s getting cheaper to buy a congressman or governor, according to a new poll by Rasmussen Reports. How cheap? Thirty-five percent say the going rate is $10,000 or less. In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was limited to donations of no more than $100 to qualify for public financing.
Posted inEducation
Dr. Kennedy’s back-up plan in Maine
Robert A. Kennedy’s nomination to become president of the state’s college system may have sailed through the Board of Regents last week, but he had a backup plan if things went awry. Kennedy was under contract to begin teaching biology at the University of Maine Jan. 15, according to the school’s student newspaper. Colleen Flanagan, […]
Posted inEducation
Ethics panel clears state’s education chief to rule on charter schools
Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor has been cleared by the state’s ethics panel to make decisions on the network of charter schools he used to be closely tied to. Pryor, who helped open Amistad Academy in New Haven and was a member of the board responsible for the governance of numerous charter schools in the state, […]
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One more time, Shays says he can upset a rich opponent
After a soft launch three months ago, Chris Shays raised the curtain on his U.S. Senate campaign Wednesday with pointed references to his unexpected victory 25 years ago over two wealthy businessmen in a Republican congressional primary. He was not merely indulging in nostalgia. To win the GOP nomination in 2012, Shays will need to recapture […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Money
CEQ offers legislative priorities for session
It’s a modest, and somewhat familiar, list of legislative priorities released by the Council on Environmental Quality Tuesday in advance of the 2012 legislative session. Modest in that, with a short session, folks tend to be mindful of realistic expectations — not to mention the current economic climate notable for its distinct lack of money […]
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State budget plunges into the red with promised savings in question
Despite repeated assurances from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy that savings from union concessions and other cost-cutting measures would be achieved, nonpartisan legislative analysts reported a nearly $145 million state budget deficit Wednesday evening. The latest projection from the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis doesn’t include the nearly $79 million in new cost-cutting measures announced Tuesday […]
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Demand for home care workers soaring, but will there be enough takers?
Dawn Luciano spends her weekends working as a personal care attendant, caring for seniors and people with disabilities in their homes. She’d like to spend her weekdays doing it, too. “Unfortunately, I can’t,” Luciano, of Killingly, said. That’s because she relies on her other, full-time job as a financial sales representative to get health insurance […]