The three-year update to Connecticut’s Comprehensive Energy Strategy, underway now, faces dramatically changed energy, environmental and political landscapes that raise questions about whether the first strategy, with its focus on natural gas, may have partially wasted the last three years.
News
Posted inPolitics
Blumenthal says Senate may reject some Trump cabinet picks
WASHINGTON – Some of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for cabinet positions may not be able to win Senate approval, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Thursday.
Posted inPolitics
Newtown activists come to an election-changed Washington
WASHINGTON — On their first pilgrimage here since the election, relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and other incidents of gun violence and their allies asked President-elect Donald Trump to abandon his hard-line stance against gun control. But chances of that are slim.
Posted inMoney
Wall Street agency gives CT pension deal a ‘credit positive’
Moody’s Investors Service, one of the four major credit rating agencies, labeled the proposal negotiated by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration and state union leaders as a “credit positive” for Connecticut in the agency’s weekly credit outlook statement.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Nappier: CT legislature must vote for pension deal to work
While offering tempered praise this week for a plan to stretch out Connecticut’s spiking pension costs, state Treasurer Denise L. Nappier also said legislators must cast at least one vote related to the deal.
Posted inNews
Feds have concerns with judge’s special education ruling
The U.S. Department of Education wrote the state’s education commissioner this week to share concerns about a state judge’s order telling Connecticut lawmakers to reassess what level of services students with significant disabilities are entitled to.
Posted inHealth
CT Obamacare sign-up deadline extended to Saturday
Updated 1:35 p.m.
Thursday had been the deadline for people to sign up for private insurance plans that would begin covering them Jan. 1. The exchange is extending that deadline to Dec. 17 at midnight.
Posted inMoney
CT unemployment rate falls to 4.7 percent in November
Connecticut’s unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent in November as it added 2,100 jobs, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Posted inHealth, Justice
Connecticut leads 20 states alleging price-fixing in generic drugs
Attorney General George Jepsen’s office is leading a multi-state investigation of generic drug companies that culminated Thursday in a federal price-fixing lawsuit filed in Hartford that complements an unfolding criminal antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Posted inEducation, Justice
Troubled schools on trial: Will a scathing court decision lead to action?
While changing the way the state distributes school aid among towns may draw substantial support from legislators and the governor, they have shown little interest in, or have outright rejected, changing other polices a Superior Court judge found unconstitutional. Last of seven stories.
Posted inPolitics
Capitol Hill vigil for Sandy Hook victims unites activists
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting has been a catalyst for mobilizing family members of gun violence victims, and its anniversary has become the day to gather to support each other.
Posted inHealth, Politics
As states vie for new opioid-fighting grants, Blumenthal puts CT in the mix
WASHINGTON — No sooner was the ink dry on President Obama’s signature on the 21st Century Cures Act than states, including Connecticut, started competing for new law’s $1 billion in grants to fight opioid addiction.
Posted inPolitics
Quoting Monty Python, Malloy says, ‘I’m not dead yet’
And now for something completely different. A smiling Gov. Dannel P. Malloy opened his annual holiday speech to the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday by comparing himself to a man prematurely given up for dead during the Black Plague, albeit the one who refused to go gently in an absurdist Monty Python comedy about the Middle Ages.
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Politics
Q&A: EPA’s McCarthy hopes Trump won’t unravel her work
WASHINGTON — On Gina McCarthy’s watch, the Environmental Protection Agency toughened the clean water and clean air regulations and finalized regulations for the Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce emissions from power plants to combat climate change. She recently gave The Connecticut Mirror a wide ranging interview and spoke, in her distinct Boston accent, of her hopes that her legacy will survive,
Posted inEducation, Justice
Troubled schools on trial: Special education driving costs and controversies
The rate at which students are identified for special education varies drastically across school districts, and school officials differ on whether that’s because districts are over- or under-indentifying students. But they agree the rising cost to educate these students has outpaced inflation and crowds out other supports for students. The state judge presiding over a recent school funding trial blamed the state for not enforcing clear mandates on who is entitled to special education. Sixth of seven stories.