Although Connecticut’s tax system certainly needs reform, the income tax is not at the center of its problems. Most of our revenue woes come from system full of loopholes, unnecessary tax expenditures and giveaways. Fixing Connecticut’s tax code to make it more fair, transparent and predictable would do far more to promote growth and fix our budget crisis than any income tax cuts for the powerful.
The Connecticut income tax is not the problem
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Above the waves, Connecticut fishermen struggle to hang on
Shifting fish species have Connecticut fishermen in an emotional dispute over how the U.S. fishing system operates. They’re calling, if not downright begging, for immediate changes to fish allocations to save the state’s fishing industry from what many believe is its inevitable ruin. But others in the scientific and environmental communities are saying – maybe not so fast.
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 inMoney
Towns will craft their own plan to regionalize, ease local tax burden
As state officials increase their warnings that municipal aid may be curtailed in the coming years, Connecticut’s cities and towns will craft their own plan to regionalize services and make local government more efficient.
Posted inCT Viewpoints, Talking Transportation
Bikes now allowed on Metro-North… sometimes
Days before the Connecticut Department of Transportation opens public hearings on a proposed 5 percent fare increase on Metro-North, Gov. Dannel Malloy held a media event to promote good news about “improved service” on our highest-fares-in-the-nation railroad. What? A return of the bar cars? More seats on crowded trains? No, nothing that monumental: just a new e-ticketing app and word that bike racks have been installed on our trains.
Posted inHealth, Politics
EpiPen lobbying campaign targeted Connecticut
WASHINGTON – Connecticut, one of 11 states that approved a law requiring schools to stock EpiPens, is on drug maker Mylan’s sizable lobbying list. According to the center, Mylan, under fire for its steep price hikes of the EpiPen, expanded its lobbying presence in state houses to Connecticut and 35 additional states between 2010 to 2014.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Beneath the waves, climate change puts marine life on the move
Climate change-induced shifts of marine species in the Northeast are forcing changes in fishing patterns for Connecticut fishermen, threatening to upend fishing management systems and generating political controversy and finger-pointing as policies struggle to keep up with the pace of fish movement, and the Connecticut fishing community struggles to hang on.
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.”
Posted inHealth
A South Windsor native’s ‘pang of guilt’ touched off EpiPen war
Though her use of an online petition, Mellini Kantayya, touched off a furor over the rapid price hikes in the cost of EpiPens, the auto-injector that delivers a drug that counters the effects of a potentially fatal allergic reaction. She hopes the reaction will open the door to greater scrutiny of the pharmaceutical industry.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Huge red flag: rehiring UConn employee who got high on state time
Does someone have to get hurt before our state stands up for what’s right? UConn Health Center appropriately fired an individual who put the public at risk by getting high while working a job that involves driving a state vehicle and operating motorized equipment. But following an arbitration ruling in support of the employee’s case, the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the arbiter’s finding instructing UConn Health to rehire the employee who got high on state time in a state vehicle.
Posted inMoney
Towns wary of local spending cap as state begins revenue sharing
Enjoying their first infusion of state sales tax receipts — albeit not as much as promised — Connecticut’s cities and towns remain wary of a revenue-sharing program that comes with a controversial spending cap.
Posted inEducation
WestConn dangles in-state tuition to entice New York students
With 200 dorm rooms sitting vacant at Western Connecticut State University, the finance panel of the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities system Thursday signed off on offering in-state tuition rates at the Danbury school to residents of seven New York counties, beginning next fall.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
One Connecticut mom: Mylan’s EpiPen olive branch is not enough
I read in an article yesterday that Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan, has called the EpiPen her “baby.” As a food allergy mom, the fact that she does so as CEO of a company that has the potential to save, and yet put the lives of my actual real life babies at risk, is ironic, to say the least.
Posted inPolitics
Trump ignites activism among young Muslims in Connecticut
NEW BRITAIN — Alicia Hernandez Strong sat in the lobby of a mosque that didn’t exist when Barack Obama was elected president, telling Yemeni worshippers how they can register to vote in this old industrial city, a place made and remade by successive tides of immigrants. She comes every Friday, setting up a folding table before afternoon prayers. Her inspiration is Donald Trump.