Connecticut Light & Power Co. was unprepared for the 809,000 outages it faced after an unprecedented Oct. 29 snowstorm, an independent assessment concluded Friday, noting that CL&P’s “worst-case scenario” plan offered little guidance for outages beyond 100,000 customers. In a report delivered to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and a state study panel, Witt Associates of […]
Expert: CL&P’s worst-case plan did not look far beyond 100,000 outages
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State pledge to meet all teacher pension costs means big budget increases
Just four years after the state borrowed $2 billion to shore up the troubled retired teachers’ pension fund, another infusion of state money will be necessary to cope with the hit the fund took during the recession. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget office estimated this week that teacher pension-related spending will jump 40 percent over […]
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Housing applications act as a barrier for the homeless
New Haven — Applying to college entails a lot of work trying to juggle all of the separate applications for each school and keeping all of the necessary personal documents organized and accessible. Now imagine applying to several institutions if you have no mailing address, no phone number and no stable home. That’s how Matthew Morgan, […]
Posted inEducation
As school financing members submit laundry list of recommendations, Malloy asks for ‘bold’ recommendations
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy wrote Thursday that he is looking for “bold” changes to the way the state’s schools are funded, and members of the panel he has tasked with that responsibility have begun to compile a laundry list of changes some of them would like to see. The proposals range from no longer counting […]
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State tracks data on students, but are they using it effectively?
Connecticut tracks students through a comprehensive data system, but a report released this week says the state still has a lot of work to disseminate that data in a timely fashion to teachers, parents and principals and to create progress reports for individual students. Thirty-three states currently provide information on student’s past performance and measure […]
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HHS rejects insurance commissioners’ broker recommendation
The Department of Health and Human Services today released its final medical loss ratio rule. In it, the administration rejected a National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ recommendation to exclude fees paid to insurance agents and brokers from insurance companies’ allowable administrative costs. You can read the document online. The medical loss ratio refers to the percentage of […]
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Connecticut’s Faithful Take On Politics
Bridgeport — Pam Stewart of Bridgeport’s Mount Aery Baptist Church took the stage, facing a crowd of about 1,500. “I’m going to talk to you about predatory lending,” she said, Wednesday night, leaning into the microphone. “I contacted my bank in October — just to get information about loan re-modification. By March, they had hiked […]
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Embracing native language at Stamford school catches Ed Chief’s eye
Stamford — With one of every four students at Rogers Elementary School speaking limited English, and their test results showing they are far behind their peers, school officials knew it was time for a new approach. They decided to embrace the foreign language many of their students were speaking and infuse it into the curriculum. […]
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The other ‘1 percent’
Protests nationwide have been shining a spotlight on America’s wealthiest 1 percent, but state veterans’ affairs officials say a different 1 percent — the population of Americans who have been serving in Iraq and Afghanistan — are the ones who need the attention. President Obama’s June announcement that he is withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan […]
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Report: Many high-poverty schools not getting fair share of money
The U.S. Education Department reports almost half of the nation’s high-poverty schools receive less state and local aid than other schools in their district and spend less per student on instructional staff. Find out which districts in Connecticut have similar disparities here.
Posted inHealth
Lipitor — A legend in its own time
As of this week, consumers can get a generic version of Lipitor, the best-selling drug developed by Pfizer. Heralding this fact, in the mainstream press as well as in the business press, are the kinds of praises and exultations one usually hears only on Oscar night. Forbes.com’s Avik Roy, in his blog (The Apothecary) […]
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State legislative districts approved; congressional map goes to court
The General Assembly’s bipartisan redistricting commission unanimously approved new districts Wednesday for the state House and Senate ahead of a midnight deadline, leaving an unfinished congressional map in the hands of the Connecticut Supreme Court. Attorney General George Jepsen will ask the court to grant the commission an extension to continue negotiations on congressional districts, […]
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Fuel experts say gasoline consumers had it easy during recent storms
There was plenty of inconvenience, but no real threat of a fuel shortage in the days following both last October’s nor’easter and Tropical Storm Irene, industry experts told a state panel Wednesday. But if Connecticut were to face a major hurricane similar to the one that struck in 1938, emergency fuel supplies could be exhausted […]
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Doctors wary of looming Medicare cut, or a short-term fix
John Foley has wanted to be a doctor since he was 6, and the Norwich cardiologist still considers the chance to take care of patients “the coolest thing on the planet.” But increasingly, Foley has found himself questioning the future of the field. Despite working longer days, his income is down 45 percent from 4½ […]
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Redistricting: General Assembly is set, not Congress
Facing a midnight deadline, the bipartisan redistricting commission is set today to approve new districts for the state House and Senate, but the panel will ask the state Supreme Court for more time to draw a congressional map. Democratic and Republican negotiators tentatively agreed late Tuesday night on new lines for 36 Senate districts, while […]