EAST HAVEN–Nearly two weeks after Tropical Storm Irene sent two feet of water through the first floor, Rick and Karen Ruggiero’s home on Cosey Beach sits locked up, an official sign stuck in the siding declaring it “unsafe for human occupancy.” Their terrace, just feet from a tattered seawall and, beyond it, the water of […]

The longstanding claim that tax hikes will drive people out of Connecticut was quick to resurface earlier this year as politicians and special interest groups reacted to more than $1.6 billion in state and municipal increases ordered by the legislature and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. But a new study by a Washington, D.C.-based fiscal policy […]

While many environmental advocates favor shifting energy-generation plants from coal to natural gas to combat global warming, a new study says that may not help–and could hurt in the long run, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Ironically, that’s because coal emits more environmentally-hazardous particles. The study by Tom Wigley, a senior research […]

Although no firm figures have been released, information from the White House indicates states could receive $100 billion or more from the $447-billion job creation plan announced by President Barack Obama Thursday night, John Gramlich reports at Stateline.org. Included in that estimate is $18 billion in direct aid to states for school modernization and construction; […]

WASHINGTON–No one was surprised. No one was blown away. But there was something for everyone to like in the $447 billion jobs package President Barack Obama laid out Thursday night–at least for most lawmakers in the heavily-Democratic Connecticut delegation. “I would describe it as solid,” said Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, who praised the president’s […]

WASHINGTON–As the super committee on debt-reduction got underway today with its first meeting, Rep. John Larson ramped up his campaign to expand the panel’s charter. Larson wants to add job-creation to the super committee’s debt-reduction mandate, or create a parallel “super committee on jobs.” He has pitched the idea to each member of the debt-reduction […]

ROCKY HILL–Gov. Dannel P. Malloy offered an optimistic take in Hartford on the struggling construction industry Thursday, but the outlook for the broader state economy was mixed, at best, at an annual business conference a few miles away. The 10th annual survey of businesses by the Connecticut Business and Industry Association found hiring and profits […]

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy reached a milestone this week: With another in a series of “outside-the-box” appointments–an education commissioner from outside the ranks of educators–his administration essentially is complete. And after a series of crises, ranging from tackling the nation’s worst per-capita deficit on day one to the natural disaster of Tropical Storm Irene last […]

A typical American family saw its income grow by $23,000 between 1999 and 2009, but the rising cost of health care gobbled up so much of the increase that the family was left with just $95 a month in additional spending money after inflation, according to a study published this month in the journal Health […]

Think the White House is trying to amplify the president’s jobs speech? It put out a one-paragraph statement tonight from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy praising the speech, not exactly SOP from the White House. The statement quantifies one impact of President Obama’s plan in Connecticut: an extension of unemployment benefits to nearly 80,000 residents who […]

Nelson Brown, a speaker of the Connecticut House in the late 1950s and the trusted tie-breaker on legislative redistricting plans in 1991 and 2001, died early Thursday at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital. He was 89. As a genial and popular figure at the state Capitol, where he lobbied on freedom of information issues, it was […]