The federal health care reform law includes a $100 million program to reward Medicaid recipients for making healthy choices–but experts aren’t sure the incentives will work, Aimee Miles reports in Kaiser Health News. The program is intended to reduce Medicaid costs by rewarding patients for such things as quitting smoking, losing weight or keeping their […]

State legislators are drafting a bill to preserve millions of dollars in a fund that uses electric bill surcharges to subsidize energy-saving projects and create jobs. The fund, known as the Energy Efficiency Fund, was slated to lose 35 percent of its total every year for eight years–$28.7 million per year–starting in July to pay […]

As the legislature’s Judiciary Committee prepares to approve a bill repealing capital punishment in Connecticut, a bipartisan group of conservatives is readying a counter-measure aimed at curbing death-row appeals. The conservatives announced Monday at a press conference attended by law enforcement officers and relatives of homicide victims that their effort to speed up executions will […]

Throughout the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, Dannel P. Malloy repeatedly charged that his Republican opponent, Tom Foley, would slash aid to towns and shred the social safety net to balance the state’s budget. Unless state unions agree to massive savings in labor costs soon, Malloy may have little choice but to follow the course he decried. […]

A year-and-half after the president of Southern Connecticut State University was informed that she would be losing her job, officials of the system have decided to back off filling the chancellor’s position that may soon be eliminated and finally launch a search for the next SCSU president. That delay means the top position at the […]

It’s not a surprise. She already formed a candidate committee to begin raising money, but former state Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Cheshire, declared her candidacy for Congress today in the 5th District, becoming the first declared Democrat. “I have decided to officially jump into the race,” Esty said by email. “It’s important that Connecticut’s 5th Congressional […]

In 2006, the Connecticut Democrats enticed a young senator with a future, Barack Obama, to headline their annual fundraiser, the Jefferson Jackson Bailey Dinner. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi also have done the honors in recent years. Victoria Kennedy, the widow of Sen. Ted Kennedy, dropped by last year to surprise her husband’s good friend, […]

A century and a half after the start of the Civil War, some historians say Americans are still fighting over many of the same issues, John Blake writes at CNN. “When you hear charges today that the federal government is overreaching, and the idea that the Constitution recognized us as a league of sovereign states […]

NEW BRITAIN–As he presses state employees for givebacks, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy stood in solidarity Sunday with union leaders in their contract fight with the American Red Cross, putting his complicated relationship with organized labor on public display. Malloy appeared with the leadership of AFSCME Council 4 outside their headquarters here, urging the Red Cross […]

As the clock ticked down to a federal government shutdown on Friday, congressional Democrats were infuriated that the debate had turned to social policy provisions proposed by the GOP, most of which were eventually jettisoned in the final deal. But Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, was thrilled that at least one of those survived-a […]

It’s not clear how Connecticut’s congressional delegation will vote on the last-minute spending agreement hashed out on Friday night, an hour or so before the federal government would have shuttered if the budget stalemate hadn’t been broken. But only Rep. John Larson, D-1st District, voted “no” at 12:40 Saturday morning, when the House took up […]

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner has agreed to a request by the Connecticut Republican Party to open his keynote speech at tonight’s Prescott Bush Dinner to the press. The party notified reporters by email sent shortly before midnight Friday that the annual fundraising dinner in Stamford, which the party had closed to the press for […]