A month later, Blumenthal offers regrets, not introspection

The federal government plans to slice about $66 million from the annual Medicare payments it sends to Connecticut hospitals in the coming fiscal year, which would deal a significant budget blow to many of the state’s health care facilities. Connecticut hospital officials are fighting the proposed cuts announced by the federal Centers for Medicare and […]

Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed 187 bills into law and vetoed 13 by today’s deadline for acting on the 200 pieces of legislation passed during the annual General Assembly that ended last month. “She’s done. She’s acted on every bill,” said Adam Liegeot, a spokesman for the governor. The General Assembly is scheduled to convene on […]

He’s picked up 6 points in a new poll. Ann Coulter is openly pining for him. To get this attention, all Rob Simmons had to do to was quit campaigning for the U.S. Senate. “This is marvelous,” Simmons said Thursday night. “Maybe if I took a long trip to China, I might move out front. […]

Bridgeport just won a state award for its BGreen2020 plan that will reduce the city’s energy consumption by 40 percent. New Haven is building charging stations for electric cars. West Hartford challenged students to help find ways to cut energy use in schools. All across the state, municipalities are seizing on ways to use clean […]

STORRS – In the face of a deepening financial crisis, University of Connecticut trustees adopted a budget Thursday that seeks to promote austerity while preserving quality – an increasingly difficult challenge. Officials warned of even more ominous times ahead as trustees approved a $1.03 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The budget, […]

The chances of a released prison inmate with a mental illness ending up back in jail is high, but a pilot program is showing that trend is reversible. Stephen Cox, a criminology professor at Central Connecticut State University, estimates 25 percent of the state’s 50,000 probationers have a mental disorder, and an earlier state study […]

All six candidates for governor agreed today that Connecticut’s government has failed miserably to encourage job creation over the past two decades. If their business audience in Hartford closed its eyes, picking out the two Democrats from the three Republicans and one Independent might have been a challenge. Costs must be lowered, regulatory processes streamlined […]

Gov. M. Jodi Rell tapped the former head of the state’s homeland security agency, James M. “Skip” Thomas, to serve as acting commissioner of the Department of Public Safety for the remainder of her administration. Thomas, 63, who retired from state service in 2009, replaces John A. Danaher III, who resigned from his post at […]

Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s lead over Republican Linda McMahon in the U.S. Senate race has shrunk by one-fifth in two weeks to 20 percentage points, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. In a race roiled by controversy over Blumenthal’s misstatements about his Vietnam-era military record, the attorney general still leads McMahon by a wide […]

WASHINGTON – During a recent meeting with labor leaders, Rep. Chris Murphy was pressed by the head of an influental teachers’ union to support a $23 billion education rescue package pending in Congress. The message was reiterated in radio ads aired in Murphy’s district warning of shuttered schools, closed libraries and laid-off teachers if the […]

Connecticut’s soon-to-be-consolidated probate courts now expect to run more cost-efficiently than ever, projecting a deficit for the next fiscal year that’s one-third of what the General Assembly anticipated before it overhauled the 300-year-old system in 2009. The $4.3 million structural deficit built into the $30.4 million system budget also is less than half of the […]

Despite a warning this week that the loss of federal stimulus money could blow a gaping hole in school budgets across Connecticut, leading lawmakers say the legislature is prepared to fill that gap. The state has relied on federal stimulus money to prop up state school aid to municipalities, but projections by the legislature’s Office of Fiscal […]

Gov. M. Jodi Rell has signed into law a bill intended to streamline issuance of state permits and licenses. Rell’s office said the bill, a compromise between industry and environmental groups, will “expedite job creation by breaking through bureaucratic backlogs without undermining environmental protections.” The relatively uneventful passage of the bill was an unexpected conclusion […]

Gov. M. Jodi Rell has vetoed a bill that would have barred state hiring managers from asking applicants their criminal background or researching their background until the last step of the hiring process. Current law allows the question, “have you ever been convicted of a felony” to appear on the application for both private and […]