Labor committee approves paid sick days

The General Assembly’s labor committee today narrowly approved legislation that would require businesses with more than 50 employees to offer up to five paid sick days. The committee voted 6-4 for a bill praised by the Working Families Party as a matter of social justice and detested by the Connecticut Business and Industry Association as […]

A coalition of 15 moderate Democratic state legislators sent a letter to their leadership urging immediate action to close the $518.4 million deficit for the current fiscal year without borrowing. The letter, signed by four senators and 11 representatives, also expressed concerns about more than $4.6 billion worth of deficits projected in total for the […]

FARMINGTON — Gov. M. Jodi Rell and a coalition of regional hospitals announced today they are backing a $236 million investment in a new hospital at the financially troubled University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. Key to the plan is a new healthcare network involving former critics of efforts to rebuild the state’s flagship […]

Democrat Dannel P. Malloy said today he will formally become a candidate for governor at noon on Wednesday, while Republican Larry DeNardis is making it official Thursday. Malloy is keeping things informal, holding a press conference outside the State Elections Enforcement Commission after he files his paperwork. DeNardis is announcing at 10:30 a.m Thursday at […]

The familiar battle-lines were drawn Monday: Package store owners from border towns complained they lose money because they can’t open on Sundays, while a broader-based liquor retailers’ association said ending Connecticut’s Sunday sales ban would drive mom-and-pop shops out of business. Still, about 100 people filled the Program Review and Investigations Committee hearing room for […]

NEW HAVEN – Here in the city’s Adult Education Center, alongside former dropouts in their 20s and 30s or older, hundreds of teenagers such as Leandrae Doward also are signing up for a second chance at a diploma. “I had an attendance problem,” said Doward, a 16-year-old who dropped out of Hillhouse High School as […]

A fresh idea is catching on at the State Capitol: budget transparency. A searchable database of the state’s checkbook. Available online for free. Kind of like the one set up a month ago by a conservative think tank. The new website created by the Yankee Institute for Public Policy showing all state expenditures, including payroll, […]

Greenwich businessman Steven J. Simmons will head a new state commission to tackle the problem of poor academic performance among low-income and minority children, Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced today. The Commission on Educational Achievement, consisting of 11 business leaders and other professionals, will conduct hearings, visit public schools and review research to address the […]

Connecticut can reduce a huge projected increase in long-term health care costs if it can place more patients into home care over the next 15 years, according to a report being released today by an alliance of public, private and institutional leaders. The study, commissioned by the Connecticut Regional Institute for the 21st Century, projects […]

If you can’t give them more money, give them less paperwork That seems to be the rationale behind a provision in Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s deficit reduction plan that would allow school boards to petition for waivers of state mandates, including paperwork requirements. But while local school officials have long complained of being overwhelmed by […]

A Hartford Superior Court judge opened proceedings today in a case that could determine if Susan Bysiewicz, the Democratic front-runner in the race for attorney general, is legally qualified to hold the office. Without objection from attorneys for Bysiewicz, Judge Michael R. Sheldon accepted the Connecticut Republican Party as an intervenor in the case, meaning […]

State legislators want to know about tuition changes at public colleges and universities before they are approved, but higher education officials warned Thursday that could create a political and procedural nightmare. “Be very careful, because you’re walking on ground that could become quicksand,” Chancellor David G. Carter of the Connecticut State University system said. Officials […]

Hoping for a second chance at millions of dollars in federal stimulus money for school reform, state lawmakers enlisted the help Thursday of education groups whose views are often at odds. In a hastily called press conference, the co-chairmen of the legislature’s Education Committee assembled the unusual coalition to help the state rewrite a school […]

A key state legislator said Thursday he has the votes to override a veto of proposed legislation that would limit the governor’s authority to cut the budget of the state’s Judicial Branch. The measure also would restore $6.1 million in cuts that otherwise would force the closure of three courthouses and nearly a third of […]