On the left, there were gay-rights activists like Anne Stanback. On the right, there were Democratic soldiers like James Wade, who ran William A. O’Neill’s campaign in 1986, the last time Connecticut elected a Democratic governor. The same things brought them Sunday to Elizabeth Park in West Hartford: a thirst for a candidate who can […]

The Connecticut General Assembly began its regular annual session on Feb. 3, when Gov. M. Jodi Rell delivered her budget address to a joint session of the legislature. Its constitutional adjournment deadline is midnight May 5. Balancing the state’s budget is sure to be the most contentious issue of the session, and the task will […]

Services critical to thousands of state residents may soon face the budget axe in the coming weeks as the economy staggers and the state’s deficit mounts to an estimated half-a-billion dollars. Three out of every $10 the state spends goes directly to the Department of Social Services – $5.4 billion of the state’s $18.6 billion […]

While the national health care reform debate rages in Washington, Connecticut is proceeding with its own plan to provide coverage for thousands of uninsured state residents. The work is the result of action by the state legislature last year creating a panel to devise a public health insurance plan, called SustiNet, that will be available […]

The most tangible of Connecticut’s dismal economic indicators may be the new computer server and automated phone lines recently ordered for a beleaguered corner of the state bureaucracy – the unemployment office. “It is simply overextended and overwhelmed by the load,” Gov. M. Jodi Rell said in January, answering complaints that the system has been […]

A major question hanging over the races for governor and other state offices in 2010 is the status of Connecticut’s new voluntary system of publicly financing campaigns, the Citizens’ Election Program. U.S. District Court Judge Stefan R. Underhill struck down the program as unconstitutional in August 2009, calling it a well-intentioned effort to combat corruption […]

The General Assembly begins 2010 with the Democratic majority and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in a stalemate over how to close an estimated $500 million gap in this year’s budget. Sound familiar? That’s how they ended 2009. The price of their inability to put the state’s finances on solid footing last year is that […]

Hoping to transform America’s public schools, the U.S. Department of Education is challenging states to design winning school reform plans in a competition for more than $4.3 billion in economic stimulus grants.The competition, known as Race to the Top, is designed to promote innovative strategies, raise academic standards and encourage aggressive reforms, including the shakeup […]

The Sheff vs. O’Neill school desegregation lawsuit ranks as one of the most influential legal cases in the history of Connecticut’s public schools. Civil rights groups filed the case on behalf of 17 schoolchildren in 1989, alleging that the richest state in the nation had allowed Hartford, its capital city, to run an impoverished, racially […]