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 […]