WASHINGTON — Federal monitors will watch elections in Hartford, West Hartford, East Hartford, New Britain, Farmington, Middletown and Newington on Tuesday. Secretary of the State Denise Merrill says they will observe the new voting system for the disabled.
Hartford
Posted inMoney, Politics
CCM tries to increase fall campaigns’ focus on urban poverty
Connecticut’s urban centers are shackled by unemployment, homelessness and other poverty indicators that dwarf those of surrounding suburbs, the state’s chief municipal lobbying group wrote Monday in a bulletin to state legislative candidates.
Posted inEducation, Money
Moody’s: School funding reform would boost cities’ credit standing
A major Wall Street credit rating agency weighed in on Connecticut’s school funding crisis this week, saying an overhaul would improve the credit standing of the state’s poorest cities.
Posted inNews
Protesters block Hartford’s Main Street over immigration ruling
Just days after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidated a White House plan to protect millions of immigrants living in the United States from deportation, more than 150 protesters gathered Monday afternoon outside the state’s federal immigration enforcement office in Hartford and blocked a portion of Main Street.
Posted inPolitics
In Hartford, mayor and unions step back from the brink
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and the city’s labor unions, its council and its legislative delegation took steps Thursday toward defusing a fight that threatened to politically isolate the new mayor as he tries to keep Connecticut’s capital city out of bankruptcy.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Why is Hartford broke?
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin recently said that Hartford is “in a state of fiscal emergency,” with projected budget deficits of 30 percent this year and into the future. Why is this happening? The short answer is that the City of Hartford can’t raise enough revenue to cover its costs. But this can’t be explained as solely a short-run or managerial problem.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Will Hartford prosper with peanuts and popcorn?
I have lived in Hartford for all my 38 years. I am proud to be raising my four kids here. But I’m getting angry — angry that the city’s new Dunkin Donuts stadium won’t agree to be covered by the city’s Living Wage.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
A shifting ground for artificial turf in Connecticut
A number of cancer cases around the country among young athletes who played on artificial turf fields made with a crumb rubber filler have spurred calls for further research into the safety of the fields.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Massive rail plan leaves Connecticut hopeful but mystified
Proposals to reinvent the Northeast Corridor rail system could impact Connecticut more than any other state. But a lack of detail in the plans is causing exasperation even among those who have been pushing for rail improvements for decades, and it has environmentalists worrying whether losses will outweigh the benefits.
Posted inPolitics
Nick Carbone dies, was power broker, policy wonk
A 1970s Democratic power broker who schooled a generation of politicians and played crucial roles in the election of Ella T. Grasso as governor and the redevelopment of downtown Hartford. Carbone was 78.
Posted inPolitics
New report: CT traffic is bad — and likely to get worse
WASHINGTON — Connecticut has some of the worst traffic in the nation, with snarls that cost drivers about 20 gallons of wasted fuel and dozens of hours of lost time each year – and things are likely to get worse, a new report says.
Posted inPolitics
Officially neutral, Malloy is drawn into Hartford primary
Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra pointedly warned the ostensibly neutral Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Wednesday that any effort to snub him in favor of the governor’s former aide, Luke A. Bronin, in the Democratic mayoral primary carries political risk.
Posted inPolitics
Skirting race, ethnicity in Hartford’s mayoral primary
Race and ethnicity are, not surprisingly, a subtle undercurrent in the Democratic contest for mayor in Hartford, which pits a white challenger with roots in Greenwich against a Puerto Rican incumbent in a city with the largest percentage of Latinos in the northeastern United States: 43.4 percent of its 125,000 residents.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Let down by Hartford City Hall
A few weeks ago, a burglar stole my beloved special edition Vespa from my condominium in the Farmington Avenue area of Hartford — the second one that gets stolen from me. The policeman who took the report told me “just file an insurance claim. We will never find it.” The Vespa I may be able to replace if I were to move into the suburbs. But sadly, what I cannot replace is my trust in City Hall, because this crime is not an outlier. We have had more than 22 burglaries in the neighborhood.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
In Connecticut, there is no ‘achievement gap’
Before students of all colors can succeed equally in Connecticut’s public schools, we must be bluntly honest about why disparities exist. An achievement gap would exist if we gave every student equal opportunities and some children still failed to achieve. In a myriad ways, we do not give all our children the same opportunities. Nowhere is this more apparent than in school discipline policies that exclude children from the classroom.