The Senate took a major step early Thursday toward ending Connecticut’s nearly 17-week budget impasse, overwhelmingly adopting a $41.3 billion, two-year plan that closes huge deficits without raising income or sales tax rates, imposes modest cuts on local aid, and provides emergency assistance to keep Hartford out of bankruptcy.
University of Connecticut
Posted inEducation
The state of UConn in 16 charts
Debate rages at the state Capitol and across Connecticut over how much to cut the state’s share of funding for the University of Connecticut. Here, in graphical form, is an overview of where the public university gets and spends its money, who it enrolls, how many it employs, and how it compares to other universities in research and endowment.
Posted inEducation, Money
State education funding to be a battleground in budget dispute
Huge questions over how state aid for schools and state colleges ultimately will fare will be a critical focus of Democratic and Republican leaders as they grapple with reconciling their vastly different state budgets. Here are the critical differences in funding for schools and colleges that Democrats and Republicans must resolve.
Posted inNews
A Connecticut ‘dreamer,’ committed to the fight, will not return to the shadows
Lucas Codognolla was born in Brazil, grew up as an average American child in Connecticut and is a UConn grad. But President Donald Trump has put his future and that of other undocumented young people in this country on shaky ground. In this Sunday conversation, we talk to him about how he’s handling the end of DACA, a program that has shielded 800,000 undocumented youth from deportation.
Posted inNews
With UConn’s campus now open, Hartford asks, ‘What’s next?’
While plenty of smaller projects are still underway, the grand opening of the University of Connecticut’s new Hartford branch campus means for the first time in more than a decade there is a lull in major redevelopment downtown.
Posted inEducation, Politics
As UConn returns, a chapter in Hartford’s history is completed
HARTFORD — For nearly a half-century, the University of Connecticut has had no place to call its own in the state’s capital city. Today that changes as Connecticut’s flagship university opens the doors of its new $140-million downtown branch campus on Prospect Street.
Posted inMoney
On Day 41 without a budget: New bus service to UConn
New bus service from Hartford to UConn underscores two things: One, going 41 days without a budget has not created a daily sense of crisis in Connecticut, where state offices, parks and beaches remain open. And two, not all spending is jeopardized by ongoing talks seeking sufficient spending cuts and revenue increases to close a $2.3 billion deficit.
Posted inPolitics
On Realtors’ dime, Geno tries coaching at the Capitol
Geno Auriemma stood Tuesday on a Bushnell Park bandstand, down the hill from the State Capitol, to give a motivational speech commissioned by the Connecticut Realtors. It was unclear if his target audience was the 2,000 Realtors seated before him or the two dozen legislators on stage behind him.
Posted inEducation
Salaries, fringe benefits driving tuition hikes at CT public colleges
Top financial officials from Connecticut’s two major public college systems told legislators Friday that rising fringe benefit costs and mandated employee salary increases are key driving forces behind tuition hikes.
Posted inEducation
College leaders warn proposed cuts would have big consequences
The president of the state’s largest public college system offered a particularly dismal outlook, warning the cuts could lead his system to declare its equivalent of bankruptcy.
Posted inPolitics
CT lawmakers hail likely return of reviled earmarks
WASHINGTON – U.S. House Republicans were stopped from bringing back a practice that once funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Connecticut – but the once reviled earmark, or special project, looks like it’s going to make a comeback anyway.
Posted inPolitics
CT immigrants fear Trump-led backlash
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s policies on immigration are roiling the immigrant community in Connecticut, as they are across the nation. “Right now people don’t know what to expect,” said Carolina Bortolleto, an immigrant activist. “Everybody in the [immigrant] community feels things are dangerous and are scared.”
Posted inEducation, Money
State officials let UConn 2000 oversight panel languish for years
A key watchdog panel tasked with overseeing the University of Connecticut’s capital building program has not met since December 2014, according to records obtained by The Mirror.
Posted inEducation, Money
Auditors: UConn improperly used maintenance funds for expansion projects
The University of Connecticut improperly redirected nearly $50 million in state funds earmarked for deferred maintenance to instead expand and upgrade various facilities, the state auditors reported Tuesday.
Posted inJustice
CT high court rules UConn wrongly fired employee for getting high at work
The state’s high court has unanimously decided the University of Connecticut was not justified in firing an employee found getting high on marijuana while on the job, a case the attorneys for the state argued would have broad implications for state employees.
