- After losing House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz’s district after he retired in 2020, Berlin and Southington Democrats are looking to a well-known former town manager to get them back in power in November.
- About 30,000 applications were requested for the Premium Pay Program in its first few days after it informally launched late last week, crashing the online portal multiple times, according to Comptroller Natalie Braswell.
- Stamford firefighter Patrick Sasser hired by Stefanowski.
- Klarides concedes after 22-year political career.
- Only one hour after news broke that FBI agents had searched his Florida home, former President Donald Trump hailed Republican Leora Levy in a tele-rally.
- “So the word ‘historic’ really is justified here. I know it’s used with abandon in politics, but this measure is truly historic,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said.
- Tuesday's primaries could potentially be low turnout.
- Pushback from a couple of senators in the party made it inevitable that some top priorities for Democrats would get stripped out of what was once known as the “Build Back Better Act.”
- Here's who Democrats and Republicans can vote for in the Aug. 9 primary in Connecticut.
Most Read On Courant.com
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Capitol Watch
After losing House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz’s district after he retired in 2020, Berlin and Southington Democrats are looking to a well-known former town manager to get them back in power in November. - With the only Democratic member of Bristol’s state legislative delegation retiring, Republicans and Democrats are expecting a heated race for the 79th House District this fall.
- The final debate for the campaign season is set for November 1 - one week before the election
- The state Capitol will be closed for Good Friday - an official holiday for state employees.
- Longtime legislator Craig Miner, one of the more colorful lawmakers in Hartford, announced Thursday that he will not be seeking re-election to the state Senate.
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Government Watch
State Treasurer Shawn Wooden’s TV ads have drawn questions from a key Republican legislator who says she sees an “unsettling” resemblance between his 2018 political campaign ads and the official-business TV commercials he’s appeared in since 2019 for the Connecticut Higher Education Trust (CHET). Rep. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme, the ranking Republican House member on the General Assembly’s finance committee, raised that and other issues in a letter she sent Tuesday to Wooden. Her questions based largely on a May 22 Government Watch column that said Wooden’s ads have blurred the distinction between political campaigning and public service. - While running for governor in 2018, Democrat Ned Lamont said on a written campaign questionnaire from a state employees’ union that he supported “fully funding and staffing” a watchdog agency called the State Contracting Standards Board. But this week, he cut $450,000 in staffing funds that the legislature days earlier had included in the new $23 million annual state budget to hire five additional employees at the long-underfunded board. The agency is intended to prevent improprieties in the award of state contracts, but for years has had only one full-time staffer. “By killing this funding, the governor broke a promise to us, and he rubber-stamped the existing broken system of contracting,” said David Glidden, executive director of CSEA SEIU Local 2001, which he said represents about 25,000 state employees and retirees.
- The state legislature last week finally put enough funds in the state budget for a state contracting watchdog agency to hire five staff members to do the job it was intended to do when it was created in the wake of the corruption scandal that landed ex-Gov. John G. Rowland in federal prison a decade and a half ago.
- History repeated itself this past week in the most noiseless way possible at the state Capitol in Hartford. In a $46 billion bill for a two-year state budget of $46 billion, legislators and Gov. Ned Lamont quietly inserted an oddly worded provision that could give 7 percent raises to more than 400 legislative staff members at an increased cost of about $2 million to taxpayers. An initial raise of 3.5% could kick in as early as three weeks from now, on July 1, with another potential 3.5% hike on July 1, 2022. It’s all like a replay of 2019, when lawmakers and Lamont inserted a nearly identical section in that year’s two-year budget bill, calling for the same percentages of pay hikes raises, without featuring it in their public deliberations on the floor of the House and Senate.
- Esther Witkos, the wife of state Sen. Kevin Witkos, R-Canton — who was the lone Republican to vote yes when the Senate voted 19-17 to approve a controversial bill to legalize recreational use of marijuana — has a job with Curaleaf, a medical marijuana grower/producer, state records show. Witkos, a six-term senator and former police officer, made no comments early Tuesday morning before he voted along with 18 Democrats to give Senate approval to the bill, which now goes to the House — where legislative Republicans are vowing a stormy fight over it in the remaining time before midnight Wednesday, when the 2021 regular legislative session is scheduled for adjournment. He said in a phone interview Tuesday that his wife has been an hourly worker at the Curaleaf production facility in Simsbury for more than a year. He said he had nothing to do with her getting a job there, and her employment there had no bearing on his vote.
Connecticut
- Gov. Ned Lamont noted in a separate statement that the aquarium is one “of Connecticut’s largest cultural destinations, and its success over the last 16 years is no doubt due in large part to Steve’s leadership.”
Opinion
- We know bears come for the food and not our company and the problem seems to be growing as more Connecticut residents report issues with the large, clawed animals. Earlier this summer, a bear that broke into multiple homes in Canton was euthanized by DEEP.
Business
- Great Pond Village, the massive multi-use project in Windsor planned for more than a decade, is advancing to the second stage as builders prepare to erect a 750,000-square-foot warehouse an a network of new roads and utilities.
Community
- Hartford Public Schools welcomed teachers from Puerto Rico Wednesday as part of the district’s effort to fill vacancies and enhance cultural enrichment through Hartford’s new Paso a Paso Puerto Rico Recruitment Program.
Property Line
- "Clover Gardens" -- a renovation of four historic properties on a prominent corner in Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood into apartments -- will welcome its first tenants next week.
Sports
- The UConn women’s basketball team has finalized its nonconference schedule for 2022-23 season. The Huskies will play Tennessee Volunteers in Knoxville on Jan. 26, the programs announced.