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Politics
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Poll Shows Malloy Trailing Foley by 3 Points
By Mark Pazniokas
www.ctmirror.orgQuinnipiac University’s first poll of the 2014 gubernatorial race shows Gov. Dannel P. Malloy slightly trailing Republican Tom Foley, the man he beat three years ago in Connecticut’s closest gubernatorial contest in a half-century.
Malloy, a Democrat still dogged by the weak economy that greeted his inauguration in January 2011, trails 43 percent to 40 percent in a matchup with Foley, according to a poll released today. Malloy leads other potential GOP challengers by seven percentage points.
The survey finds the electorate evenly divided on a governor who has raised taxes, battled with employees over concessions and teachers over education reforms, while betting heavily on bioscience as Connecticut’s economic future.
His approval rating is 47 percent. Voters who say he deserves re-election are slightly outnumbered by those who say he doesn’t, 44 percent to 46 percent.
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Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Dems Hear from Probate Judge Hopefuls
By James Lomuscio
Four probate judge hopefuls made their case before Westport’s Democratic Town Committee (DTC) tonight to get the party’s nomination to run in November.
The Democratic Town Committee tonight elected Joe Scordato (l) vice chair to serve with Jim Ezzes (r), chair. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
Kevin O’Grady, a Democrat elected to the Westport-Weston Probate Court judgeship in 1999, resigned in April because of health problems.
DTC Chairman Jim Ezzes said that one of the four will be nominated to run to replace O’Grady at the committee’s July 18 convention.
Each of the four who presented to the DTC touted his background in probate law and estate planning. The candidates were: James M.Powers of Weston; David B. Krauss, an attorney who curently serves as chair of the Board of Assesment Appeals; Kieran Costello, a Westporter and Fairfield attorney; and Westport resident Neil Phillips.
More "Dems Hear from Probate Judge Hopefuls"
Blumenthal Headlines DTC Fundraiser
Westport’s Democratic Town Committee’s (DTC) will host a Saturday morning fundraiser June 29 at Tavern on Main featuring U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, state Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman and state Attorney General George Jepsen, DTC Chairman Jim Ezzes announced today.
“We couldn’t be more pleased that Dick Blumenthal, Nancy Wyman and George Jepsen will be joining us for our annual event,” said Ezzes. “They always share valuable insight as to what is happening in Washington and Hartford.”
The breakfast fundraiser, which runs from 9 to 11 a.m., is being sponsored by Ann Sheffer, Bill Scheffler, Linda and Michael Gordon, Betsy and Kieran Costello and Joe Scordato. The cost is $50 per person, and seating is limited.
For further information or to made reservations, visit westportdemocrats.org or call Ezzes at 203-227-4861.
Friday, June 14, 2013
GOP Honors Their Own
Westport Republicans tonight honored Jim Marpe and Bob Zappi at their spring gala at the Westport Inn. Marpe, a former vice-chairman of the Westport Board of Education, is the party’s candidate for First Selectman. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Westport Rotary Club, the Green’s Farms Congregational Church, the Westport Weston Family Y board of trustees, Homes with Hope and the Stamford Symphony Orchestra. Zappi, former chairman of the Westport Republican Town Committee (RTC), has been active as Cub Scout pack chairman, coach of Little League baseball and Rec basketball teams. More than 100 persons attended the awards ceremony followed by dinner and dancing. Pictured (l-r) are Karen Hess, vice chair, RTC; Jim Marpe; Desiree Soli, RTC Chairwoman; Bob Zappi, and Brandi Briggs, vice chair, RTC. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
Thursday, June 06, 2013
Malloy Looks to 2014 At End of Annual Session
By Mark Pazniokas
www.ctmirror.orgGov. Dannel P. Malloy brought the 2013 session of the General Assembly to a close minutes after midnight Wednesday with a seven-minute speech that framed a difficult session as a success, an assessment the Republican minority already is contesting with an eye toward the 2014 election.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy addressing the General Assembly. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Ctmirror.org photo
Malloy, the first Democratic governor in 20 years, opened by invoking somber memories of the Sandy Hook school massacre that claimed 26 lives on Dec. 14, instantly transforming Connecticut’s political agenda—at least for three months, the time it took to craft and adopt a bipartisan package of gun control legislation.
“It seems hard to believe that more than five months have passed since this legislative session began,” Malloy said, delivering the speech that traditionally closes every session of the General Assembly. “I think back to that cold day in January when we came together to begin our work, all of us still reeling from the worst tragedy we could imagine.”
Malloy, whose audience included at least two potential GOP opponents to his re-election, Senate Minority Leader John McKinney and House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., acknowledged the rarity of the bipartisan response as he talked about the continuing debate on guns.
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Wednesday, June 05, 2013
Session’s Final Night Produces Drama, Intrigue
By Keith M. Phaneuf, Arielle Levin Becker and Jacqueline Rabe Thomas
www.ctmirror.orgThe General Assembly delivered its annual dose of drama and deals, seasoned by a few grudges, on the final day of the annual legislative session as union and hospital lobbyists nearly came to blows tonight outside the Senate, and Senate Democrats publicly snubbed House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, in the session’s last hour.
House Republicans slowed business after learning that Senate Democrats would not honor their deal with House Democrats on a small issue, the legalization of Sunday bow hunting of deer. But the major House-Senate conflict was a Democratic squabble as the Senate killed Sharkey’s proposal to phase out the property tax on cars.
“There were certainly some misgivings in the Senate,” Sharkey said of his proposal. “I can’t believe they would not want to repeal the most regressive and most hated tax in Connecticut.”
The House adopted the repeal plan late Tuesday. When it became clear the Senate would not take up the measure Tuesday, Sharkey tried unsuccessfully to get the plan included in an omnibus budget implementer bill.
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House GOP Agrees to End Filibuster; Driver’s License Issue Resolved
By Keith M. Phaneuf
www.ctmirror.orgA last-minute effort to speed up the legalization of driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants to this summer has been scrapped, prompting minority House Republicans to end a filibuster that threatened the final day of the 2013 General Assembly session.
House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero, R-Norwalk, who announced the deal, also said his caucus wouldn’t block a second last-minute change that had sparked the filibuster—a measure that would allow the state to spend $750 million in new financing pledged to a special budget reserve.
Also this afternoon, key Democratic leaders in the House and Senate insisted they remain unaware of who had arranged the driver’s license change, or why.
“I was told they (Democrats) have every intention of taking it out” now, Cafero told reporters just after 3 p.m. outside of the Hall of the House.
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On the Last Day, a Final Gesture to Newtown Victims
By Mark Pazniokas
www.ctmirror.orgThe Connecticut General Assembly’s annual session is ending today as it began, with a focus on the grieving families of Newtown, who pleaded for legislation that might give solace. And once again, lawmakers found it impossible to deny them.
In the first hours of the final day of the 2013 session, the Senate and House quickly voted to close public access to police photographs of the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School and, at least temporarily, an audio account made by police as they stepped among the 20 dead children and six educators.
The legislation applies to all homicides. It is a major new exemption to the state’s Freedom of Information Act, a 40-year-old monument to transparency in government, a simple concept grown complicated in a digital age when everyone with a smart phone or a laptop can be a publisher.
The Senate passed the bill, 33 to 2. The House quickly followed with a vote of 130 to 2. The dissenters were Sens. Edward Meyer of Guilford and Anthony Musto of Trumbull and Reps. Stephen Dargan of West Haven and Peter Tercyak of New Britain, all Democrats.
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Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Senate Allows Unlimited Spending by Parties
By Mark Pazniokas
www.ctmirror.orgUnder legislation approved early today on a partisan vote in the Senate, state parties would be able to make unlimited expenditures on Connecticut legislative races next year, weakening a campaign finance reform passed in 2005.
The Senate voted 21-14 for final passage of legislation intended to tighten disclosure rules on independent expenditures, while expanding the role of the parties in legislative races. The House passed the bill Saturday, 71-59.
The legislation, which did not attract a Republican vote in either chamber, was sought by the Senate Democratic majority in reaction to independent groups’ spending $500,000 to defeat a handful of Democrats in the closing weeks of the 2012 campaign.
By beefing up the role of the parties, the legislature is seeking a counterweight to big money after Citizens United, a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited campaign spending.
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Monday, June 03, 2013
GMO Labeling Advocates Turn Focus to Other States
By Arielle Levin Becker
www.ctmirror.orgShortly after the bill they endorsed got pulled “out of the legislative graveyard,” the grass-roots network of advocates pushing for labels on genetically engineered food gathered today to cheer about it.
Advocates for labeling genetically engineered food declare victory today as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy reminds them what’s next. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Ctmirror.org photo
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy showed up and congratulated them. But, characteristically, he pointed to the next thing on the agenda.
“You better go win in some other states right now,” Malloy told the crowd.
Advocates lauded the bill’s passage in the Senate Saturday and the House today as a groundbreaking win. But under its terms, the requirement that food containing genetically modified organisms be labeled won’t occur until a “trigger” is met: Four other states in the Northeast with a population of 20 million must pass a similar law, and one of those four must border Connecticut.
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Lawmakers Want Slot Machines in Their Cities
By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas
www.ctmirror.orgTired of watching neighboring states expanding gambling while Connecticut’s revenue from the casinos steadily declines, a handful of Democratic legislators today threw their support behind allowing 7,500 slot machines to open in Bridgeport, New Haven and Windsor Locks.
“The tide of competition has just begun to rise,” said Sen. Andres Ayala Jr., D-Bridgeport, the vice chairman of the Public Safety and Security Committee. “This is about us being proactive.”
But gambling opponents seized the group’s press conference to vent about the state budget approved by the House over the weekend, which expands gambling in the state by allowing Keno games for the first time in facilities outside the state’s two casinos.
“We feel thrown under the bus… No one has looked at the social cost,” Mary Drexler, the executive director of the Connecticut Council of Problem Gambling, told the six legislators during the press conference at the state Capitol.
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Saturday, June 01, 2013
House Gears for Overnight Debate on $37.6 Billion Budget
By Keith M. Phaneuf and Jacqueline Rabe Thomas
www.ctmirror.orgThe House of Representatives was expected Sunday to adopt a $37.6 billion budget for the next two fiscal years that preserves municipal aid, meets a rising demand for social services, and shifts an unprecedented $6 billion out from the constitutional spending cap.
The budget bill expands the education reform initiatives adopted last year while launching a major science and technology expansion plan at the University of Connecticut. It calls for expenditures of $18.6 billion in the fiscal year beginning July 1 and $19 billion the next.
If not for a dramatic new interpretation of how Medicaid spending is counted, the bottom line next fiscal year would fall just shy of $21.5 billion, representing a 6 percent hike in the state’s operating budget. In 2014-15, the total spending would be $22.5 billion, up another 4.6 percent.
The budget includes a major raid on the transportation fund, shifting its resources to general-fund expenditures, just as motorists prepare for one of the largest gasoline tax hikes in history. It also refinances operating debt from the last recession, spends over $220 million from the current year’s surplus and launches a new Keno lottery game.
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House Drops Energy Auction from Budget
By Mark Pazniokas and Keith M. Phaneuf
www.ctmirror.orgThe Connecticut General Assembly staggered into the final weekend of the 2013 session today, trying to close an elusive budget deal among majority Democrats, who forced the Malloy administration to give up on a plan to raise $80 million through an energy auction.
Sources in the House and Senate Democratic caucuses said the tentative budget deal would redirect proceeds from a cap-and-trade, anti-pollution program to make up some of the lost revenue. And for the second time in recent days, lawmakers scaled back a controversial tax extension on electricity generators.
Malloy administration officials and legislators conducted impromptu negotiations Friday in Capitol corridors turned sticky from the first hot breaths of summer, often with lobbyists and reporters straining to hear.
Arms folded, House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, stood outside the House, warning Mark Ojakian, the governor’s chief of staff, that the GOP was unhappy with proposed election legislation. He threatened a filibuster.
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Senate OKs GMO Labeling Compromise Bill
By Mark Pazniokas
www.ctmirror.orgWith a deal that revives a bill requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods, Connecticut’s legislative leaders today acknowledged a movement that has muscled its way from the scientific fringe to political mainstream.
Senate and House leaders announced a bipartisan compromise that is expected to make Connecticut the first state to require labeling of foods with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
It passed the Senate unanimously with little debate and was sent to the House, where the leadership promises final passage before the adjournment deadline of midnight Wednesday.
A week ago, the measure appeared dead. Then a grass-roots group, GMO Free CT, used social media to focus the movement’s ire on Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, whom activists deemed responsible for the apparent defeat.
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House Tightens Disclosure, Loosens Spending Rules for Campaigns
By Mark Pazniokas
www.ctmirror.orgThe Connecticut House voted 71 to 59 early today to revise sweeping campaign finance reforms adopted in 2005 after scandal toppled a governor, with Democrats and Republicans arguing whether the changes represented progress or backsliding.
The legislation is a double-barreled reaction to the Citizens United case permitting unlimited independent expenditures: It requires greater disclosure of the resources behind of those expenditures, but it allows party committees to play the same game.
Rep. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, said the measure was less a reform than an endorsement of a political arms race in which legislative leadership PACs and party committees now can make their own unlimited expenditures.
“If we can’t beat ‘em, let’s join em?” Hwang said.
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