To date, this is the only Democratic debate in Fairfield County prior to the August primary, Ezzes said.

Gary Rose, chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at Sacred Heart University, will moderate the event, and Ezzes asks DTC members to submit questions to him no later than Friday. Topics should include healthcare, education, the economy, foreign policy, judicial, social and moral issues, Ezzes said, as well as energy, taxes and the deficit.

He added that submitting questions beforehand will avoid long questions from the audience and “permit the candidates to address as many questions as possible during the hour-long debate.”

Only two hours after Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed into law a compromise education reform bill to near universal applause, a disagreement erupted at the State Department of Education over how to implement a provision on evaluating teachers.

At issue is how much students’ performances on standardized tests will count when grading teachers. The new reform package relies on linking tenure and dismissal decisions to a new state-created teacher evaluation system.

“We are going to have an evaluation system that actually means something,” Malloy said Tuesday afternoon, before signing the bill to the applause of administrators, teacher union leaders and others at the state Capitol.

But a panel working across the street at the education department on finalizing the details for these new evaluations by July 1 split on how much standardized tests will count.

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You think rush hour traffic is bad in Fairfield County on I-95 and the Merritt? Try driving on I-84 or I-91 into Hartford! That’s why the planned Busway from New Britain to downtown makes such sense.

Yet, the project has been widely scorned and almost scuttled by rail advocates and lawmakers who would rather see rail service than buses. Even though I’m all about trains, this Busway project makes sense.
But first, what is a “busway,” you ask? Let me explain.

A busway is a dedicated highway just for buses. In this case, it would run 9.4 miles from downtown Hartford to New Britain on an old railroad right-of-way. There would be 11 stations, each with plenty of parking like at a Metro-North station. So rather than be stuck in rush hour traffic on the interstates, you’d drive to a Busway station and hop aboard for a high-speed ride to downtown.

For more distant commuters, at the end of the dedicated bus-only Busway, the bus would enter the road system and head off into other towns and neighborhoods—something that rail cannot do—giving you a one-seat ride from home to work.