Gov. Lamont wants vote this month on tolls
Lamont wants December vote on tolls: Lamont wants a special legislative session before Christmas to approve truck-only tolls, a proposal he had previously dismissed that has since been revived with the support of House and Senate Democrats. “We started with a budget on time, and before the end of this year, we’re going to show that we’ve fixed our transportation system for the future without nickel-and-diming the rainy day fund,” the governor said recently. Republicans, who remain opposed to any tolls, are urging Lamont to pump the brakes on his plan, citing an ongoing lawsuit in Rhode Island arguing that state’s truck-only tolls are unconstitutional. A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the case could continue despite a lower court’s decision to dismiss the suit. “The court’s decision gives credence to the trucking industry’s challenge,” said Senate Republican leader Len Fasano. “It ties up this issue in litigation for years to come, leaves doubt and uncertainty in the ability to toll only trucks, and creates significant economic risk for taxpayers.” But Lamont said he is confident Rhode Island will prevail in defeating the truckers’ lawsuit and that the state must take action now to boost transportation funding. The appeals court ruling “did not decide on, or even address, the merits of the case,” he said. public pension funds his office oversees. The move is largely symbolic: Those investments make up a tiny fraction of the state’s $37 billion in public pension funds. Wooden said he felt compelled to act because of the inaction in Congress on gun control legislation. “Efforts to advance meaningful gun reform at the federal level have stalled at every turn in the Senate,” he said. But Wooden also argued gun companies are not sound investments and are subject to volatile swings. “Simply put, the business of civilian guns has become an increasingly risky proposition,” he said. The NRA panned Wooden’s proposal. “Penalizing a law-abiding industry and legions of skilled laborers who manufacture a lawful product and are breaking no laws serves no substantive purpose,” said Catherine Mortensen, an NRA spokeswoman.
UConn proposes tuition hike: UConn’s board of trustees will vote this week on a five-year tuition plan that will increase in-state tuition from $13,798 to $17,012 in the fall 2024, a 23.3% hike over the duration of the plan. “In my early conversations with Gov. Lamont and members of the General Assembly, I asked that they do all they could to hold state funding for UConn steady,” Katsouleas said. “That happened for the current fiscal year, and I am hopeful it can continue. As a result, we are able to propose tuition increases that are significantly lower than those enacted in recent years.” Under a previous tuition plan approved in 2015, in-state tuition increased $950 this year. Fasano criticized the increase, as well as Katsouleas’ plan to hire additional faculty to double research spending at the university. “They are making new promises without a plan to pay for them,” he said. “And tuition will increase yet again.”
More than $100K disappears from Sandy Hook fund: State auditors can’t account for more than $100,000 that went missing from a special fund to help first responders and educators who were at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on the day a gunman killed 26 people there in 2012. The money was co-mingled with other accounts managed by the union-associated nonprofit handling the fund, and as a result, the auditors “cannot readily determine exactly how” the money was spent. The United Labor Agency, the charitable arm of the AFL-CIO, has since restored the fund to its prior balance. Republican lawmakers held a news conference Thursday to discuss the audit, which was requested by state Rep Mitch Bolinsky, R-Newtown, who had heard from a state trooper that had been denied benefits from the fund. State Attorney General William
Tong’s office got involved and rectified the issue. Now, Tong’s office says an investigation is warranted to determine what happened with the money.
Hospitals will settle tax lawsuit: Lamont and the Connecticut Hospital Association announced Thursday that a settlement has been reached in a long-running lawsuit challenging the way Connecticut taxes hospitals. The deal must be approved by the legislature and will cost the state an estimated $872 million over the next seven years. At issue is a federally sanctioned, back-and-forth arrangement where Connecticut taxes hospitals and then receives Medicaid funds back based on those taxes. Some of that money is then returned to the hospitals. When it was first passed in 2011 the tax proved to be a financial benefit to hospitals, with them receiving more money than they paid in taxes. But as the state faced continual budget deficits, the tax was increased but the reimbursement to the hospitals was not. As a result, the hospitals no longer benefited, including this year, when they collectively lost $271.6 million. Lamont has worked to repair state government’s standing with the hospitals after their contentious relationship with ex-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Annie Lamont’s emails: Lamont’s wife, Annie, is one of his closest advisers, a trove of emails reviewed by Courant columnist Kevin Rennie show. Rennie requested the emails under the Freedom of Information Act, and they show Annie Lamont weighing in on a number of topics during her husband’s first year in office, ranging from the contentious debate over highway tolls to a proposal to tax sugary beverages. “I know we always want to be doing what is ‘right’ but there are different ways to get there and for the R’s this is political gold for them to jump on — breaking a promise out of the box,” she wrote in February, a day after Lamont reneged on his campaign pledge of truck-only tolls and released a plan to toll all vehicles. In another email, she praised the governor’s comments to top advisers in March that the administration needed to be more aggressive toward its Republican critics. “Love it! Couldn’t agree more!” she wrote.
Special elections will be held next year for three state House seats. Elections in the 48th and 132nd House districts will be held Jan. 14. The 48th House District was represented most recently by Democrat Linda Orange, who died of cancer Nov. 20. The 132nd House District seat was vacated by Republican Brenda Kupchick, who was elected first selectman of Fairfield. The third open seat is the 151st House District in Greenwich. Republican Fred Camillo resigned his seat after being elected first selectman of Greenwich. That election will be held Jan. 21. … Ex-Middletown Mayor Dan Drew has been fined $1,000 by the State Elections Enforcement Commission for illegally soliciting campaign contributions from city employees. Drew, during his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor, obtained the addresses from city hall himself, including the legally protected home addresses of police officers. He used that list to send solicitation letters, in violation of state clean elections law that prohibits “any municipal employee” from soliciting a contribution from “an individual under the supervision of such employee.” Drew, who was first elected mayor in 2011, did not seek reelection in November and has been succeeded by Democrat Ben Florsheim. … State Sen. Will Haskell was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in the Law and Policy category, one of 600 people recognized this year by the publication. “This is an incredible honor, and I have been humbled all morning as I read about the accomplishments of the other people Forbes has chosen to highlight,” the 23-year-old Haskell said. He was elected to the legislature in 2018, defeating longtime Republican Sen. Toni Boucher less than a year after graduating from Georgetown University. … State Department of Revenue Services Commissioner Scott Jackson will resign his position Jan. 16 to join the administration of New Haven Mayor-elect Justin Elicker as chief administrative officer. Jackson, a former Hamden mayor, previously served as commissioner of the state Department of Labor and was chairman of a panel charged with making public policy recommendations following the Sandy Hook shootings. “Scott will bring many talents to Mayor-elect Justin Elicker’s incoming administration, and I appreciate the service he has provided our administration and our state,” Lamont said. … Chris Soto, a former Democratic state representative from New London, has taken a new position with the state Department of Education as the agency’s director of innovation and partnerships. Soto, who served one term representing the 39th House District, resigned from the legislature earlier this year to take a $120,000-a-year job as Lamont’s director of legislative affairs. “I know that Chris will do a great job helping chart a path for our youth in his new role,” Lamont said.