Thumbs up, thumbs down

Thumbs up to another month of job growth for the state. Preliminary numbers showed Connecticut added 3,600 jobs in September, enough to keep the unemployment rate steady at 3.6 percent. Though the August numbers were revised to show less of a gain than originally reported, it’s another month of positive news for a labor sector that has struggled to maintain momentum in recent years. A state official injected a note of caution, however. “Almost all the growth came from an unusually high increase in the education component of the Education and Health Services sector,” said Andy Condon, director of the Office of Research at the Connecticut Department of Labor.

Thumbs down to the reasoning of state House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, DBerlin, for the Partnership for Connecticut’s need to deliberate behind closed doors. After months of anticipation over how transparent it would be, the publicprivate partnership spent 33 minutes in open session before ducking into executive session for an hour. Aresimowicz defended the practice by suggesting similar discourse at the General Assembly is “nothing more than pandering” to constituents and that it is more productive to allow the board to meet in secret because members will be “free of political consequences.” We believe what Aresimowicz referred to as “honest discussions” can be held in public. State residents can handle the truth. And the partnership should offer an appropriate lesson in civics to the students it strives to serve.

Thumbs up to the official opening of practice for college basketball season. For the University of Connecticut, whose men’s and women’s teams are the flagship sports programs in the state, it means the last season of exile in the American Athletic Conference, playing the likes of Tulsa and East Carolina. Next season, they’ll be back facing more familiar opponents like Georgetown and Villanova in their return to the Big East.

Thumbs down to a delay in permit applications for a longawaited downtown Derby development. The applications are seeking a special exception, a zone change and a site plan related to an effort to build two fourstory buildings with 215 apartments on the upper floors and retail on the street level. The buildings would be on the former Housatonic Lumber site. The developer said it will resubmit plans next month with revised languages, but for residents who have been waiting years to see action in downtown Derby, it’s a disheartening sign.

Thumbs up to MGM International renewing a contract giving it the option to develop a casino in Bridgeport Harbor on land controlled by RCI Group. The $675 million plan has gone nowhere because of a longstanding compact with state Indian tribes that give them the sole right to operate casinos in Connecticut, and the dispute has extended to the tribes’ plans to build a third casino, this time not on tribal land, in East Windsor. While the problems look intractable, keeping MGM in the picture allows the potential to make progress on these longstanding issues, and to make decisions on the future of gaming in the state both in casinos and elsewhere.

Thumbs up to UConn’s Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering opening of the Hemp Initiative, a facility meant to support the efforts of growers, manufacturers and researchers, and educate students interested in entering the expanding commercial hemp industry. To comply with federal regulations, licensed growers are required to have the THC level tested on the crop before they are harvested, and the Hemp Initiative can handle these and similar issues that many people in the business might be unfamiliar with.