Never enough. Somers wants to increase spending on one of the most expensive per passenger rail lines in America.

State Senator Heather Somers (R-Groton) wants state taxpayers bilked out of more money for Shore Line East. The fifth term senator and former mayor supports squandering more public funds on what is often the rail service with the highest per passenger subsidy in the nation.

She introduced a bill “[t]o increase the Shore Line East rail service between the city of New Haven and the town of Mystic in order to ease traffic congestion on Interstate Route 95 and promote tourism along the Connecticut shoreline during the summer.” Shore Line East is so expensive it would be cheaper to hire cabs for its passengers. The state per passenger subsidy this year is estimates at $150.

No prudent steward of public funds can argue with a straight face that Shore Line East is a wise or efficient use of taxpayer money.

Somers has proposed sixty bills, including one for state taxpayers to fund the Chamber of Commerce in Mystic.

The Somers political action committee (Somers PAC) spent much of its money by making contributions to Republican Town Committees last year. The original purpose was to support Republican women running for office but the Somers PAC made most of its contributions to town committees supporting incumbent Republican men in the Senate. The towns represented by Republican Lisa Seminara, the only other woman in the Senate Republican caucus, appears to have received nothing from Somers PAC, which appears to have solicited many lobbyists for money last winter. In the summer of 2024, builder Michael Di Gioia provided Somers PAC with $1,000 of the $1,200 it raised between July 1st and September 30th. Di Gioia also gave the maximum contribution to Somers PAC in 2023. Di Gioia lives in North Haven but has had a construction project in Groton.

Published January 15, 2025.