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Here’s the opinion issued Tuesday by Superior Court Judge Susan Peck.

State Senator Joseph Markley (R-Southington) won the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor a week ago, six days after making another late payment of his local real estate taxes. Southington online tax records show that Markley, who owns a home with his sister, has been late paying the semiannual bill the last five times they were due, including the most recent.

Markley, who defeated Erin Stewart and Jayme Stevenson in the party primary last week, tells Daily Ructions, “Relative to the taxes on the home in Southington I own jointly with my sister (a property we inherited from our mother): In recent years we have made several late payments, with interest, creating an additional expense for us personally.  Our taxes are current and will remain so.”

Markley’s running mate, Christopher Dodd donor Bob Stefanowski, has been touting a fantasist’s delight of a tax plan that would repeal the state income tax. Stefanowski’s delusion would add thousands to local property taxes, making Markley’s twice-a-year challenge more of a struggle.

U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) also failed to pay taxes on time when he represented Southington in the state legislature. Murphy, readers may remember, also had trouble remembering that a mortgage payment is due from lender to borrower each month.

With the primaries done, voters will want to learn more about the two major party contenders. New voter Bob Stefanowski, a Democrat this year and a Republican now, is a self-financing stranger to most. This would be an appropriate time to release several years of tax returns. Ned Lamont made his taxes available in a sealed room during his 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate. After a long hiatus from politics, this is the right time to give the public a fresh look.

Tax returns have become an issue in the New York Democratic race for governor. Challenger Cynthia Nixon released one year, but incumbent Andrew Cuomo and his surrogates want to see more.

Good news from Hamden. The Quinnipiac University Poll is back home in Connecticut. The respected survey, according to spokesman JohnAnthony DiMaria, “is planning a survey of Connecticut voters, asking their opinions of candidates for governor, sometime in the next month.”

The long primary campaign that concludes today has not featured any credible polling available to the public.

Aretha Franklin is nearing the end of her sizzling life of providing wonderment to the world. Here she is with three other legends in a 1973 tribute to Duke Ellington, who had a hand in planning the lineup of talent. Take a moment to remember what a constellation of talent Aretha Franklin thrived in.

‘What would be wrong with a nice photo? The Office of Legislative Management and the Department of Economic and Community Development’s Office of the Arts are seeking state portraiture artists to paint a portrait of a specific state official for $15,000. The portrait will hang in the State Capitol.

If it is to be a people’s portrait that reflect’s our common experience of the past eight years, how about this:

A print can be had for a few dollars and tells the tale. See, there are ways to save money.

The centerpiece of Republican Mark Boughton’s third campaign for governor has been his pledge to eliminate the state’s income tax over 10 years. The veteran Danbury mayor and party-endorsed candidate for governor has struggled to explain his proposal to repeal the $9 billion revenue raiser for the state’s $20 billion budget. The impossible promise has caused Boughton to stumble when attempting to explain his plan to repair Connecticut’s battered finances. Should Boughton win Tuesday’s primary he would have hobbled himself by trying to maintain a glaring fiction against the vagaries of Democrat Ned Lamont.

Boughton now says he will reduce the income tax, which opened the spigot of unsustainable spending when it was enacted in 1991. The former state representative has nixed “repeal” and replaced it with the more manageable, fungible “reduce.” A major renovation at the heart of a campaign a few days before the August 14th primary is destined to cause skeptical voters to question Boughton’s reliability as a reformer.

Boughton faces four challengers in Tuesday’s contest. No clear front runner has emerged despite millions in advertisement and regular joint appearances by the contenders.

State Senator Art Linares (R-Westbrook) picks up the endorsement of the remarkably unpopular former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The loudmouth bully left office office at the beginning of this year at the end of a calamitous second term as governor. A notable achievement of Christie’s final years in office is that he competed with Dannel P. Malloy for the painful distinction of the nation’s most unpopular governor.

Christie’s record addressing New Jersey’s troubled pension fund may be something Linares should avoid.

Linares lost the Republican nomination for state treasurer to Thad Gray at May’s party convention. The two meet in Tuesday’s primary.

Dita Bhargava has found a wide space on guns between herself and primary rival Shawn Wooden. The Greenwich Democrat has found a New Jersey public pension fund investment to make her closing argument five days before Democrats pick their nominee for state treasurer.

In an email titled “We need to talk about Shawn,” Bhargava launches a stinging attack on Wooden’s two featured calling cards in this campaign: his experience advising investment funds and opposition to investing public funds in gun manufacturers. That’s now, not before. Bhargava highlights a $400 million losing bet the New Jersey State Public Pension Fund made with BlackRock Credit Investors. Wooden and his firm, according to Bhargava, “collected millions in fees” on the losing deal. She’s not done yet. BlackRock, Bhargava writes, “is among the biggest shareholders of gun manufacturers.” This is not the sort of record Democratic primary voters like to see in party leader.

Expect to hear more about this in these fraught closing days of the campaign.