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The House of Representatives is wrestling with excessive drinking among legislators while the chamber is in session. Capitol police officers and staff members are dismayed. Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter has admonished his caucus over several incidents.

One legislator fell in a parking garage stairwell while walking from the garage roof where members were drinking to the causeway between the garage and the Legislative Office Building, where some legislators leave their laptop computers that are programmed to allow them to cast a roll call vote from a distance.

On Thursday, State Representative Robin Comey, a second term Democrat and Assistant Majority Leader, was incomprehensible when she attempted to speak on an amendment pending before the House. Comey’s condition caused concern on the floor. Representative William Petit (R-Plainville), doctor, hurried to Comey’s side. Aides provided water. A police officer arrived with medical equipment. Petit returned to his seat. Comey was escorted off the House floor. She returned to the Capitol Tuesday.

Officers have taken car keys from legislators who appear to be intoxicated.

Ritter may be able to address the immediate embarrassment by declaring the 4th floor of the LOB, where much over-serving is said to occur, an alcohol-free zone.

Gunshots were fired overnight Monday/Tuesday at the State Capitol. The bullets are said to have stuck windows and are thought to have been fired from outside the building.

Heavily armed police officers were posted at the Capitol Tuesday morning as legislators retuned after the holiday weekend. The regular session of the legislature concludes on June 9th.

Additional details as they become available.

The Courant has more.

Unless you are able to get to the roof of the legislature’s parking garage or a former speaker who works for a lobbying firm, you, a member of the public, are not able to enter the Capitol complex. Our constitutional right to petition the government continues to be severely constrained as the legislature carries on in voluntary isolation.

The Connecticut Retail Merchants Association is out with a radio ad opposing the imposition of a digital tax on small businesses. The pandemic has been especially hard on the state’s retail merchants. It seems reasonable to ask state government not to add another obstacle to their recovery.

Former state Representative Themis Klarides announced Wednesday she is exploring a bid for the 2022 Republican nomination for governor. Some wag anticipated this moment and reserved ThemisKlarides.com. It leads to the page of the frontrunner in the 2022 race.

House members have been leaving their laptops unattended on the walkway between the Legislative Office Building and its parking garage while they have their version of a tailgate party on the roof of the garage. The legislators appear to have found the farthest place in the Capitol complex from where they may cast roll call votes.

When a vote is called the legislators recess their rooftop gathering, walk to the second floor of the garage, and head for their row of laptops on the walkway.

The public continues to be banned from the Capitol complex.

The militarization of the police continues. A group of legislators has proposed an amendment to skirt last year’s ban on municipal police departments acquiring controlled vehicles, highly mobile multi-wheeled vehicles, and mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. The ban was enacted as an element of 2020’s police reform bill.

The militarization of local police departments has caused unease along a wide swath of the political spectrum. A bipartisan coalition of ten (10) legislators is proposing an exception. The group of Senate and House members would allow West Haven to purchase Farmington’s mine-resistant, ambushed protected vehicle by January 1, 2022.

Former state Representative Themis Klarides has been making the rounds as she prepares to launch a bid for the Republican nomination for governor. The Derby Republican has been joined on the exploratory trail by two devoted supporters of Donald Trump.

Sebastian Rougemont and Elissa Voccola have been spotted accompanying Klarides as she appears at events around the state. Voccola served as executive director of Connecticut’s Republican organization from 2013 to 2015. She was the director of the Trump Victory campaign in the northeast in 2019 and 2020.

Rougemont was the New Hampshire director of the 2020 Trump campaign. Trump lost New Hampshire last year by almost 60,000 votes, 20 times greater than the margin Hillary Clinton took the state’s four electoral states by four years earlier.

Rougemont and Voccola, who have been looking for a Connecticut campaign, may also be auditioning to join Greg Butler, Klarides’s spouse and the Connecticut face of utility giant Eversource, in running the 11-term legislator’s run for governor. While Themis2022.com has recently been reserved, no documents creating a campaign committee have been filed with the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

Connecticut’s economy added a piddling 500 non-farm jobs in April. The figure from the state’s labor department is a significant drop from March’s 5,200 gain in jobs.

Massachusetts added 5,100 jobs in April.

A weekend group text among Hartford legislators ignited an explosion of resentments between state Senator John Fonfara and Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter, Daily Ructions has learned.

Fonfara posited that Ritter’s establishment instincts are preventing him from making the most of a moment that Fonfara sees as progressive opportunities. Fonfara previously suggested that Governor Ned Lamont, a wealthy Greenwich Democrat, is not acting like a Democrat.

While Lamont largely ignored Fonfara, Ritter did not. The scion of Connecticut’s most privileged and patronage-laden political family, Ritter responded with some right royal abuse of the battle-hardened Fonfara. The South End fixture has seen off a host of opponents in more than 30 years in the tumultuous world of Hartford Democratic politics.

Local Democrats have recruited state Representative Brandon McGee to bring what passes for peace among Hartford Democratic factions. McGee, himself a remarkable survivor of shifting alliances, knows something about brokering peace.

A stunning scoop from The Courant: Thomas Katsouleas submitted his resignation as the University of Connecticut’s president in March. His official departure date is June 30th, though his landing gear appears to have been engaged for some time.

The public was not told of this major development at the state’s premier public university.

What Governor Ned Lamont knew of this development and when he knew it will cause considerable interest. So will the cost of Katsouleas staying on as a member of the faculty, if he decides to do that. The public university is paying a hefty tariff for Katsouleas’s predecessor, Susan Herbst, to teach a course each semester at the public university’s Stamford branch.