House Minority Leader Themis Klarides (R-Derby) is making a risky foray into a critical energy issue. Klarides is joining leftists in calling on Dominion to “open its books” before passing a bill that would initiate a process to create longterm energy contracts after a review by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The legislation made it through the state Senate in the middle of the night early Wednesday morning. It moves to the House for consideration on the fraught last day of the regular session.

Klarides adopting the “open its books” chant comes at a precarious time for the often-confused House Republican leader. She is engaged in a close personal relationship with Greg Butler, the chief lawyer and an executive vice president for energy giant Eversource. Boston-based Eversource has vigorously opposed the Dominion legislation. Klarides and other legislators did not require companies like UTC and the state’s casino-operating Indian tribes to open their books before serving them heaping helpings of crony capitalism.

Proceed with caution. Four state senators, more than 10% of the upper chamber’s membership, recused themselves from voting on the bill early today due to conflict concerns.

The corks will be popping among Connecticut’s protected liquor interests today. Total Wine, eager to disrupt the state’s tightly regulated alcohol markets, lost its challenge to the state’s comprehensive pricing scheme. United States District Court Judge Janet C. Hall’s decision is here. 

The legislature is confused. Its members do not know what to do about the Dominion proposal to give the energy giant more options on how it sells the electricity it generates in Connecticut at its nuclear power facility. The company is looking, as many companies do,  for some insulation from market gyrations. Enough legislators are either confused or opposed to the Dominion proposal.

Financial analysts have taken note. Here’s what one from Barclays thinks and it is not good for Connecticut. Click to enlarge.

Dominion, keep in mind, generates energy without adding to the state’s carbon emissions. How many solar panels and wind turbines will it take to replace it.

State Senator Beth Bye (D-West Hartford) takes a different view. She unleashed a splenetic post on Facebook:

Extortion? Is that what hundreds of millions to Pratt & Whitney was? Bye didn’t characterize the Jackson Labs in Farmington as extortion when it made a sweet deal to create a facility in her district? How about those millions to Cigna? Extortion or investment in Connecticut’s future? Often hard to tell the difference.

Where in West Hartford will Bye want all those wind turbines sited to replace the power generated in Waterford if Dominion departs Connecticut?

UPDATE: A reader points out that Bye voted for a 2015 bill that established the same process for natural gas that Dominion is seeking in its proposal this year.

Updates as events demand.

These maps tell the tale of what legislators supporting tolls will be imposing on Connecticut residents. The maps from 2015 and 2016 studies refute the myth of out of state drivers bearing the burden of this network of tolls.  Those red and green dots tell of a more costly future for Connecticut residents.

Notice that routes 2, 8, 9, and 11 are included, though they are not border roads. You can’t raise anything close to $18 billion with just border tolls.

Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) took to Twitter to confirm his curious view of terrorism in the aftermath of Saturday’s London attack. Former Republican state Representative and 2016 U.S. senate candidate Dan Carter responded.

State Representative Christopher Davis (R-Ellington), who represents most of East Windsor, and his local House colleagues, have filed an amendment to the slot shack bill that would require a local referendum to approve or disapprove authorizing a Mashantucket Pequot/Mohegan casino in East Windsor. Defeat of the proposal by East Windsor voters would terminate the process.

The amendment ought to sail through the House. Who could oppose giving the people of East Windsor a chance to participate in what everyone agrees is a critical decision? The tribes were happy to participate in local referendums in Massachusetts when they wanted to take jobs away from Connecticut by building facilities there. The Mohegans, readers may recall, went down to spectacular defeat in a Palmer referendum, clearing the path for MGM to build a casino in Springfield.

Let them vote.

The legislature is wrestling with the terrible idea of adding tolls to state residents’ considerable burdens. Here is a suggestion for an amendment to propose during the debate. Prohibit legislators from receiving reimbursements for toll expenses. We do not need one more preposterous expense (they already include mileage) added to the calculation of legislative pensions.

It’s a simple amendment. Ask for a roll call.

And then move on to the elimination of the gas tax if tolls are imposed. Anyone with a sense of what instincts move legislation knows that tolls will prompt the Democrats to start using gas tax revenue for general fund expenses.

New York is far ahead of Boston in the competition for Hartford-based Aetna’s new headquarters, Daily Ructions can report. After 164 years in Hartford, the insurance giant invited proposals from Boston and New York. The city that never sleeps is soon expected to win a public acknowledgement of its victory.

The move from Hartford will initially involve several hundred top corporate jobs moving to a new home base in Manhattan. The decision has involved many factors. One is the cultural shift to large urban regions favored by young talent. Another obstacle for Hartford has been dynamic Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini’s famously frosty relationship with surly Governor Dannel P. Malloy. Senator Richard Blumenthal’s opposition to Aetna’s merger with Humana confirmed Connecticut’s top political leadership’s hostility to a company trying to grow in an industry facing urgent challenges in and out of the marketplace.

Aetna executives and representative have begun to inform public officials that the headquarters search process is close to a conclusion. The announcement should provoke a searching examination of the policies that have caused Aetna–on the heels of GE–to leave Connecticut.

Here’s a searing light on the intractable challenge of getting Hartford’s operating costs under control. The mayor, Luke Bronin, is holding meetings with employees to assist them in understanding what Hartford faces at its appointment with critical decisions this spring. Members of the Hartford Police Department are urged to attend one for them by their chief and the head of the police union.

The meeting is this afternoon. The president of the police union adds a sentence that reveals the wrenching ordeal ahead: “All off-duty personnel who attend, please do not forget to put in for overtime/comp time.”

Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst reminds us once more that he cannot control his authoritarian instinct. The easily excitable Republican used Trumbull’s Citizen Alert notification program to blast a flyer local Democrats distributed to 1,000 homes in the Fairfield County suburb.

The handout seems like normal political discourse in a free society. Not to the thin-skinned candidate gubernatorial hopeful. He recorded a message decrying criticism of a proposal to sell some town-owned properties by engaging the municipal system that alerts locals to emergencies such as approaching severe weather. The Trumbull Times has the story and a helpful reproduction of the handout opposing Herbst’s proposal. 

The local issue raises the persistent question of Herbst’s ugly personality. Republican donors and delegates who want eight more years of nasty in the state’s top office have found their candidate in Herbst.