Daily Ructions has been where Connecticut’s news begins for nearly 14 years.

Something new begins on Monday, August 28th.

Published August 21, 2023.

The Boston Globe reports that LEGO’s new American headquarters will be 100,000 square feet in a new Boyleston Street building atop the Massachusetts Turnpike. LEGO announced early this year that it will close its Enfield headquarters after nearly 50 years in the north central Connecticut town.

“Being in proximity [to MIT and other innovative institutions] can make a big difference in collaboration,” LEGO American group president Skip Kodak told The Globe. “You don’t know who you might bump into when you move into a new neighborhood.”

Governor Maura Healey called the announcement, according to The Globe, “an incredible opportunity to bring new jobs and innovation to the area, while inspiring the next generation of leaders.”

LEGO’s decision remains a stinging wound in Connecticut’s 15 year struggle to restore jobs to the state’s economy.

Published August 21, 2023.

Inside Higher Ed reports on an extended conflict at Trinity College that began with complaints in the school’s engineering department, furtive bullying by two deans armed with a sealed envelope, an intervention by the school ombuds, followed by meetings of the Academic Freedom Committee, and action by the Board of Trustees and college president. To summarize, administrators have made a complicated mess with collateral resentments and grievances litter the leafy campus.

Reporter Ryan Quinn explains the web of actions and conflicts at the elite liberal arts college with the help of documents he obtained and conversations with the early target of the administration, engineering professor John Mertens.

Henry Kissinger, who served on the Harvard faculty before joining President Richard Nixon’s administration at its start in 1969, famously observed, The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small.” The conflict at Trinity sounds like a right royal brawl with nothing accomplished other than a guarantee of future fights.

Published August 17, 2023.

State Senator John Fonfara and retired Superior Court judge and former state senator Eric Coleman have qualified for the Hartford Democratic primary for mayor. They will face each other and town committee-endorsed candidate Arunan Arulampalm on September 12th.

Nick LeBron, who is a member of the City Council, did not gather enough signatures to make the primary ballot.

Liam Brennan, the former federal corruption buster, will meet New Haven’s Democratic mayor, Justin Elicker, in that intensely political city’s primary.  Tom Goldenberg and Shafiq Abdussabur fell short in their effort to collect signatures from their fellow Democrats and will not be on ballot. Elicker recently announced he thinks New Haven holds too many elections and should extend his term from two years to four years.

Published August 16, 2023.

The imminent departure of Connecticut Lottery Corporation President and CEO Greg Smith was not announced at Thursday’s board meeting. The first hint of a major change came near the end of the meeting when the board approved a motion to form a search committee for a new leader.

The lottery, which has a long history of troubles accompanied by intense finger-pointing often ending in lucrative settlements, continues to endure an embarrassing year. Its new point-of-sale technology was launched in May and has alienated lottery retailers and customers with a series of troubles that the quasi-public agency has been reluctant to highlight.

Published August 10, 2023.

Not a good day at Connecticut’s fourth branch of government. The Wall Street Journal shines a light on public university spending–with an emphasis on the University of Connecticut. The state’s premier public university has increased spending, according to the Journal, by 73% between 2002 and 2022. Enrollment has risen by 47%, with much of the burden falling on students.

The Journal story, written by Melissa Korn, Andrea Fuller and Jennifer S. Forsyth, includes an examination of public university spending on athletics, highlighting UConn:

The University of Connecticut won the national championship this spring in men’s basketball, and its women’s team has been a near-constant presence in the Final Four. Yet since 2016, Connecticut’s athletic department has received more than $35 million annually in student fees and university subsidies to stay afloat. In 2022, it took in $55 million in such funds, making up more than half its total athletics budget.

The school said more than $13 million of that subsidy covered a payout to a former men’s basketball coach as part of a legal settlement over his employment contract, and that it faces unique challenges in having to pay rent and other fees for basketball and hockey games, which are played off campus. 

Overall, the University of Connecticut’s spending rose by 73% between 2002 and 2022, far faster than enrollment grew. Much of that was driven by personnel costs, with spending on benefits more than tripling.

Reka Wrynn, associate vice president of budget, planning and institutional research, said that was in part because the school was on the hook for a growing share of the state’s unfunded pension liability. Connecticut was also obligated to pay for raises that unionized employees negotiated with the state, she said.

The treatment of Kevin Ollie, the men’s basketball coach fired by ruse, remains a deep stain on UConn’s administration. That will not begin to change until the university officials who plotted to terminate Ollie’s contract, embarrass the NCAA championship coach and deny him the compensation he was entitled to in an agreement the university negotiated with Ollie endure consequences proportionate to their bad acts.

Daily Ructions readers will profit from reading the entire WSJ story.

Published August 10, 2023.

The tussle over explaining Connecticut’s high utility costs on monthly bills continues. Two Democratic legislators objected last month to the decision by the state’s public utility regulator, Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), to describe one of four categories of charges on consumer bills as “Public policy changes not imposed by PURA.”

State Senator Ryan Fazio (R-Greenwich) and state Representative William Buckbee (R-New Milford), ranking members on the legislature’s energy committee, have offered their support for the PURA description. Fazio and Buckbee’s Democratic colleagues requested PURA impose “investments to support reliability, emissions reductions, and affordability. Nor originated by PURA. Charge dependent on usage” on that contested fourth utility bill silo. Fazio and Buckbee dismiss that as “biased phrasing of the category that aims to persuade more than inform.”

“The label proposed by DEEP, ‘system benefits charges’, is a worse alternative than the one proposed by the legislators because it is not comprehensible to the average consumer,” the Republican duo wrote to Marissa Gillett, chairman of PURA.

“Your decision in last year’s docket deserves a lot of credit for adding transparency to consumers’ electric bill,” Fazio and Buckbee concluded. “There is no reason to change that decision, especially because it has the most fidelity the new public act that I co-authored. Consumers will appreciate your leadership on this matter.”

Published August 10, 2023.

Petitions for September’s municipal primaries are due by 4 p.m. in local registrar offices. Democrats supporting Eric Coleman and John Fonfara in Hartford were optimistic on Tuesday that each would qualify to challenge former lobbyist Arunan Arulampalam, the choice of Hartford’s Democratic town committee.

Democrats Liam Brennan, Shafiq Abdussabur and Tom Goldenberg are in the hunt to meet incumbent Justin Elicker in a primary. Elicker defeated incumbent Toni Harp in 2019–his second attempt to knock her off the Democratic ticket.

Republican Barry Cohen is expected to file enough signatures to take on party endorsed candidate Paige Weinstein for mayor of sorrowful West Haven. Cohen lost by 32 votes to Nancy Rossi two years ago. Cohen challenged the result and the handling of absentee ballots in a court action that failed. Rossi, who has brought insistent incompetence to the job, is not seeking re-election. Republican Steven Mullins is also running.

Democrats nominated state Representative Dorinda Borr for mayor. She’ll face council member Victor Borras in a primary. A former Democratic mayor, Ed O’Brien, formed an exploratory committee for mayor early in the year but endorsed Borr when she entered the race.

Published August 9, 2023.

Canton Republican Kevin Witkos ended 20 years in the state legislature when he did not seek re-election as a state senator from the far-flung 8th District last year. This year, the retired police officer, former restaurant and bar owner and Eversource program manager is the Republican nominee for first selectman of the Hartford outer suburb, according to the Valley Press.

Witkos served on Canton’s board of education before winning a stunning upset victory over seven term Democratic House of Representatives incumbent Jesse Stratton. She was mounting a credible challenge to incumbent speaker Moira Lyons when Witkos won the seat comprised of Avon and Canton. Witkos served three terms before winning the open 8th District seat.

Witkos will face Bob Namnoum, a retired Granby English teacher and athletic coach who worked for the Connecticut Education Association as a field director and lobbyist.

Democrat Robert Bessel announced is not seeking re-election.

Published August 7, 2023.

The MDC—again. The first agenda for the regional water and sewer authority’s August meeting included a significant item: “Consideration and potential, action re: drafting of new ordinance to provide the MDC the ability to expand the stormwater system capacity in Hartford specifically for future development projects through ad valorem.”

The item raises the prospect of tagging seven of the member towns with the cost of development in the eighth, Hartford. The ad valorem tax formula for sewer services requires West Hartford to pay a disproportionate share of costs. Agenda item 11 for Monday’s meeting would open a new front in the battle for fairness at the relentlessly political agency.

And then a change. A revised agenda for Monday’s meeting appeared on the MDC’s website. The ad valorem tax has disappeared. The stealth tax increase may be the subject of comment—-and the evasive discussions that are the hallmark of the agency’s meetings.

Item 11 on the revised agenda is ”Opportunity for general public comments.” The changing agenda and plans to burden other town’s with Hartford’s development costs may be discussed there. some participants may want to suggest actions on what plotters can do with their plans.

Published August 5, 2023.