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Frank Ricci |
Feb 2, 2023 10:23 am
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Ex-fire union President Frank Ricci.
The following opinion essay was submitted by Frank Ricci, a retired former New Haven Fire Department drillmaster, union president, and battalion chief. Ricci is currently a Fellow of Labor for the Yankee Institute and an advisory board member for FDIC and Fire Engineering Magazine. He was also the lead plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano.
New Haven state lawmakers (clockwise from top left): Gary Winfield, Martin Looney, Robyn Porter, Roland Lemar.
Clockwise from top left: Toni Walker, Juan Candelaria, Pat Dillon, Al Paolillo, Jr.
Taking city ownership of the expansive former Gateway Community College campus on Long Wharf.
Handing back to the state the detention center at police headquarters.
Increasing property taxes on Connecticut’s most expensive houses to better fund its most cash-strapped public school districts.
And — of course — making pizza the state’s official food.
Those are among the 218 proposals contained in bills introduced so far by New Haven’s lawmakers in the Connecticut General Assembly session now underway in Hartford.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Jan 30, 2023 5:07 pm
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DOT Commissioner and New Havener Garrett Eucalitto: "Intent" of speed cameras is not to surveil people, but to keep them from getting killed.
Yale medical student Aishwarya Pillai “Zoomed” up to Hartford to tell state legislators about the crushed skulls and other carnage she’s seen patients endure in the wake of local car crashes — and to relay her own experience nearly getting run over on South Frontage Road while trying to leave her shift at Yale New Haven Hospital.
Pillai recalled those gory details in a virtual plea made during a hybrid online/in-person public hearing at the State Capitol, where a host of New Haveners expressed their concerns with growing road dangers and then called on the Connecticut legislature to enact traffic safety measures — including allowing for speed and red-light cameras — to help cut down on future car-driven damage to life and limb.
At Thursday's protest outside of Gateway Community College.
Gateway Community College student and Board of Regents student representative Alina Wheeler lives on the edge — of affording to be able to stay in school, of being “just poor enough” to have her healthcare covered as she works towards graduating.
She and fellow community college students in similarly precarious spots are now worried they might not be able to finish out their educations thanks to a potential increase in tuition that could be coming down the pike now that the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities Board of Regents has announced plans to raise tuition at state universities by 3 percent.
Gov. Ned Lamont announced Wednesday afternoon that the state has set aside $12.5 million for a new “Eviction Prevention Fund” that will provide eligible applicants with up to $5,000 to pay back rent.
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Maya McFadden |
Jan 18, 2023 8:52 am
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State Comptroller Scanlon (right) taking a baklava break with legislative liaison Kevin Kurian at Pistachio Cafe ...
... and talking retirement plans with Westville salsa entrepreneur Alisa Bowens-Mercado, Tuesday.
Angela Naranjo now puts aside 3 percent of her Westville massage-therapy paycheck towards her retirement — thanks to a new state program that encourages workers across Connecticut who do not have employer-backed retirement plans to start saving early, even if they have decades to go before leaving the workforce for good.
Naranjo, a 34-year-old Westville native, shared her story about getting ready for retirement — many years down the line — during a neighborhood walking tour promoting that program as hosted by newly elected state Comptroller Sean Scanlon.
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Kimberly Wipfler |
Jan 17, 2023 12:28 pm
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Hannah Srajer and Emmett Santisi (right) make their rent-cap-bill pitch to Hill resident Johnna Davis during Saturday's canvass.
Hitting the doors in the Hill.
Tenants rights advocates from across Connecticut descended on the Hill to knock on nearly 100 doors in their bid to win local renter support for a new rent-hike-stifling legislative campaign.
New Haven's Kim Hart, with Claudette Kidd: "Our purpose is to put the onus of evictions not on the tenant, but on the landlord."
Hundreds tune in for Thursday's Zoom campaign launch.
Hundreds of tenant rights organizers from across Connecticut gathered online to kickstart a new campaign focused on limiting annual rent increases — on the same day that two New Haven state legislators introduced a bill in Hartford that would cap such hikes at no more than 2.5 percent a year.
Bysiewicz's (seated) term-two team: Chief of Staff Taijah Anderson, Senior Adviser Joseph Carvalho, communications chief Chelsea Neelon, External Affairs and Constituent Services Director Brittany Foulds, Chief Legal Adviser Christine Jean-Louis, and John Kelly (scheduling and special projects).
The New Haven-to-Lieutenant Governor’s Office pipeline keeps flowing, with two new appointments announced Wednesday.
(Updated) Erick Russell raised his right hand Wednesday, took the oath to be the state’s new treasurer — and already found himself grappling with the first scandal of the second Lamont administration.
CT Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker: "I want Team New Haven to know that the Department of Education is here to support the work that you are doing."
Tuesday's state delegation-organized meeting about NHPS.
Connecticut’s top education official and New Haven state lawmakers called city public school district leaders to the table for a reality check on student chronic absenteeism — and for a discussion on improving local public education while working as one “Team New Haven.”
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Thomas Breen |
Dec 15, 2022 1:49 pm
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On the scene of a "48-hour film" set in 2016.
A New Haven-based fiscal policy watchdog has proposed cutting a money-pit state film tax credit as part of a broader suite of reforms targeting Connecticut’s “unfair tax system.”
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Thomas Breen |
Dec 8, 2022 5:23 pm
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Dixwell Plaza's planned new ConnCAT Place redevelopment.
Dixwell Plaza’s mixed-use redevelopment, a new health center on Grand Avenue, and new affordable apartments on Shelton Avenue were some of the dozen New Haven projects to receive over $21 million in support from Hartford in an end-of-year windfall of state aid.
Lemar: "I am excited to guide the legislature through this transformative time for our state's infrastructure."
New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar will again be in a top legislative role for developing statewide transportation policy come January as he prepares to serve a third term as House chair of the Transportation Committee.
Valerie Tanner, pictured, helped her cousin Quiana Tanner pitch her local "Try This Pie" bean pie business to attendees at Tuesday's economic summit.
Job creation? Or filling jobs already created?
Economic development gatherings have tended to focus on the first question. A statewide confab held in New Haven Tuesday afternoon pivoted to the latter.
DOT Commissioner-to-be Garrett Eucalitto, on the Green in March 2021.
Gov. Ned Lamont has tapped yet another New Havener from within the ranks of his administration to lead a major state government department during his second term.
A week before the state legislature gathers to vote on whether CT Transit buses should remain fare-free through April, the Board of Alders formally called on state government to make public buses free to ride forever.
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Thomas Breen and Paul Bass |
Nov 16, 2022 4:53 pm
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Newly tapped next state economic development Commissioner Alexandra Daum with Gov. Ned Lamont at Thursday's announcement at Hotel Marcel.
Gov. Ned Lamont turned to a New Havener from within the ranks of his administration to shepherd Connecticut’s economic development for the next four years.
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Paul Bass, Thomas Breen and Laura Glesby |
Nov 9, 2022 12:24 pm
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Erick Russell with rest of Democratic statewide team at Wednesday presser: LGBTQ history made.
Thomas Breen photo
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (right) with supporter Sydney Perry Tuesday night.
Democrats elected to fill all of Connecticut’s statewide elected offices for the next four years — including the first New Havener to win one of those offices in 36 years — claimed a mandate Wednesday to continue and build on the policies of the previous four.
Green AG candidate Krayeske with Veronica Douglas Tuesday.
He talked about electric cargo bikes, being new neighbors in Fair Haven Heights, and how people in positions of power must be more compassionate and be held accountable.
All of that — delivered on a cool, sunny Tuesday morning on Lexington Avenue — got Green Party attorney general hopeful and recent New Haven transplant Ken Krayeske Larry Ardigliano’s vote on Election Day.
The successful exchange occurred at Krayeske’s polling place, the Benjamin Jepson School at 15 Lexington Ave., where the candidate had ridden on his spiffy yellow electric cargo bike to meet the folks and to solicit votes.
Krayeske said he plans in the near future to move his now Hartford-based law practice to the Elm City. He’s there in part because the majority of Krayeske’s clients are state prisoners.
His aim outside of the Fair Haven Heights polling place Tuesday morning was as much to meet his neighbors as to garner votes in his long-shot attempt as the Green Party’s candidate to replace Democratic Party incumbent William Tong as the state’s attorney general.
Casually but effectively mixing the neighbor and policy messages, Krayeske made his case to Jose Maysonet. “I’m Ken Krayeske, running for attorney general on the Green Party. More importantly, I’m your neighbor.”
The candidate (right) with neighbor Jose Maysonet.
Then switching into fluent Spanish, he added (in the candidate’s translation): “The reason I’m running is I don’t like the way the current attorney general does business.”
Then Krayeske reprised for Maysonet a representative case in which the ultimate ruling compelled the state of Connecticut to test 20,000 inmates for hepatitis. (Click here to read more about that and other of his cases in Krayeske’s interview with the Independent). “The corollary benefit is that it helped to close the Northern Correctional Institution, which was a brutal place.”
Krayeske’s Spanish comes from a year spent in Spain as a Syracuse University undergraduate and also through his wife, who is Puerto Rican. Krayeske and Maysonet chatted, in more Spanish, about where his wife’s family hails from and where Maysonet’s family lives on the island.
Still, when Maysonet excused himself to vote, he wouldn’t tell a nosy reporter if the candidate had convinced him to vote the Green line for attorney general.
“It helps I speak Spanish,” said Krayeske, “And I know Puertoricanisms” through his wife.
A few minutes later, when he noticed Larry Ardigliano approaching wearing a bright lemon-colored bicycle helmet, Krayeske introduced himself and added, “I rode that awesome electric cargo bike. We just moved here. I’m running for attorney general and I do civil rights law.”
After a few words on the pleasure of riding bikes along the Quinnipiac and the Mill rivers and when Ardigliano expressed interest in the type of law Krayeske practices, the candidate went to the heart of his pitch: “I’m running because I don’t like the job William Tong is doing in holding his lawyers to account. We can exert state power with compassion. And the state can admit when it makes mistakes.
“But why doesn’t the state admit wrongdoing?” Ardigliano pressed Krayeske.
“Because if the state admits wrongdoing” instead of fighting each such allegation, he argued, “then it has to approach change. Women should not be raped in the state’s prisons. They shouldn’t have to give birth on a toilet. The attorneys I fought against were mean. This is the 21st century in America. That’s why I’m running, but I’m also here to meet my neighbors.”
Moments later when Ardigliano emerged from the Jepson lobby voting area, he said, “Holding people in positions of power accountable. That’s one of our biggest problems. He got my vote.”
Krayeske (right) with Larry Ardigliano.
He also got Maysonet’s vote.
Krayeske didn’t spend any money on his own campaign, he said. Instead, he gave what was available in his budget, he said, to the local diaper bank.
“Why should I spend money on what amounts to info warfare! Why make the media companies rich! Why are Lamont and Stefanowski spending millions when so many babies have diaper rash. This is why William Tong didn’t want to debate me. I’d have spanked him.”
As Krayeske mounted his bike, this reporter asked him what, on this election day, his next campaign stop would be.
It turns out this was his only one.
“I’m a lawyer, I’m going home. I’ve got briefs to write.”
Demarlo Allen with Winter outside King/Robinson polls: Is early voting safe?
Boosting electoral reform, with the help of stickers.
“If democracy isn’t accessible, it isn’t really democracy.”
With those words of caution — and with plenty of democracy-boosting stickers and flyers and lawn signs to boot — Steve Winter made an Election Day pitch to fellow Newhallville residents to vote yes for early voting.
Mayor Elicker (second from left) and Town Chair Vincent Mauro Jr. (far right) with entire statewide Democratic slate at BAR Monday evening.
Top Democrats from across Connecticut descended on a Crown Street pizzeria the night before Election Day to make their final case to voters in the “political capital of the state” that their party is the one to trust to protect democracy for the long term.
