With midterm elections less than a week away, one of the state’s largest teacher’s unions — American Federation of Teachers Connecticut (AFT CT) — is calling in reinforcements to join a “Get Out To Vote” […]
The Hartford Federation of Teachers, AFT, is fighting a multi-year court battle with its own unionized office employees over wage and retirement benefits, pitting the teachers’ union against its own affiliate organization, the AFL-CIO. At […]
During the legislative session lawmakers approved $44 million in raises and benefits through a series of twelve collective bargaining agreements, according to a review of arbitrated labor agreements approved by the House of Representatives and […]
The Connecticut Communist Party gave out awards on Saturday, December 8 to Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, SEIU organizer and former Lt. Governor primary candidate, and Shellye Davis, president of the Greater Hartford Labor Council.
Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill to stop taxpayer money from paying state employees to do union work after an anonymous whistleblower sent a package of information unveiling the practice. State employees - known as […]
Assistant attorneys general who plan to vote "no" in an upcoming union vote are making their case to their colleagues, arguing that a union could interfere with the existing relationship they have with their boss, […]
The Connecticut State Legislature will begin its 2023 session on January 4th and will adjourn on June 7th. The “long session,” as non-election years are called in Hartford, will be centered around the biennial budget. The Office of the State Comptroller reports that state government found a way to spend $47.11 billion in 2022 and, if trends continue, we can expect that number to grow even more going forward. Concerns over energy prices, inflation, and general cost of living continue to dominate the headlines and the threat of a recession hovers over economic forecasts.
What will our elected officials be working on to improve policy outcomes for Connecticut residents? What tax reform proposals will there be? What can be done to lower home heating bills? How will state and local budgets be affected by fewer federal resources? How will schools be implementing to curriculum requirements?
While we wait to see the thousands of individual and committee bills that while dominate the myriad policy debates this year, Yankee Institute is hard at work promoting free-market solutions to the problems we face from Stamford to Putnam and Mystic to Salisbury. To that end, we have produced a new edition of our Charter for Change. The Charter provides commonsense reforms to make Connecticut’s government work for its residents.
Though the list of reforms may be exhausting to review, it is far from exhaustive! And that’s why we want to work with you to build a broad-based coalition to encourage sound policy reforms to enable Connecticut residents to forge a better future for themselves and their families.
It’s also imperative that we do so. As we noted in a report and CT Mirror op-ed last year, the debate over whether we’re in a national recession really misses the point for Connecticut residents. We had more people employed in the private sector in 2007 than we do today. Our economy has grown at one of the slowest rates in the nation for the past decade, and we are getting outpaced year after year. We’re not attracting innovation and industry. We’re losing some of our best and brightest as they seek other parts of the country where it’s easier to make a living.
But together, we can reverse this trend.
At Yankee Institute, we know Connecticut is a state with boundless opportunity, and we intend to help make our state more than a place where people are just able to make ends meet! Connecticut should be a place where everyone can thrive – and with your help, it will be.