When finances are tight, every little bit helps, but some Connecticut cities have potentially thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars, sitting unused and uncollected on Connecticut’s unclaimed property list, known as the Big List, […]
A report by the Las-Vegas based Better Cities Project found the Stamford-Bridgeport-Norwalk area to have the fourth largest gig economy of the nation’s major metropolitan areas, with 10.2 percent of the area’s workforce per capita […]
The Inner-City Foundation for Charity and Education, based in Bridgeport, announced it was closing its nearly 30-year operation after corporate donations dried up, donors left for other states and the pandemic ended their ability to […]
Three of Connecticut’s largest cities were listed as having the slowest job growth among the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country in a new report by the Arch Mortgage Insurance company. In their 2019 […]
Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget proposes shifting 25 percent of the “normal cost” of teacher pensions onto towns and cities, but distressed municipalities will only have to shoulder 5 percent, which means the City of Hartford […]
**Update: Senate Democrats have confirmed the figure of 40,000 students was a mistake in the bill. Instead, the regionalization effort would apply to towns with less than 40,000 total population. The article below is amended […]
While a bill to raise Connecticut’s minimum wage to $15 an hour died in May, legislators may want to consider a new report before resurrecting the idea during the next session.
The Connecticut State Supreme Court ruled last week that Connecticut’s school funding formula did not violate the state’s constitutional mandate that every child be provided a “minimally adequate” education.
But “minimally adequate” might not be enough for some parents and students.
Gov. Dannel Malloy’s education cost sharing executive order maintained flat funding for the Bridgeport school system, but that wasn’t what Bridgeport Superintendent Aresta L. Johnson was hoping for, according to her budget talking points.
Despite receiving the same amount of state education funds as last year, the Bridgeport school system has implemented a hiring freeze and an operational account freeze for nonessential and contractual accounts as the school system faces rising costs.
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.