The CT Mirror

After killing his cousin, Clyde Meikle found purpose in prison through service. ...

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 17:00:00 GMT

Over a few months in 2007, a day room at Cheshire Correctional Institution turned into a mock trial courtroom a couple of nights each week. Sitting on drab, half-cushioned seats, roughly a dozen male inmates practiced complex legal arguments in preparation — they hoped — for a future court hearing at which they could prove they should be released from prison.

As each man presented his case, someone in the group was assigned to be the lookout, scanning the room’s entryway for correction officers who might spot them and accuse them of gang activity, which could put them at risk of losing their prison jobs or being sent to segregation.

The others tried to be mindful of their peers who wanted to use the precious hours outside their cells to watch Monday Night Football or another show on the common room’s shared television in peace. These complications meant the mock trials only lasted a few months. The group scrapped the meetings, worried they’d get caught.

Still, it was great while it lasted, said James Jeter, one of the mock trial participants who practiced his arguments and learned to take constructive criticism from his incarcerated peers.

“It’s really getting away from these clear-cut narratives that, ‘Oh well, you do the crime, you do the time.’ Sure. But what’s the time?” Jeter said. “Is it justice if you give me an insurmountable amount of time and take in no mitigating factors?”

Jeter was released from prison on parole in 2017, but the man who organized the mock trials is still behind bars. That man is Clyde Meikle.

Like many of his informal courtroom colleagues, Meikle is fighting for his freedom while serving his time — in his case, a 50-year sentence for killing his cousin in 1994 — and is awaiting a judge’s ruling in his petition for a sentence modification that, if granted, could cut his sentence to 28 years. Among those supporting his release are Scott Semple, the former commissioner of the Department of Correction; James Rovella, the commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection who, as a Hartford police detective, arrested Meikle in 1994; and Donna Mambrino, a career prosecutor in the Hartford State’s Attorney’s Office whose first case in Part A court, where serious felonies are handled, was Meikle’s.

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Cheshire Correctional Institution on Sept. 23, 2020. Thirteen years earlier, the site of an informal mock trial for incarcerated men organized by Clyde Meikle.

“My philosophy during my tenure as commissioner was that you have to have some semblance of hope in the correctional system, otherwise, it’s a system in chaos. And you need to send a message that you have something to work for,” Semple said in an interview on Jan. 11.

Meikle’s case is unique in that he was able to take, and thrive in, college classes while he’s been incarcerated, Semple said, which has aided in his rehabilitation.

“However,” Semple said, “there are a lot of people like Clyde that have ended up in the correctional system as young people and have now matured and moved forward in their lives, that do have the capability to be accountable to themselves and more likely than not are not a threat to society.”

Hartford Superior Court Judge David Gold is expected to announce a decision on Meikle’s sentence modification on Friday. If he grants the request, Meikle, who is currently 49 years old, won’t have to spend the rest of his life behind bars. If he doesn’t, he could die in prison.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

A photo of Clyde Meikle from a graduation ceremony for his associate’s degree on display in his mother’s home.

To Jeter, Meikle is a “no-brainer” for a sentence modification. He’s one of the founding members of the prison system’s highly regarded T.R.U.E. Unit, which pairs older inmates with younger ones, to mentor troubled youth and help keep them out of the prison system. While incarcerated, Meikle earned his GED, an associate’s degree from Middlesex Community College and completed the credits required for a bachelor’s from Wesleyan University.

“That’s the complicated part: We settle for the no-brainers. Of course Clyde deserves a sentence modification, because look at what he did in the system,” Jeter said. “But should that be the only standard?”

The CT Mirror reviewed Meikle’s petition for a sentencing modification; the 500 pages of exhibits his attorneys filed containing court records and letters of support from Meikle’s family and others he’s helped; and spoke to experts about Meikle’s case and the use of sentence modifications as a tool to dismantle mass incarceration and reduce lengthy sentences.

The resulting picture is one of a man who has lived two distinct lives — one before he fired the gun that killed his cousin, and one after. It took imprisonment for Meikle to get the resources he needed to earn his G.E.D. and thrive in college classes, and it took the perspective that comes only from time and sobriety for Meikle to grow into a role model for incarcerated youth.

His rehabilitation, which he has painstakingly built over the 26 years he’s spent in prison, seems inarguable. What is still uncertain is his redemption — a more nuanced process that rests not with the courts, but within himself: forgiveness, granted through a lifetime of helping others struggling with similar afflictions.

Incarceration led to a rebirth for Meikle. Gold’s decision will determine whether prison is the end of Meikle’s road, or a path to a new one.

A string of crimes

On Oct. 31, 1994, a 23-year-old Meikle pointed a gun at two people at a car wash on Woodland Street, stealing their money and jewelry.

The next day, on Nov. 1, Meikle arrived at his family’s house on Enfield Street in Hartford, where he met his cousin, Clifford Walker. The two men — close friends who used to go on family fishing trips together — started yelling and cursing at each other when Walker asked Meikle to move his car. Meikle pulled a sawed-off shotgun from his blue Cutlass Ciera and approached Walker.

“What are you going to do, shoot me?” Walker asked, his arms raised.

Meikle shot him in the stomach from four feet away.

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Dimaya Williams, 6, looks at photos of her uncle Clyde Meikle in prison with his family members.

Then he fled the scene. About an hour and a half later, according to transcripts from his sentencing, he returned to the same car wash as the previous day, less than two miles from where he shot his cousin, and tried to rob another man. The man resisted, so Meikle shot him too. The man survived.

Walker wasn’t as fortunate. He was transported to St. Francis Hospital, where he died four hours after being shot. He left behind two biological daughters and a stepdaughter.

Walker was killed four days before he turned 30. His family buried him on his birthday.

Meikle spent two days hiding out in New Haven before coming back to Hartford to collect some money. He’d told his mother, Mable, he was going to flee Connecticut.

Mable and Seka Simpson, Meikle’s younger sister, sat down and considered what to do. The two came to the conclusion that Meikle’s life was going to go one of two ways: He would go to prison, or he would die on the streets. They chose incarceration. Maybe, Simpson said in a phone call with The Mirror on Jan. 12, he could get help there.

Mable called the cops and told them Meikle was coming to her house to get cash and clothes so he could leave the state.

Rovella, then a detective with the Hartford Police, arrested him there.

“This is an American tragedy.”— Superior Court Judge David M. Barry

Meikle wasn’t sentenced for four more years, but he was eventually found guilty of murdering Walker. He pleaded guilty to the other charges at the car wash, receiving a 25-year sentence, which he finished in 2019.

Meikle received the 50-year sentence for killing his cousin on July 7, 1998.

During his sentencing, the Meikles pleaded for mercy; the Walkers pleaded for punishment.

“He was my father when my mother and my father split up,” Clifford Walker’s sister, Kim, said when she took the stand. “He was the only one there. He raised me. He dressed me. He bathed me. He combed my hair and sent me to school. And you took that away from me.”

Others talked about how much Walker’s children were suffering in their father’s absence. Lisa Edmonson, the mother of Walker’s children, said she was struggling being a single mom.

“My daughter listen to songs at times now and she cry, go up in her room and cry,” she said.

Judge David M. Barry recounted Meikle’s history of drug and alcohol abuse, his inadequate schooling, his failure to hold a job. The judge faulted him for his addiction and acknowledged the “baggage” Meikle brought with him to Barry’s courtroom.

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Mable Meikle, Clyde Meikle’s mom, said she had to have two jobs to support four children on her own. “No father near to talk to them. No mother because I was hard working for them,” Mable said. “Always food on the table and clothes … It was hard.”

“This is an American tragedy,” Barry said before handing down Meikle’s sentence.

“When he was sentenced, he said that his life was over, but I told him his life was just beginning,” Mable wrote in a letter supporting her son’s request for a sentence modification. “He couldn’t take back what he did, but he could turn away from the drugs and the life of the streets.”

A childhood marked by trauma

Meikle grew up on Enfield Street in Hartford’s North End, one of the most violent, poorest sections of the capital city. Two-thirds of the city’s robberies and around 40% of its homicides occurred within his neighborhood’s three square miles, according to the petition Meikle’s lawyers filed; over a two-year timeframe during Meikle’s childhood, there were nine murders on his street.

In a neighborhood where poverty and violence reign, growing up unscathed is nearly impossible. It wasn’t uncommon for a young Meikle to see friends and community members get beaten or shot. When he was 16, he watched a close friend die after getting shot in a drive-by. The two had been standing together on a porch. It was not the only time of his adolescence that he was in danger.

Meikle had been shot, stabbed and burned before he reached his 20s. According to a legal filing, a nurse noted that he still sucked his thumb at age 17, a sign of severe trauma.

“Before coming into prison I did not explicitly think about violence. I lived in it,” Meikle wrote in a 2018 letter from prison to a retired Hartford police sergeant he knew from his childhood. “Violence became not only a medium of communication and security, it became social capital. If you were unwilling to exercise violence, especially to defend yourself, you would be ostracized: a social outcast among social outcast.”

His parents, both of whom are Jamaican immigrants, fought constantly before they separated. Once they split up, Meikle’s mother had to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Sometimes she was gone for weeks at a time, hospitalized because of her asthma.

Meikle started drinking alcohol with his father when he was 10 years old. He began snorting cocaine a few years later. His addiction spiraled as he grew older. He was absent from his family for long periods, turning up only when he needed money.

Simpson was the first person in the immediate family to find out Meikle was using drugs. It broke her heart. She was a young teenager at the time and carried the secret for a week or two before she told her two older brothers, so they could all tell Mable together.

“Looking back, I felt for a long time that I could have saved him,” Simpson said. “I felt like I waited too long. I can’t remember how long it was, but I felt like maybe I should have said something sooner.”

Meikle’s drinking was already causing family strife. Like his father, Meikle turned mean and angry when he was drunk. In her letter supporting Meikle’s sentence modification, Mable wrote that she could always tell her son was sober if he was kind and brought her his paycheck.

“When he would get out of jail, it would be a good time, the best time, because he would be sober,” Mable wrote.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Mable Meikle, Clyde Meikle’s mom, looks through photos from when her children were young. “I felt hurt,” Mable said about learning that Clyde was hanging out with a bad group of friends.

When Meikle was 15, a psychologist hired by the state Board of Education conducted an evaluation. Meikle had just been expelled from Weaver High School for disruptive behavior and breaking suspension rules.

“When he went to Weaver, that’s when everything broke down,” Mable recounted in her letter. “I was working so hard I wasn’t paying attention.”

The psychologist concluded that Meikle read at a fifth grade level. His math was seventh-grade level. Although he appeared interested in “the usual and expected things, such as girls, money and going to college,” the psychologist wrote in his report, “he may also harbor feelings of inadequacy and poor self-esteem, especially in school.”

The psychologist concluded that Meikle was “essentially a slow learner who will probably have difficulty continuing with his present school programming.” He recommended Meikle be enrolled in special education classes and receive counseling to build his self esteem.

Meikle didn’t get any of that support. He didn’t step foot in a classroom again until he was in prison.

But when he was behind bars, he flourished. He got his GED diploma one year after his sentence. He took vocational classes in the ’90s and 2000s, earning several certifications. He became an avid reader and took to mentoring younger prisoners in an attempt to steer them toward a better life after they were released.

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Crystal Simpson said her uncle Clyde Meikle helped her overcome hardships from transferring to a different school so she could eventually graduate. “Seeing him excel the way he did in his circumstances, it really motivated me to stay strong, try hard and push through, and I was able to do it,” Simpson said.

In 2009, he was one of 18 inmates chosen to participate in Wesleyan University’s Center for Prison Education. He earned an associate’s degree and has the credits for a bachelor’s, but his graduation was disrupted by the pandemic.

Jeter, who also participated in Wesleyan’s CPE program, said Meikle recruited many of the incarcerated students in the Wesleyan program by building up their confidence, convincing them they could handle the rigorous coursework.

Meikle gives his incarcerated peers books to read. He edits their writing. He became a teaching assistant in a calculus class.

The other prisoners call him “Professor Meeks.”

An emotional reunion

One summer day in 2014, Thea Montanez sat in the parking lot outside Cheshire Correctional Institution and waited for her meeting with the Lifers Group, a club of men serving long prison sentences who support each other and perform philanthropy both inside and outside the prison.

As she was waiting, then-Hartford Police Chief James Rovella pulled into the parking lot. The two struck up a conversation, chatting about why they were visiting the prison. Rovella said Meikle invited him to visit so the Lifers could share their ideas about how the city could address a wave of gun violence that summer.

It was the first time Rovella and Meikle had seen each other since 1998, during Meikle’s sentencing.

When he was sentenced, he said that his life was over, but I told him his life was just beginning.”— Mable Meikle

In Montanez’s recollection, Rovella told the crowd about the gun violence in the city. He said it was his job to keep the community safe but he couldn’t do it alone, which is why he accepted the offer to visit with the Lifers.

Then Rovella turned to Meikle. Montanez remembers the police chief telling Meikle he hadn’t seen him in a long time. Then he extended his arm to shake one of the hands he had placed in handcuffs 20 years ago.

“Clyde looked at him and just burst into tears,” Montanez said.

At Meikle’s side were two fellow Lifers. They whispered in his ear and patted his back as he cried, telling him it would be OK.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Devontae Simpson puts his arm around his nephew Mathias Williams at a dinner table. Simpson has kept in touch with his uncle Clyde Meikle. “He always wants to know what I’m doing. He always wants to know my plans for the future,” Simpson said. “He was saying that I should get involved in our own town.”

Montanez, who is now the chief operating officer for the City of Hartford, said she thinks that experience was a crucial part of the recovery process people like Meikle go through after they harm others. Rovella’s arrest of Meikle in 1994 bound them, Montanez said, and Meikle needed to cross paths with him again to progress in his rehabilitation.

The Lifers’ invitation wasn’t out of the ordinary, said Montanez, whose cousin was also a member of the group. They were known to invite community members to visit the prison, so they could offer their thoughts on how to make life better for people on the outside.

“When you are facing that much time,” Montanez said, “I think you naturally question, ‘What is my purpose?’”

A chance for release

Meikle’s options for getting out of prison before the end of his 50-year sentence are limited.

He’s not eligible for parole, his lawyers say, or credit earned for good behavior. The Board of Pardons and Parole is not currently accepting applications for commutations. Some other forms of discretionary release, like a reentry furlough, would have to be renewed every 45 days. A release to a halfway house wouldn’t happen until much later, at the tail-end of his sentence. He’s only served slightly more than half his time.

At the moment, Meikle’s best hope for a meaningful reduction in prison time is a sentence modification, a petition judges can respond to by dismissing it entirely, ordering individuals be discharged immediately, or subjecting them to community supervision for up to as long as they would have been incarcerated.

Those serving sentences of three years or less can petition the court directly. But those like Meikle, who are serving any sentence longer than three years, must get an agreement from a state’s attorney that the sentence can be reviewed.

That can be difficult to obtain. Criminal Defense Attorney Brian J. Woolf says denial is the norm, not the exception. His office gets phone calls every week from those hoping to get a sentence modification.

“I turn down about 95% of them, knowing I can’t do anything about them,” said Woolf.

Successful sentence modification petitions require a confluence of factors, Woolf said: prosecutors who are in favor of the sentence modification, or at least won’t oppose it; a prisoner with a compelling story who is “clearly rehabilitated, or well on the process of being rehabilitated”; a victim who won’t “viciously oppose” the petition; and a sympathetic judge.

“The judge doesn’t just have to hold a hearing,” Woolf said. “The judge can deny it from the paper or grant it outright.”

Lawmakers will have an opportunity to change the rules for sentence modifications in the 2021 legislative session. The Sentencing Commission has sent a proposal to legislators that would broaden the parameters under which incarcerated people can directly petition the court without having to get permission from a state’s attorney. The bill would allow people serving seven years or less to bypass getting a prosecutor’s blessing. Those who were sentenced to prison for any length of time after a trial — a rare occurrence, since most cases are handled through plea deals — also would not need to go through a state’s attorney.

Because the staff who have worked with Clyde and other people like Clyde, they need to be able to see that they’re having an impact on somebody’s life … That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to correct. Anything else is incapacitation.”— Scott Semple, former DOC commissioner

Under the proposed bill, if the petition for sentence modification is denied, the incarcerated person would have to wait five years to file another.

The measure is a compromise that has support from key players on criminal justice policy, including the Public Defender’s Office and Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo, said Alex Tsarkov, executive director of the Sentencing Commission.

“There seems to be a recognition that some cases do deserve another look because sentencing is so complicated, so this provides an expansion of eligibility,” Tsarkov said. “Nothing is automatic here; you have to go through a hearing, you have to prove your case as a defendant, but at least you can bring up a case.”

Reginald Dwayne Betts hears a lot about sentence modifications in his role on the Criminal Justice Commission. As a commissioner, he’s tasked with interviewing and appointing prospective state’s attorneys.

“It’s a thing prosecutors have consistently brought up when they’ve talked to me about the issue of accounting for this thing we call mass incarceration,” Betts said, explaining that prosecutors use ‘sentence mods’ as a vehicle for addressing long sentences, acknowledging the ways that people have changed while they’ve been incarcerated.

But sentence modifications only apply to individual cases, making them an imperfect tool for broader systemic reform that dismantles mass incarceration.

“These motions are not easily put into checklists, or categories,” Tolland State’s Attorney Matthew C. Gedansky said in a statement to the CT Mirror. “These motions must be individualized and taken on a case-by-case basis, taking into account many factors, which is what I would think everyone would want of a process like this. Cookie-cutter justice, one size fits all, is never a good system for defendants, victims or the community.”

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Former Gov. Dannel P, Malloy, center, and Commissioner Scott Semple, at Malloy’s left, at the opening of a reintegration unit for veterans in 2015.

Betts acknowledged that sentence mods are a piecemeal approach to reducing the prison population but said many of the problems raised in sentence modification petitions require individualized remedies, since they are rooted in individual problems. Plus, he thinks there’s value in state’s attorneys grappling with issues raised in the petitions.

“I think it’s meaningful to put prosecutors in the position to reevaluate the lives of people they sent to prison,” Betts said. “Otherwise they would be living in a vacuum in which they saw people at the worst moment of their lives and are left to imagine that that’s all they could be.”

One of the state’s attorneys appointed by Betts and other commissioners is Sharmese Walcott, who became the state’s attorney for the Judicial District of Hartford on Sept. 25. That office is the one that allowed Meikle’s case to progress to a hearing and supported modifying his sentence to 28 years.

All sentence modifications sent to the Hartford Judicial District are reviewed by a three-member committee, Walcott said. The group performs a thorough analysis of each petition, gauging each applicant’s housing and employment prospects, their attitude and the steps they’ve taken to rehabilitate themselves while they’ve been incarcerated. They also look at records from before they were sentenced, underscoring the individualized approach.

“A lot of times, we will look at the underlying file because the only way to see how far a person has come is to know where they started from,” Walcott said. “They have to demonstrate the person they are now is ready for release.”

Walcott said an important consideration is the attitude change a petitioner has undergone during their incarceration. “You’re looking for that shift of ‘Whatever, I’m going to do what I have to do to survive,’ to really kind of caring about the others that are in the community and around them,” she said.

Betts said he thinks it’s brave for state’s attorneys to allow sentence modification petitions to get a hearing because prosecutors are the ones who have to explain to victims that they’re allowing an application to proceed.

The process of following a case through the system can be long and overwhelming for victims, Walcott said. They often “pour their hearts out” at sentencing hearings and then try to move on from the senseless trauma of the crime after the case is resolved.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

A painting that Clyde Meikle gave his niece Crystal Simpson and a letter for Seka Simpson. Crystal said her uncle has been in prison her whole life, but she has kept in touch with him through calls, letters and visitations. “Just seeing him be in the circumstances that he’s in and being successful and accomplishing as much as he did, it really helped me realize that I can do everything that he does, if not more, especially because I have access to certain resources and opportunities,” Crystal said.

Then, Walcott said, “We call them 20, 25 years later and say, ‘Hey, remember that case? Everything we went through 20, 25 years ago? This guy has been doing really, really, really, really great in prison. And we think maybe he should have an opportunity to argue for a shorter sentence.’ And it just reopens everything for the family.”

Jeter said Meikle’s case is being watched closely by those still in prison because he’s such a perfect candidate. If Meikle can’t get a sentence modification, what is the hope for anyone else?

But there are rehabilitative programs at every prison and jail in the state, and there are a number of college courses and degree programs in which prisoners can enroll. Meikle is hardly the first person who has used his time in prison to better himself.

“There has to be hope,” Jeter said. “A lot of these men, they’re not the same individuals; they’ve had the space and time to transform. Are we so punitive that we’d rather have someone sitting and dying than being active and transformative to the world?”

Semple said he thinks it’s just as important for corrections staff to pay attention to Meikle’s journey to redemption as it is for incarcerated people.

“Because the staff who have worked with Clyde and other people like Clyde, they need to be able to see that they’re having an impact on somebody’s life, that they’re making communities safer as a result that they’re engaging with incarcerated people,” Semple said. “That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to correct. Anything else is incapacitation.”

All eyes on Meikle

On Dec. 18, Meikle sat beside one of his attorneys and appeared for a virtual hearing on his sentence modification petition. A slew of officials spoke in support of Meikle, including Mambrino and Semple.

Reviewing her 31-year career in the Hartford State’s Attorney’s office, Mambrino said she’s prosecuted hundreds of serious felonies, including 47 murders and 12 capital felonies.

“And during that time, I’ve reviewed countless requests for sentence modification. Only twice have I concurred with inmates’ requests and granted a hearing. This is the first time I’ve ever agreed to a specific sentence to pose to the court,” Mambrino said, outlining her reasons for agreeing to Meikle’s petition for a 28-year sentence. “And the reason for that is I’ve never been presented with an incarcerated person who has accomplished as much as Clyde Meikle has.”

Clyde Meikle appearing alongside his attorney in a video hearing for his sentence modification petition on Dec. 18, 2020. “I strive to give young people insight through my hindsight,” Meikle told the court. “Nonetheless, all that comes through my experience is tinged by a tragic event.”

Semple called Meikle “a poster boy candidate” for release. He spoke highly of Meikle’s work as a mentor and said there have been virtually no behavioral incidents in the T.R.U.E. Unit because, he thinks, of the example set by Meikle and the other mentors.

Meikle gave a short, emotional speech taking responsibility for Walker’s murder and expressing his remorse. He talked about the pain of knowing he had done irreparable damage to his family members’ relationships, how he had robbed Walker’s children and grandchildren of a father and grandfather. And he talked about his pursuits over the past 26 years, his education and service to help turn others away from a life that will put them back behind bars. Still, in all of Meikle’s work, Walker remains an indelible figure in his life.

“My presence will always be tainted with his absence,” Meikle said, crying softly. “The victims’ family is my family, and the seeming impossibility of reconciliation between family members haunts me.”

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

From left, Mable Meikle, Seka Simpson and Simpson’s grandson Mathias Williams gather for dinner. On the wall behind them are a few symbols of their faith.

Mambrino said Walker’s daughter Natasha was initially skeptical of Meikle’s sentence modification request. She’d been against his release until the DOC arranged a phone call between her and Meikle. That conversation changed her mind.

“She believes that the man has done enough time and that he should, in fact, come home,” Mambrino said.

Judge David Gold asked Natasha if she wanted to speak. Appearing to change her mind again about the prospect of Meikle’s release, she said she was aggravated by all the people who spoke in support of Meikle and called him a good man. Didn’t they know her children could never call their grandfather, that they only thing they’d ever know of Clifford Walker is a gravestone?

“It don’t matter if he come home today, tomorrow, next year or did the whole time, I’m still going to hurt, and I’m still going to feel the same way I feel, because when you take somebody’s life, it don’t matter what you went to jail and accomplished,” she said. “You got sentenced that time, you supposed to do that time.”

My presence will always be tainted with his absence, The victims’ family is my family, and the seeming impossibility of reconciliation between family members haunts me.”— Clyde Meikle

Others talked about all that Clifford missed by dying so young. Kimberly Walker, Clifford’s sister, said her brother could have done the same things Meikle did, but he never got the chance.

“You guys think it’s OK, you think it’s all right because he got a degree?” Kimberly asked those on the virtual hearing about Meikle. “If he was out here, he wouldn’t have gotten that degree.”

Gold scheduled another hearing for Jan. 15, at which he will issue his ruling.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Seka Simpson hugs her grandson Mathias Williams surrounded by her family members. Growing up, Simpson and Clyde Meikle were close to each other, Simpson said. “Inseparable pretty much,” she said. “We were tight… He was Superman and I was Superwoman. We would jump from couch to couch.”

On a phone call three days before Meikle’s next hearing, Simpson said she’s girding herself against disappointment. She’s scared. If her brother is denied the sentence modification, she’s worried it’ll feel like losing him all over again.

That doesn’t mean she hasn’t thought about what they’ll do the first day Meikle is released. They’ll be at Simpson’s house, where Meikle has a room waiting for him.

“The house would be a home,” said Simpson.

His first night back, the family would sit at the kitchen table and talk, making up for lost time. Mable would probably make fried dumplings and ackee salt fish, Jamaica’s national dish. Simpson said it will be the first time Meikle will have eaten Jamaican food in 26 years.

Later, they would visit their father’s grave. He passed away in 2002, eight years after Meikle killed Walker. Simpson said her brother’s incarceration was hard on her dad. She doesn’t think he ever visited Meikle in prison, and she’s not sure they ever talked on the phone.

Still, Simpson thinks Meikle will want to tell his father about his achievements and goals, that he’s a different person now — the man Gladstone and Mable always hoped he’d be.

“He had to go through a lot of trials and tribulations to get there,” Simpson said. “But, thank God, he made it.”

Note: Clyde Meikle’s petition for a sentence modification was granted on Jan. 15, shortening his prison sentence to 28 years. For more on the judge’s ruling and the potential policy implications, click here.

Connecticut’s $90M lobbying industry has a new player: former Speaker Joe Aresimowicz

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 23:08:14 GMT

MARK PAZNIOKAS :: CTMIRROR.ORG

House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz presiding over what was his last session as speaker.

Following a well-trod path, former House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz is becoming a lobbyist, barred from lobbying his former colleagues for a year, but free to immediately seek business for his new employer, Gaffney Bennett & Associates.

Aresimowicz, a Democrat from Berlin who was a long-time employee of the public-sector union AFSCME Council 4, said Friday he is joining Gaffney Bennett, a firm with a deep base of business clients that makes it the state’s largest lobbying entity.

After 16 years in the House and the last four as its top leader, Aresimowicz did not seek re-election last fall to the 30th District of Berlin and Southington, a district that had been growing increasingly hostile to Democrats. His term ended on Jan. 6.

At least three other former Connecticut speakers are now lobbyists: Thomas D. Ritter, Richard J. Balducci and James Amann. Speakers develop networks, nationally and in Connecticut, that can bring value to a lobbying firm beyond direct communication with lawmakers.

While barred from lobbying state government officials for a year by the state’s revolving-door law, it is legal to be a rainmaker for a lobbying firm during this period. He also can lobby municipal and congressional officials.

Last month, Aresimowicz asked the Office of State Ethics for guidance on that issue, among others. He specifically asked whether he could seek business for a lobbying firm and share in the income brought by the new business.

“The answer is yes … and the reason is this: you personally would not be communicating directly or soliciting others to communicate with any public official or his or her staff in the legislative or executive branch or in a quasi-public agency for the purpose of influencing any state legislative or administrative action,” replied Brian J. O’Dowd, general counsel of the ethics office.

Since leaving the General Assembly 22 years ago, Tom Ritter has overseen a government relations practice at Brown Rudnick. In Connecticut, he has worked primarily as a behind-the-scenes strategist for clients, leaving direct lobbying in Hartford to others.

“I will say that I have looked to Speaker Ritter’s success over the years, in many ways. And this particular decision was no exception,” Aresimowicz said.

Tom Ritter is the father of Matt Ritter, who succeeded Aresimowicz as speaker.

Gaffney Bennett is the state’s largest lobbying firm, as measured by clients and billings. It reported contracts worth $10 million for the 2019-2020 state legislative term, more than double any other firm, according to filings with the Office of State Ethics.

Interest groups spent nearly $90 million over the past two years on lobbying state government.

Gaffney’s managing partner, Jay F. Malcynsky, is a Republican who advised Lowell P. Weicker Jr. during his time in the U.S. Senate and John G. Rowland, the former governor. A senior partner, Steve Kinney was an aide to Chris Dodd. Another partner, Fritz Conway, is an old friend of Aresimowicz.

“This is a long- term move for us. This is not a short-term move,” Malcynsky said, though he added that Aresimowicz can help the firm immediately by meeting and strategizing with clients.

Aresimowicz said he knows the shift from union employee to a member of a business lobbying firm will be jarring to some. Gaffney’s clients include one of labor’s least favorite employers, Walmart. They have at least one labor client: the Operating Engineers.

Aresimowicz said he left the union for a variety of reasons, ranging from making way for a new generation of staff to the tensions his dual role as a House speaker and union employee had created at AFSCME.

“It was always in the back of my mind that at some point, I would move on,” said Aresimowicz, who was an AFSCME employee for six years before he was elected to the House in 2004.

In December 2016, the Office of State Ethics advised him that nothing in the state ethics code barred him from continuing his job as education coordinator with AFSCME, once he became speaker of the House of Representatives.

As a speaker and an AFSCME employee, Aresimowicz faced suspicions he was acting on behalf of labor and complaints from unions when he supported budgets and legislation opposed by labor.

He broke with AFSCME and other unions in 2016, supporting an austerity budget that required layoffs of state employees. That led to sharp public criticism by Sal Luciano, his boss at AFSCME, and opposition by some AFSCME members to his endorsement by the AFL-CIO.

More recently, he earned the enmity of police unions by voting for the passage of a police accountability bill.

Spiking tax revenue will wipe out state budget deficit, analysts say

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 22:20:28 GMT

The Connecticut state Capitol in Hartford

Gov. Ned Lamont’s prospects for balancing the next state budget without tax hikes took a big leap forward Friday as revenue projections for the coming two years skyrocketed by almost $1.7 billion.

According to a joint forecast by Lamont’s budget staff and nonpartisan legislative analysts, spiking income tax revenues — particularly those tied to capital gains and other investment earnings — were the driving force behind the improvement.

The new report from the Office of Policy and Management and the Office of Fiscal Analysis now projects an extra $925 million in revenues for the current fiscal year. That’s more than enough to wipe out the $640 million deficit Lamont’s office had projected as late as Dec. 21.

More importantly, the spike in tax receipts is expected to continue into the next two-year state budget, whittling down a huge projected deficit into a far-more-manageable financial challenge.

“In this unique paradigm, portions of our state’s economy have continued to perform thanks to the resilience of our residents, robust federal support, and smart and strategic state investment,” Lamont said. “This forecast allows the state to continue essential services and support for our partners without forcing us to tap our historic savings in the current year.”

“Make no mistake: we are not out of the woods yet, and we still face big challenges, but today’s news is a very welcome step in the direction of progress when it comes to Connecticut’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” added Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, House chairman of the legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.

Analysts from both offices had warned that state finances, unless adjusted, would run $2.1 billion in the red in the fiscal year that begins July 1, and $2.2 billion in deficit in 2022-23 — both gaps exceeding 10% of the General Fund.

But the latest revenue forecast assumes each of those fiscal years will receive, on average, about $843 million extra in revenue, shrinking the potential gaps to $1.2 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively.

And given that Lamont already has about $3.1 billion in the state’s emergency budget reserve — commonly known as the rainy day fund — he and the legislature could cover both shortfalls over the next two years and still not entirely deplete their fiscal cushion.

The latest forecast comes in sharp contrast to state officials’ dire warnings just eight months ago.

In May, Lamont not only estimated Connecticut would have nothing left in its reserve by this point but would also be facing a more than $5 billion gap in the next two-year budget.

There was good reason for that pessimism.

At the height of the pandemic, more than 390,000 people received weekly unemployment benefits from the state Department of Labor, and the caseload exceeded 300,000 for much of the spring and summer. It currently tops 190,000. By comparison, Connecticut lost 120,000 jobs in the last recession, which ran from late 2007 through mid-2009.

But the Federal Reserve expanded its assets steadily through 2020 to prop up the stock market and protect investments.

Forbes.com noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average set an all-time intraday high on Jan. 7 at 31,193. That’s 15% higher than it was on March 4, when it began a pandemic-induced plunge that eliminated one-third of its value.

And Connecticut, which boasts one of the highest per-capita incomes in the nation, has seen its wealthy residents benefit significantly throughout the pandemic.

When analysts issued their last revenue forecast on Nov. 10, they upgraded revenue estimates for the current fiscal year by $400 million and for the next two-year budget by another $1.3 billion.

Analysts boosted expected income tax receipts by nearly $530 million for this fiscal year and by an average of about $570 million for each of the next two. About 60% of that growth involves quarterly filings, which are dominated by investment-related earnings, as opposed to paycheck withholding.

“While it’s great to see an improvement in revenue figures, it’s not news that should cause any of us to relax,” said House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford. “The reality is that we have a tremendous amount of work to do in order to turn around our economy that’s been propped up by federal dollars, particularly when it comes to reviving industries hit hardest during the pandemic. We can take a step toward achieving that by doing everything we can to continue to stabilize our budget situation.”

But while the new report represented good news for the General Fund and most of the state budget, it wasn’t as positive for the cash-starved Special Transportation Fund.

Analysts didn’t change revenue projections for the STF this fiscal year, saying the fund is still on pace to close more than $60 million in the red.

They did project modest increases in the next two years as the pandemic wanes and motorists do more driving — and therefore pay more gasoline taxes. But the fund still is expected to reach insolvency in 2024 or 2025.

Judge approves shorter sentence for convicted murderer turned prison mentor

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 19:30:40 GMT

Clyde Meikle prays silently beside his attorney, Yale Law School’s Miriam Gohara, as he awaits Judge Gold’s ruling on his request for a shorter sentence.

A Hartford Superior Court Judge granted a sentence modification on Friday to Clyde Meikle, a man serving a 50-year prison sentence for killing his cousin in 1994.

“The Clyde Meikle of 1994 was a different person than the Clyde Meikle that stands before the court today,” Judge David Gold said before granting Meikle’s sentence modification, cutting his sentence from 50 years to 28.

Meikle killed his cousin Clifford Walker 26 years ago by shooting him in the stomach during a dispute over a parking space at his family’s house on Enfield Street in Hartford’s North End. Meikle, who long suffered from substance abuse and unresolved trauma at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1998. He has served 26 years so far, during which he has earned a GED and the credits for a college degree and become one of the founding mentors of the T.R.U.E. Unit, which pairs older incarcerated people with younger ones, to help keep them out of the prison system.

“Mr. Meikle has been confined within the walls of a prison for his 20s, his 30s and his 40s, the entirety of the adult life he has thus far experienced,” Gold said. “In light of the lengthy period of incarceration he has already served, the question now before the court is not whether Mr. Meikle’s violent past should cause him to lose the enjoyment of most of his adult life. It already has. Rather, the question is whether it should require him to lose the enjoyment of the rest of his life, whatever that period may be.”

Outlining the considerations he had to consider in making his decision, Gold said the case ultimately boiled down to weighing Meikle’s rehabilitation efforts against whether the 49-year-old’s release would pose any threat to public safety, whether Meikle has accepted responsibility for his actions and the effect on the Walker family, which Gold said has “had to pick up the pieces and hold them together in the aftermath of Mr. Meikle’s actions.”

‘Frivolous claims’

But Gold castigated Meikle for filing a litany of lawsuits over the years challenging his incarceration. Gold said Meikle filed legal motions blaming various lawyers for his getting locked up, claimed he should be awarded $13 million and alleged his prosecutor and Hartford police had lied at his trial.

“Since Mr. Meikle was convicted of murder, he has used, and in the view of some abused, the legal system to wage what has been a relentless attack against the fairness of the process that resulted in his conviction,” Gold said. The “wild and frivolous claims” accused “everyone else in the system of bearing responsibility for his imprisonment, except for himself,” Gold said.

Gold said Meikle “has every right to pursue all avenues of legal redress that are available to him, yet a person’s endless pursuit of frivolous claims in one court after another does tend to suggest that the person either does not, cannot or will not accept the reality of what has happened.”

Nonetheless, the judge granted Meikle’s petition, which had been supported not only by the state’s attorney who prosecuted him 26 years ago but former Department of Correction Commissioner Scott Semple and current Commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection James Rovella, who arrested Meikle in 1994 when he was a Hartford detective.

For the court to require Mr. Meikle to serve out the remainder of his sentence simply to fulfill the terms of the original judgment would not contribute in any meaningful way toward making him a better person when he is released.”— Judge David Gold

“Mr. Meikle’s is the rare, if not unique, case in which the police detective who arrested him, the state’s attorney who prosecuted him and the state Commissioner into whose custody he was placed upon conviction, all speak with one voice in urging the court to grant the motion to modify and to reduce the presence sentence,” said Gold.

“Under such circumstances, for the court to require Mr. Meikle to serve out the remainder of his sentence simply to fulfill the terms of the original judgment would not contribute in any meaningful way toward making him a better person when he is released,” Gold said. “But it would only serve to make them an older one.”

Of particular importance, Gold said, was his decision’s impact on other people still in the prison system. To deny Meikle relief, Gold explained, would ignore the value of Meikle’s achievements and could serve as a disincentive for other incarcerated people who, in the hope of one day earning sentence reduction, might follow Meikle’s lead and seek to better themselves and others.

Meikle appeared to be praying silently as Gold spent a half-hour explaining his reasoning behind his ruling before revealing that he would cut his sentence to 28 years. His attorney, Miriam Gohara, a clinical associate professor of law at Yale Law School, placed her hand on his shoulder as Gold broke the news that Meikle would be going home, some day.

At least a half-dozen members of the Walker family, meanwhile, gathered together for the Friday morning hearing. Gold addressed them directly after announcing his ruling.

“I realized that these rationales and explanations are not likely to mean much to you. From your viewpoint, what I have done has just allowed the man who killed your loved one to escape the service of his full punishment,” Gold said, praising them for being the “only voices against the chorus” of Meikle’s many supporters in a Dec. 18 hearing on his sentence modification petition.

“To the Walker family, please do not interpret my reduction of Mr. Meikle’s sentence as meaning that Clifford’s life was somehow worth less. His life was priceless. And there is no prison sentence, regardless of its length, that can express the magnitude of your loss,” Gold said. “In my opinion, the strength that each of you showed during the hearing last month, and the strength that each of you has had to maintain since Nov. 1, 1994, is something far more worthy of praise and admiration than anything that Mr. Meikle has done, or will ever do in the future.”

At the end of the hearing, Gold told Meikle there were around 800 people in Connecticut prisons right now who are serving long sentences for murder.

“I suspect every single one of them would give everything to have even a fraction of the support that you do,” Gold said. “But yours is the case that has become the feel-good, almost inspirational story that so many have flocked to.”

The judge warned Meikle of the hard road ahead. Despite having much support from members of his community, Meikle will face struggles in his reentry, after having been in prison for 26 years.

“You’ve become accustomed to being looked up to by many in prison, but there’s a risk that you’re going to be looked down upon by many outside of it,” Gold said. “It’s nice being called extraordinary. It’s not so nice being called an ex-con.”

The Department of Correction begins screening incarcerated people for discharge to a halfway house 18 months before the end of their sentence, said Karen Martucci, the agency’s director of external affairs. In Meikle’s case, that would be sometime in the summer.

He will not be eligible for parole, per state law at the time of his sentencing.

Martucci said the DOC considers each inmate’s sentence, the transcripts from their court hearings, their conduct while incarcerated and victim impact in its decisions on discretionary releases. Those sent to halfway houses are supervised by parole officers, she added.

A vacancy in prison mentorship

There are 16 mentors on the T.R.U.E. Unit. Meikle’s eventual discharge will create a vacancy, perhaps an unprecedented one.

“Our mentors are lifers, so I’m not sure if there’s been any replacements until now,” said Martucci.

When the mentees leave the unit, they are replaced by other young incarcerated people, Martucci said. Meikle has been an “active mentor in that unit, so I can see where there’d be a hole upon his release,” Martucci said, explaining that replacing him will be the subject of future conversations between Cheshire Correctional Institution’s warden and other DOC officials.

Meikle’s case was watched closely by current and former officials, including those who helped start the T.R.U.E. Unit. Among those is Michael P. Lawlor, former undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

“People I think are coming to realize that the sentences imposed in this country are off the charts compared to many other place in the world,” Lawlor said, noting that Meikle’s 50-year sentence was “unheard of in the rest of the world, in almost any country where we would want to associate ourselves with.”

A close observer of criminal justice trends and data across the state and country, Lawlor said Connecticut’s prison population is changing; younger people now make up a smaller percentage of the incarcerated population, but the number of people over age 60 is growing.

“I would imagine most of them committed crimes 20 years ago and are still serving those sentences, and they’re not getting out,” Lawlor said.

He suggested the legislature follow the lead of places like Washington, D.C., and pass bills that make people eligible for parole who are locked up for violent crimes they committed before the age of 25.

“You have quite a few people who have committed crimes when they were very young, really serious crimes, and who were sentenced to 40, 50, 60 years without the possibility of parole. And now, 25 years later, some of them, at least, are different people,” Lawlor said. “This is something that’s new, and now public policy has to respond to it.”

Without vocal dissent, Senate confirms Justice Andrew McDonald

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 18:44:57 GMT

MARK PAZNIOKAS :: CTMIRROR.ORG

Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney urges confirmation of Justice Andrew McDonald in a chamber largely empty due to COVID-19. At right, Sen. John Kissel,.

The state Senate that once blocked one of its former members, Andrew J. McDonald, from ascending to chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court quickly and quietly confirmed him Friday for a second term as an associate justice.

Two years ago, Republicans voted as a bloc in an evenly divided Senate to deny McDonald a place a history as the first openly gay chief justice of the highest court in any state, denouncing him as a judicial activist unfit to lead the state’s judiciary.

On Friday, the Senate voted 26-6 to confirm the 54-year-old jurist for a second eight-year term on the court. The House voted 104-37 for the nomination Thursday.

The only senators who rose to speak did so in praise of the justice, among them Sen. John A. Kissel, R-Enfield, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Before saying McDonald deserved reappointment, Kissel referred to the extraordinarily bitter nomination fight from two years ago in the blandest terms, saying “That did not work out for him.”

Republicans are much diminished in the Senate since the fight in 2018. They had won 18 of the 36 seats in 2016, sharing a measure of power with Democrats in the 2017 and 2018 sessions. After losing seats in 2018 and 2020, they now have only 12 members.

Six of those 12 Republicans cast the only no votes Friday. Five others voted for confirmation, including the caucus leader and deputy leader, Sens. Kevin Kelly of Stratford and Paul Formica of East Lyme.

Formica said after the vote that the arguments used against McDonald’s nomination for chief justice no longer were relevant.

“I think this a question of a voice on the Supreme Court, not being the leader of the Supreme Court,” Formica said. “And for me, that was the difference.”

Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, a conservative critic of McDonald, recused himself. His appeal of a State Elections Enforcement Commission ruling against him in a campaign finance case is pending before the court.

As a Democratic state senator from Stamford, McDonald was the co-chair of the Judiciary Committee. He left the Senate to become the top legal adviser to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who nominated McDonald as an associate justice in 2013 and then as chief justice in 2018.

Malloy’s successor, Gov. Ned Lamont, nominated McDonald for a second term.

Judges of the Superior, Appellate and Supreme courts are nominated by governors and confirmed by lawmakers to eight-year terms. Absent cause, the jurists can expect reappointment until the mandatory retirement age of 70.

His promotion to chief justice offered critics of McDonald an opportunity to vote against him without breaking the legislature’s tradition of not using a controversial opinion to deny a justice reappointment. It also came at a time of rare strength for the GOP.

In 2018, the Republicans held an effective 18-17 majority on the question of McDonald’s confirmation as chief justice.

That’s because Democrat Gayle Slossberg of Milford, who was not seeking re-election that year, refused to vote, asserting a conflict due to two cases involving her husband, a lawyer. Another Democrat, Joan Hartley of Waterbury, joined the Republicans, producing the 19-16 rejection.

Hartley voted for McDonald’s confirmation Friday.

The threat of COVID-19 and concerns about unrest because of the assault of the U.S. Capitol last week by a pro-Trump mob were evident Friday.

As a social distancing measure, the Senate operated under new rules that allow senators to vote remotely from their offices. Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, who normally presides, was home in self-quarantine after a staff member’s positive test for the virus. Bysiewicz has tested negative since the exposure.

The session originally scheduled for next week was moved to Friday, so that neither chamber of the General Assembly will be in session next Wednesday, when Joe Biden is inaugurated.

“Obviously, these are difficult and stressful times, not only for us, but our families and staff and others who work here at the state capitol as well,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk. “I want to take a moment to to thank the folks who are keeping us safe during these trying times.”

On Friday, among the State Capitol Police officers greeting lawmakers was one officer carrying an M-4 semi-automatic rifle.

“We don’t know when or how,” Duff said, “but I know that over some time our democracy will prevail.”

MARK PAZNIOKAS :: CTMIRROR.ORG

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff: “Obviously, these are difficult and stressful times.”

Funding to fix CT’s roads and bridges is drying up, and officials don’t have a solution

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:00:39 GMT

Construction and maintenance spending on Connecticut’s highways has decreased.

While the coronavirus dominated summer headlines, Connecticut’s five-year effort to accelerate the transportation rebuilding program slowed to a stroll on July 1.

A risky initiative to force tolls — by borrowing and spending billions of extra dollars on new projects between 2016 and 2020 — concluded July 1, without those controversial fees or any other plan to pay for all of it.

Now Connecticut is left with a $2.8 billion bill, a cash-starved Special Transportation Fund headed toward insolvency, and a construction industry poised to shrink even as the state struggles with unprecedented unemployment.

Unless Gov. Ned Lamont and the legislature order more revenue for transportation — a risky proposition as they near a new state election cycle — construction and labor leaders say Connecticut’s aging and congested highways, bridges and rail lines are at risk of further deterioration.

And the administration already has begun to delay transfers of funds to the transportation building program, something advocates say will only postpone projects.

“Once we get out to the next several years, nothing is [fully] funded,” said Nate Brown, vice president of the Connecticut State Building Trades Council. “It’s a construction industry issue statewide, and the men and women who rely on that as a living could have some really severe consequences going forward.”

“It’s going to significantly hamper the state’s ability to make any progress at all,” Don Shubert, president of the Connecticut Construction Industry Association, warning that construction contractors and workers could soon migrate to other states to find employment. “The construction industry pulls back as soon as it recognizes uncertainty. Drastic cuts like this cause deep adjustments in the industry.”

Now, faced with the overlapping problems of more debt to pay off, more infrastructure needs, the lack of a new revenue source and less of an appetite to borrow, the state’s transportation funding situation is dire. There are not many ways out of the jam.

State funding for highway, bridge repairs plummets

These “drastic cuts” center around slightly more than $900 million Connecticut is expected to borrow this year for transportation work.

That’s down a whopping $711 million, or 44%, from last year, the final stage of the five-year “ramp-up” launched in 2015 under then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

Transportation borrowing, which enables Connecticut to qualify for federal construction grants, is paid for by the Special Transportation Fund — which is supported largely with two fuel taxes and a share of sales tax receipts.

Last year, Connecticut funneled nearly $2.5 billion into its capital program, chiefly through state borrowing and federal grants. This year, the projected total is $1.64 billion.

Further complicating matters, the state saved $74 million this fiscal year by waiting longer to borrow funds for infrastructure work.

Making the DOT wait longer for less money helps keep borrowing costs down as the bill for the “ramp-up” comes due. But it also will slow infrastructure repairs, Shubert and Brown noted — an odd prospect given that Malloy, Lamont and other leaders have warned constantly that the rebuilding was proceeding too slowly and barely maintaining a state of good repair.

“The key to an efficient transportation program is long-term, dedicated, dependable funding,” Shubert said. “As soon as you break from that, it affects the DOT’s ability to plan and deliver projects immensely.”

Bonding backlog explodes over the past decade, costing tens of thousands of jobs

Delays in transportation funding are nothing new in Connecticut.

When Malloy took office in 2011, the state had $1.7 billion in approved financing for transportation, but it hadn’t actually borrowed the money — partly because it couldn’t afford to make the debt payments on it.

By the time Lamont succeeded Malloy in 2019, the amount approved but not borrowed was up to $3.8 billion.

The bonding backlog now stands just shy of $4.4 billion.

Every $1 billion in stalled bonding translates into 10,000 construction and related jobs that could have been created, said Fred V. Carstensen, who heads the University of Connecticut’s economic think-tank.

“Clearly one of the things that is hamstringing the state’s economy is that we have bad infrastructure,” he said. “Now you’re putting austerity on top of that?”

But things weren’t supposed to be like this. Malloy’s “ramp up” was never supposed to ramp down.

To cover part of the ramp-up’s debt costs, Malloy and legislators dedicated more sales tax revenues to transportation — just not enough to cover the whole bill.

But the linchpin of Malloy’s “Let’s GO CT!” plan was that by 2020, state officials would have embraced tolls — or some other new funding source. With that money, Connecticut not only could have maintained the accelerated pace of repairs but enhanced it further.

The governor formed a study panel to spend a year figuring out how to cover the long-term costs. Meanwhile, the ramp-up went forward while the administration dreamed big.

Under Malloy, the DOT established a “vision level” annual investment in infrastructure of $3.2 billion per year, enough to maintain safety and make various strategic improvements to relieve congestion.

Technically, the study panel offered both tolls and gasoline tax hikes as options to pay for the borrowing but spent the majority of its January 2016 report pitching tolls as the best solution.

But Malloy’s popularity — which was never overwhelming — plummeted after he approved his second major state tax increase in June 2015.

CT spent more on transportation but wouldn’t adopt tolls to pay for it

By January 2016, faced with the prospect of backing tolls and slipping further in the eyes of voters, Malloy said he would support no new funding source until legislators endorsed a state constitutional amendment to create a legal “lockbox” to prevent transportation-related revenues from being spent on other programs.

By the time voters ratified that amendment in November 2018 by an 8-1 margin, Malloy was a lame duck in the final two months of his tenure, and the tolls question would have to wait.

Lamont, who took office the following January, proposed tolling all vehicles in his first year and modified the pitch to involve trucks only in his second. Legislators declined to act on either, fearing a voter backlash.

But Connecticut’s bonded debt doesn’t care about the polls.

Projections from Lamont’s budget office show debt costs in the Special Transportation Fund jumping 23% in the next two-year state budget and by 40% over the next four years.

The STF is running $61 million in deficit this fiscal year, and the administration says, at this pace, it will have exhausted its meager reserves and reached insolvency by late 2024.

But between now and then, two things will happen: Lamont and legislators must adopt a new, two-year state budget this spring — which could fix the transportation fund. And there’s also a statewide election in 2022.

Lamont, who hasn’t ruled out running again, already has said he won’t propose tolls a third time.

When asked whether he would ask legislators to increase gasoline taxes or raise some other form of new revenue for transportation this year, Lamont said he’s hopeful President-elect Joe Biden’s new administration will increase federal aid in this area. But the governor also has acknowledged that won’t solve all of Connecticut’s problems in the long term.

“The legislature didn’t want to make a hard decision,” Lamont added. “My job this year is to give them some other ideas that would make the fund solvent.”

But that could be taken two ways.

It could mean Lamont simply could release updated research, showing how much money various tolling, gasoline tax and other revenue proposals might raise.

Or he could formally endorse one option, such as a gas tax hike, in the two-year budget he will propose to the General Assembly in early February, a move that brings greater political risk.

Patrick Sasser, founder of No Tolls CT, said Lamont and any other state official considering raising gasoline taxes as an alternative to tolls is right to be wary.

“There’s not a doubt in my mind there will be blowback on a gasoline tax hike,” Sasser said, adding motorists haven’t forgotten the more than $1 billion in fuel tax receipts Connecticut spent on non-transportation programs between 2006 and 2014. “Maybe now this is finally the time when the state of Connecticut will truly prioritize” its spending.

Rep. Roland Lemar, D-New Haven, co-chair of the legislature’s Transportation Committee and a supporter of tolls, agreed with Lamont that getting tolls approved this year is unlikely.

But Lemar also said Connecticut cannot afford to simply let its transportation building program slip dramatically, adding that’s a threat not only to highway safety but also to the economy.

According to the Department of Labor, there are more than 180,000 people still collecting weekly unemployment benefits. The state lost about 120,000 jobs during the entire recession that ran from late 2007 through mid-2009.

“I’m open to seeing what the budget proposals are … but I don’t see any way possible that we could cut our way to a positive result,” Lemar added. “We’ve yet to find anyone who’s willing to do the hard thing.”

Evidence not clear that Trump incited Capitol destruction

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 09:58:44 GMT

Defending President Donald Trump is not popular and I have no interest in writing this other than adherence to truth. Recognizing the truth (if we can find it, which is not always possible of course) should make us be able to come together around that and move on with a common understanding.

Truth and objectivity should be what brings us together, not pushes us apart, but at least for the last four years such ideals have been willfully tossed aside in order to engage in the war of words. Obviously, Trump is the main offender, but he is but one politician (granted the “biggest” politician) and he does it more offensively and with less sophistication than most practiced politicians. (No, apparently he can’t learn from his dumb mistakes.)

We expect politicians to play fast and loose with the truth. But his influence is much smaller in comparison to the vast number of “legitimate” officials/people who have sold their legitimacy sometime around his election in 2016. In the Trump vs. The Media/Establishment War – the losers are us – the people. The problem with selling your legitimacy is that once it’s sold you can’t buy it back.

Consider the “incitement impeachment” currently underway. To be clear, my analysis that follows is largely based on the evidence presented in the articles of impeachment and the known transcripts of speeches and a phone call by Trump. I also listened to the impeachment debate, but as always I am leery about the political posturing of the parties and did not find it substantively helpful. This analysis does not include the many speculations that have been made or will be made – some of which may turn out to be true. I am sticking with just the hard and known facts at this point unless or until more is established.

Since what I heard in the news snippets after the horrific mob stormed the capitol didn’t seem inciteful to me, I painfully took the time to watch and read the entire transcript of the one hour plus speech Trump gave at the rally before the march to the Capitol on 1/6/21. You can watch and read it for yourself here at ABC News. I could not find anything that seemed out of the ordinary politician “rally the troops” with rhetorical flourishes tool box. It was the same as one usually hears.

Some say those words lit the match to the simmering mob while others say that D.C. would be a ghost town if no political speech could use terms such as Trump used. Granted the stakes and the background were completely different – Trump repeatedly claiming the election was rigged, stolen, etc. Those are serious charges. The context was graver, but most of the media — where we get our information from — mostly downplayed him and his lawyers as much as they could after the election.

Maybe that’s right – maybe that’s justified – who can tell anymore? After the fact, it is easy to criticize the Capitol Police for not being better prepared, but what normal person thought it would turn so ugly? There are reports that the FBI knew the rally would be dangerous, but it is not clear from what I’ve seen so far if Trump knew or why the information was not passed to the Capitol Police. The Capitol Police had no interest in ignoring credible threats, so presumably they didn’t get the information or they didn’t believe the information to prepare properly.

Despite partisan claims now, I submit that almost no one foresaw the violence. Rallies occur in D.C. and other places all the time. It’s normal to have rallies. Who would have thought some crazies would actually smash and break into the Capitol and among other things kill a policeman! I could see a charge levied that a “reasonable” person at the top should have been able to foresee violence. I’d be ok with that as a justification for impeachment – I’m not sure I would be comfortable with conviction though.

Of course, impeachment is not justice. Impeachment is political. There is a reason why the last two impeachments (Clinton, Trump) were party line votes. You can impeach a president for a hangnail if you have have enough people on your side. So in that sense I am not concerned about impeachment. Politicians generally do what’s good for the party machine or their political fortunes. But from a justice or “what’s right” perspective, I do not see anything he said that caused the riot/violence – nothing that actually lit the match.

I cannot seem to find an estimate of the numbers that attended the January 6 rally other than it was in the “thousands.” Only a relatively small portion of these attendees breached the Capitol (but there was not an insignificant number of “breachers.”) Trump had a lot to do with encouraging people to come to the rally and march to the Capitol. But watching him give that speech seemed like most every other speech he has given. What happened at the Capitol is a classic case of a gathering of people turning into a mob and getting out of control and/or some people who actually came with that agenda. Again, maybe Trump orchestrated the entire Capitol breach, but at this point there is no evidence of that. But more evidence will be available in the coming days and could change this analysis.

You can read the five pages of the articles of impeachment here at CNN. The main Trump high crime and misdemeanor was that he “incited violence” against the U.S. Government. The evidence cited was that he disputed and encouraged dispute of the election – “We won it by a landslide,” etc. (not a crime in any way or the first time a politician has claimed the election was stolen from them – Hillary in 2016 anyone?) The apparent smoking gun evidence in the articles by Trump: “Lf you don’t fight like hell you are not going to have a country anymore.” That’s pretty much it. I won’t waste my time doing a LexisNexis search to show how many times politicians use the phrase “fight like hell.”

There is also a passing reference in the five pages to the call Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffernsperger (with rooms filled with people listening, and which someone illegally recorded,) where the articles say Trump “urged” Raffernsperger to find enough votes to overturn the election and threatened him.

I also read this transcript and there is some pressure being applied but mostly to not ignore the evidence that Trump and his lawyers who chimed in claimed he had. That seems reasonable to me. If you feel you have been wronged wouldn’t you want to call and make your case? The “threat” in the one hour call according to the transcript was that Trump said Raffernsperger could be subject to criminal liability for not finding allegedly illegally destroyed ballots to block investigators. “That’s a criminal offense” said Trump. If it were true, Trump would be right.

The other “threat” is political in nature. That many Georgians would not support Raffensperger after the role he played. Trump: “A lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president.” Distasteful, but not really a threat and even if Trump suggested fighting against him (which he didn’t) – that is politics as usual, the party machine in its usual motion. Nothing unusual there.

I think this impeachment is about the last four years of vitriol and fighting and hating Trump and getting it out of one’s system: Sending him off with the singular mark of the only president to be impeached twice and to negate him running again. Feel’s good – feel’s vindicated. It’s about having the last word. I’m pretty sure Trump does not need anything else to separate him from all other presidents and I can almost guarantee that he will not run and almost assuredly will not win again. There are way too many people in the middle (actually across the spectrum) that are just sick of him and the constant drama.

I am not going to try to dissuade anyone from hating Trump – he deserves a lot of it. I understand where you are coming from. But don’t mix the apples with the oranges (no pun intended). Always remember that you could be the one being charged with something and you would want fairness in your final disposition.

Alan Calandro is a former Chief of Staff for administration and finance at UConn and the former Director of the General Assembly’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis.

CTViewpoints welcomes rebuttal or opposing views to this and all its commentaries. Read our guidelines and submit your commentary here.

Securing our nuclear legacy: An open letter to President-elect Joe Biden

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 09:58:43 GMT

Dear President-elect Biden,

As you noted in a tweet shortly after protestors stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, “Today is a reminder, a painful one, that democracy is fragile.” Indeed it is. And so are nation-states.

The fall of the Soviet Union is surely well-cemented in your memory. And history shows time and again that empires end, sometimes surprisingly quickly. There could come a point, in the far more immediate future than we would like or expect, that the American experiment fails, that our democratic systems of government buckle, or we even find ourselves devolving into a number of smaller countries or embroiled in a second civil war.

There are many dangers that could come from this, but the most pernicious one stems from our large nuclear arsenal. Every nuke out there, if the United States fails, will mean a chance of that devastating weapon being controlled by a new (and possibly rival) state, or even lost in the chaos.

As you know, the United States spent billions under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program to help Russia secure its nuclear arsenal in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, destroying hundreds of warheads, launchers, silos, subs and bombers. Fortunately, no other republics wanted to keep their nuclear missiles, making the process smoother, but I do not imagine, if the United States fails, that the same will ensue here.

Thus, it is imperative that, along with addressing climate change (which makes our country and the world far more fragile as we are hit by more and more costly mega-disasters), and the inequality that is so dividing our country, you prioritize reducing and securing America’s nuclear arsenal and fissile material.

Specifically, you should:

· Bring the US nuclear arsenal down to the minimum number needed as a realistic deterrent, ideally no more than one thousand (and hopefully a number lower than that), as opposed to the 6,185 warheads the U.S. currently maintains;

· Take the nation’s reserve of highly enriched uranium (HEU), and that harvested from decommissioned warheads, and downblend it, turning it into fuel for the 56 commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S.;

· Safely secure nuclear waste immediately, and implement a realistic plan for long-term storage (not that it’ll ever be long enough considering the waste will take longer than human civilization has existed to stop being dangerous);

· Establish a realistic timeline to phase out nuclear energy (a serious threat to security, communities, and the environment, which the disaster of Fukushima demonstrated yet again) and create a realistic plan to secure the radioactive legacy that these reactors have created.

· And finally, end the destructive mining of uranium on American soil. By repurposing HEU, our mining needs should be minimal until our remaining nuclear power plants—most of which are nearing the end of their prescribed lifespans—have been shut down and dismantled.

Only when we address the extraction and use of nuclear materials, what Joanna Macy calls “the poison fire,” will our nation be more secure from this long-term peril. And considering that, as we grapple with future challenges of climate change, we will have less and less capacity to deal with this seemingly far off lesser danger, now is the time to address this existential threat to the United States and any future civilizations that rise up on North American soil in the millennia, centuries, or even decades to come.

Erik Assadourian is an independent sustainability researcher and writer and resident of Middletown.

CTViewpoints welcomes rebuttal or opposing views to this and all its commentaries. Read our guidelines and submit your commentary here.

COVID deaths and infections in CT nursing homes decline as more residents are vaccinated

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:51:51 GMT

AP Photo

Jeanne Peters, 95, a resident at The Reservoir nursing home in West Hartford, received a COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 18. The Reservoir was among the first nursing homes in Connecticut to begin vaccinating residents against coronavirus.

For the first time in several weeks, the number of COVID-19 deaths and infections in long-term care facilities in Connecticut decreased sharply — raising the possibility that systematic vaccinations are curbing the virus’s deadly path through the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Over the week of Jan. 6-12, there were 85 deaths in nursing homes and 312 residents who were infected — both numbers lower than during previous weeks. For the period of Dec. 30 to Jan. 5, there were 120 deaths due to COVID-19 and 483 infections. The week before, there were 126 deaths and 382 infections.

“We don’t know where we are going to go from here — it could really go either way,” said Dr. Vivian Leung of the state Department of Public Health. “We are not relaxing now that the first doses of the vaccine have been given.”

Leung, who oversees the DPH’s Healthcare-Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance Program, told a legislative committee Thursday that despite the decrease, the state is still testing residents and staff at the same frequency and is doubling-down on infection control, especially with community spread still high — particularly in Eastern Connecticut.

“There needs to be continued vigilance with infection control and rapid response, and we are continuing to do that at the department and in the facilities themselves until the community rates start to go down,” Leung said.

There have been several major outbreaks in long-term care facilities in Eastern Connecticut recently. The Matulaitis nursing home in Putnam and Davis Place nursing home in Killingly have had 89 and 120 infections respectively over the past few weeks.

There also were 18 deaths at the Greentree Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Waterford, which has become the recovery home in Eastern Connecticut where other homes send their COVID-positive residents.

Matthew Barrett, the CEO of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, said that while the numbers look better, nursing homes and assisted living facilities “can’t let their guard down.”

“The vaccine is the clear pathway to the other side of the pandemic, but congregate settings like nursing homes and assisted living communities will continue to struggle until our state tamps down community spread,” Barrett said.

CVS and Walgreens vaccinators have started the second round of vaccines in nursing homes this week and are hoping to get through a second round at all 213 by the end of January.

The participation in the vaccine program by residents has been very high — averaging over 90 percent — and providers have been waiting for the numbers of cases to decline because of that.

The state saw a steady increase in infections and deaths in long-term care facilities until the most recent report.

Overall, there have been 3,813 COVID-19 deaths in the state’s nursing homes since March or about 61% of all deaths in the state. The death rate has been significantly lower in long-term care facilities during the second wave of coronavirus infections over the past few months than it was in the spring.

Lamont appoints reformers, disability advocates to Police Officer Standards and Training Council

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:29:53 GMT

Gov. Ned Lamont appointed 11 members to the Police Officer Standards and Training Council on Thursday, reconstituting a board that oversees the training and decertification of cops across Connecticut.

The appointments are a requirement of the police accountability bill passed over the summer in a special session. The new law gives POST the authority to decertify a police officer — revoking a necessary credential for employment — if they use excessive physical force or if they do something that “undermines public confidence in law enforcement.”

“The POST Council performs the critical task of holding all police officers and departments in Connecticut to the highest standards of public service,” Lamont said in a statement. “I am grateful to the outgoing council members for their years of important service to the state, and grateful to those who have volunteered to serve today. I am confident they will continue the important and complementary work of equipping officers for success, ensuring individual and community safety, and ending systemic discrimination in our criminal justice system.”

Lamont’s appointments include:

Keith Mello, a Milford police officer since 1981, and police chief since 2004. He has been a member of POST since 2013, and its chair since 2017. He also was the chair of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association.
Douglas Glanville, a baseball analyst for ESPN and an advocate for racial and economic equity. He has been on the council since 2016.
Mike Lawlor, former chair of the state’s Judiciary Committee and undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning at the Office of Policy and Management under Gov. Dannell Malloy. He is currently an associate professor in the criminal justice department at the University of New Haven’s Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, and is on the New Haven Board of Police Commissioners.
Patricia Rehmer, who served as the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services from 2009 to 2015. She is currently the president of Hartford HealthCare’s Behavioral Health Network.
Jonathan Slifka, a longtime advocate for the disability community. He chairs the subcommittee on improving interactions with the disability community for the Police Accountability and Transparency Task Force.
Ellen Zoppo-Sassu, mayor of Bristol since 2017.
Michael Freda, first selectman for the Town of North Haven since 2009. He has been a member of POST since 2013.
Fernando Spagnolo, chief of the Waterbury Police Department, where he has served in since 1992.
Vernon Riddick, West Hartford Police Chief who has served on POST since 2018.
Roberto Rosado, who was chief of the Willimantic Police Department from 2016 to 2020, and is now the Meriden police chief.
Jim Viadero, former Middlebury police chief, current Newtown chief of police. He has been a member of POST since 2018.

There are 19 members of POST in total, several of whom will be appointed by members of the legislature.

“The law enforcement landscape has changed, presenting many new directions and challenges for the POST Council,” Emergency Services and Public Protection Commissioner James Rovella said in a statement. “This refreshed group of appointees represents many new respected experts, leaders, and broad perspectives. We look forward to cooperatively addressing the many law enforcement issues that will ultimately make our state a safer place for all.”

Between the ever-present, and publicly growing, demand for accountability of police officers, and anticipated funding made available by the Biden administration, Lawlor said, “this is a very important moment for law enforcement … It’s the perfect time to be involved in this type of work for people who are dedicated to improving the criminal justice system.”

Lawlor said the work is a continuation of his last job in state government, for the Malloy administration. He said the goal there was threefold: reduce crime, reduce spending and restore confidence in the criminal justice system, among racial and ethnic minorities, victims of crime, and the general public.

“If you can improve confidence in the system, the result is less crime,” said Lawlor.

Once controversial, Justice Andrew McDonald backed for reappointment to CT’s high court

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 21:45:04 GMT

MARK PAZNIOKAS :: CTMIRROR.ORG

Social distancing: Rep. Craig Fishbein, left, and Rep. Steve Stafstrom debate a judicial nomination in a House largely emptied due to the COVID-19. Most members watched and voted remotely from their offices.

Denied confirmation as chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2018, Andrew J. McDonald was easily endorsed Thursday for a second term as an associate justice on a vote of 104-37 by the House of Representatives.

Debate was brief in a chamber largely empty due to COVID-19, a stark contrast to the protracted and heated fight two years ago, when McDonald’s nomination cleared the House by a single vote and was rejected by the Senate on a vote of 19-16.

Only two lawmakers spoke in opposition Thursday, each citing McDonald’s vote in a 4-3 opinion that struck down the last vestiges of capital punishment in Connecticut. Both called the opinion an example of judicial activism.

“If he really wants to legislate, he could retire from the bench and run for office like all of us. And he could legislate to his heart’s content over here,” said Rep. Larry Butler, D-Waterbury, the only opponent who spoke at length.

Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, said McDonald unquestionably possesses a first-class legal intellect and judicial temperament, and he cautioned against assessing nominations on a single case.

Three Democrats voted with 34 Republicans against McDonald; Fifteen Republicans voted with 89 Democrats in favor. His nomination now goes to the Senate, an evenly divided chamber in 2018 that now is controlled by a solid Democratic majority of 23-12.

The session, originally scheduled for next week, was advanced by a week as a precaution against the possibility of civil unrest and protest in state capitals timed to the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden on Jan. 20.

The state Capitol has been closed to the public since March, when the 2020 session effectively ended as the coronavirus quickly spread through Connecticut.

The 2021 session opened last week under new rules. Hearings and committee meetings are virtual, while floor debates are conducted under tight social-distancing rules. Access to the chamber is limited, and most House members watched and voted remotely from their offices.

The votes for 13 judicial reappointments Thursday were the first substantive actions by the House, other than the election of House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, and adoption of the rules on opening day.

Judges in Connecticut are appointed to eight-year terms, with a rebuttable presumption that they will be reappointed by governors and confirmed by legislators, absent good cause, until reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70.

McDonald, 54, went to the state’s highest court in 2013 with a higher profile than most justices. He had been a liberal Democratic state senator who co-chaired the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, a cauldron of conflict over abortion, gay rights and criminal justice issues.

In 2011, he left the legislature to become the general counsel to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who nominated him to the Supreme Court and then as its chief justice.

As a nod to judicial independence, the legislature has generally shied from using controversial legal opinions as a rationale for denying reappointment. But the death penalty case nearly ended the career of Richard N. Palmer, the justice who wrote the 4-3 opinion, as well as a decision legalizing gay marriage.

On a heavily lobbied 19-16 vote in the Senate, Palmer was confirmed for a fourth and final term in 2017. Palmer retired after turning 70 last year.

As the first openly gay member of the state’s highest court, McDonald’s nomination as chief justice had a politically charged dimension. It came after an unusual public lobbying campaign on his behalf by the legal profession.

The 19-16 vote against McDonald in the Senate stopped the ascent of a political and legal trailblazer for the gay community — a factor that opponents insisted was irrelevant and supporters said could not be ignored.

All 18 Republicans and one Democrat, Joan Hartley of Waterbury, voted against McDonald’s nomination as chief justice. One Democrat abstained. In the House, every Republican but one voted against the nomination.

After killing his cousin, Clyde Meikle found purpose in prison through service. ...

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:35:00 GMT

Still, it was great while it lasted, said James Jeter, one of the mock trial participants who practiced his arguments and learned to take constructive criticism from his incarcerated peers.

Jeter was released from prison on parole in 2017, but the man who organized the mock trials is still behind bars. That man is Clyde Meikle.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Cheshire Correctional Institution on Sept. 23, 2020. Thirteen years earlier, the site of an informal mock trial for incarcerated men organized by Clyde Meikle.

Meikle’s case is unique in that he was able to take, and thrive in, college classes while he’s been incarcerated, Semple said, which has aided in his rehabilitation.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

A photo of Clyde Meikle from a graduation ceremony for his associate’s degree on display in his mother’s home.

Incarceration led to a rebirth for Meikle. Gold’s decision will determine whether prison is the end of Meikle’s road, or a path to a new one.

A string of crimes

On Oct. 31, 1994, a 23-year-old Meikle pointed a gun at two people at a car wash on Woodland Street, stealing their money and jewelry.

“What are you going to do, shoot me?” Walker asked, his arms raised.

Meikle shot him in the stomach from four feet away.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Dimaya Williams, 6, looks at photos of her uncle Clyde Meikle in prison with his family members.

Walker wasn’t as fortunate. He was transported to St. Francis Hospital, where he died four hours after being shot. He left behind two biological daughters and a stepdaughter.

Walker was killed four days before he turned 30. His family buried him on his birthday.

Meikle spent two days hiding out in New Haven before coming back to Hartford to collect some money. He’d told his mother, Mable, he was going to flee Connecticut.

Mable called the cops and told them Meikle was coming to her house to get cash and clothes so he could leave the state.

Rovella, then a detective with the Hartford Police, arrested him there.

“This is an American tragedy.”— Superior Court Judge David M. Barry

Meikle received the 50-year sentence for killing his cousin on July 7, 1998.

During his sentencing, the Meikles pleaded for mercy; the Walkers pleaded for punishment.

Others talked about how much Walker’s children were suffering in their father’s absence. Lisa Edmonson, the mother of Walker’s children, said she was struggling being a single mom.

“My daughter listen to songs at times now and she cry, go up in her room and cry,” she said.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

“This is an American tragedy,” Barry said before handing down Meikle’s sentence.

A childhood marked by trauma

Meikle had been shot, stabbed and burned before he reached his 20s. According to a legal filing, a nurse noted that he still sucked his thumb at age 17, a sign of severe trauma.

“When he would get out of jail, it would be a good time, the best time, because he would be sober,” Mable wrote.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Mable Meikle, Clyde Meikle’s mom, looks through photos from when her children were young. “I felt hurt,” Mable said about learning that Clyde was hanging out with a bad group of friends.

“When he went to Weaver, that’s when everything broke down,” Mable recounted in her letter. “I was working so hard I wasn’t paying attention.”

Meikle didn’t get any of that support. He didn’t step foot in a classroom again until he was in prison.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Meikle gives his incarcerated peers books to read. He edits their writing. He became a teaching assistant in a calculus class.

The other prisoners call him “Professor Meeks.”

An emotional reunion

It was the first time Rovella and Meikle had seen each other since 1998, during Meikle’s sentencing.

When he was sentenced, he said that his life was over, but I told him his life was just beginning.”— Mable Meikle

“Clyde looked at him and just burst into tears,” Montanez said.

At Meikle’s side were two fellow Lifers. They whispered in his ear and patted his back as he cried, telling him it would be OK.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

“When you are facing that much time,” Montanez said, “I think you naturally question, ‘What is my purpose?’”

A chance for release

Meikle’s options for getting out of prison before the end of his 50-year sentence are limited.

“I turn down about 95% of them, knowing I can’t do anything about them,” said Woolf.

“The judge doesn’t just have to hold a hearing,” Woolf said. “The judge can deny it from the paper or grant it outright.”

Because the staff who have worked with Clyde and other people like Clyde, they need to be able to see that they’re having an impact on somebody’s life … That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to correct. Anything else is incapacitation.”— Scott Semple, former DOC commissioner

Under the proposed bill, if the petition for sentence modification is denied, the incarcerated person would have to wait five years to file another.

But sentence modifications only apply to individual cases, making them an imperfect tool for broader systemic reform that dismantles mass incarceration.

CTMIRROR.ORG

Former Gov. Dannel P, Malloy, center, and Commissioner Scott Semple, at Malloy’s left, at the opening of a reintegration unit for veterans in 2015.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Jeter said Meikle’s case is being watched closely by those still in prison because he’s such a perfect candidate. If Meikle can’t get a sentence modification, what is the hope for anyone else?

Semple said he thinks it’s just as important for corrections staff to pay attention to Meikle’s journey to redemption as it is for incarcerated people.

All eyes on Meikle

Reviewing her 31-year career in the Hartford State’s Attorney’s office, Mambrino said she’s prosecuted hundreds of serious felonies, including 47 murders and 12 capital felonies.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

From left, Mable Meikle, Seka Simpson and Simpson’s grandson Mathias Williams gather for dinner. On the wall behind them are a few symbols of their faith.

“She believes that the man has done enough time and that he should, in fact, come home,” Mambrino said.

My presence will always be tainted with his absence, The victims’ family is my family, and the seeming impossibility of reconciliation between family members haunts me.”— Clyde Meikle

Others talked about all that Clifford missed by dying so young. Kimberly Walker, Clifford’s sister, said her brother could have done the same things Meikle did, but he never got the chance.

Gold scheduled another hearing for Jan. 15, at which he will issue his ruling.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

That doesn’t mean she hasn’t thought about what they’ll do the first day Meikle is released. They’ll be at Simpson’s house, where Meikle has a room waiting for him.

“The house would be a home,” said Simpson.

Still, Simpson thinks Meikle will want to tell his father about his achievements and goals, that he’s a different person now — the man Gladstone and Mable always hoped he’d be.

“He had to go through a lot of trials and tribulations to get there,” Simpson said. “But, thank God, he made it.”

State invites people 75 and older to sign up for COVID vaccine appointments

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 17:34:23 GMT

Cloe Poisson :: CTMirror.org

Karen Pagliaro, a registered nurse at Hartford HealthCare, prepares a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to give to a first responder at the Connecticut Convention Center on Wednesday. HHC vaccinated several first responders, and they are also vaccinating people 75 and older at the Convention Center by appointment.

Seniors age 75 and older can now sign up to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.

The state on Thursday launched its centralized website for vaccine information, with links to two health systems – UConn Health and Hartford HealthCare – that currently are scheduling appointments for people in that age group. Patients can sign up through their MyCharts account (those without an account can create one). Residents don’t need to have a relationship with the health systems to sign up.

Due to limited supplies of the vaccine, the state warned, it is expected to take weeks to provide a shot to everyone in that age group. Appointments are required – walk-ins will be turned away.

The state has created a vaccine call center for people who want to schedule appointments by phone or ask questions. The number is 877-918-2224. The line will be open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and offer a call-back option when workers are busy assisting other callers.

UConn Health and Hartford HealthCare have also added phone lines for vaccine inquiries. Residents can reach UConn’s call center at 860-679-8888 and Hartford HealthCare’s help line at 860-972-4993.

Residents can also sign up through the Vaccine Administration Management System (VAMS). A link to that portal can be found on the state’s centralized website: https://portal.ct.gov/coronavirus/COVID-19-vaccination—75-and-older

Patients are asked to use the online system or to call UConn or Hartford HealthCare rather than contacting their primary care physicians.

More locations for vaccine administration are expected to be added to the state’s website.

Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday that he has accepted recommendations from Connecticut’s vaccine advisory group to expand Phase 1B of the rollout to include about 715,000 more people – those ages 65 to 74 and those 16 to 64 with co-morbidities such as cancer or chronic kidney disease. That’s in addition to another 652,000 people already approved for Phase 1B that live and work in congregate settings such as prisons and homeless shelters, “essential workers” like grocery store employees and teachers, and those 75 and older.

The state will announce a tiered approach prioritizing each population in that phase, beginning with people 75 and older. Lamont has not said what group will be next in line. State officials estimated they are receiving about 46,000 doses of the vaccine each week to be given out as the initial shot. Two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine are required.

“The Connecticut Department of Public Health has worked diligently with our health care partners across the state to increase access to the vaccine, but I must continue to urge patience at this point in time,” Lamont said. “We know many people are excited to receive the vaccine and the promise of the future that comes with it, but we are limited in our ability to distribute them purely based on the amount we receive from the federal government. We are hopeful we will see increased allocations in the coming weeks and months.”

Check back for updates.

Not just environmental problem; Killingly plant is a great target

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 09:58:37 GMT

In 1990, I was one of five legislators to introduce the first climate change legislation that became PA 90-219, An Act Considering Climate Change, the most popular bill of that session.

Back then I considered climate change a national security issue… and I still do. Much of this centers upon the need to decentralize the power grid. Decentralization entails using many smaller power plants located close to the points of end use rather than using large plants requiring extensive transmission facilities. The latter also creates more energy losses as well as making us more vulnerable. So, as we prepare as best we can for climate change mitigation and adaptation, decentralization of the electric grid is a must

It is the huge degree of centralization that is one major reason I oppose the construction of the Killingly plant. I also oppose it on environmental grounds since it also adds huge amounts of use of natural gas leading to more CO2, not less. These topics, which DEEP, PURA and the governor’s own advisors seem to have discounted, are near and dear to me. Having had a military background, I look at climate change issues through an energy security lens and the Killingly plant does not pass the muster for multiple reasons. These include but may not be limited to:

1) At 650 MW it further centralizes the electric grid requiring large amounts of vulnerable transmission and distribution

2) The power generated at long distances from the points of end use leading to more outages such as those we have experienced.

3) At that size it makes a great target for either physical and/or cyberattacks.

4) We need to decentralize the grid and this plant is the antithesis of this.

5) Funds that could otherwise go to decentralized renewables are diverted into this project.

I hope DEEP, PURA and the governor will seriously consider these points and the effects of climate change they only claim they are so concerned with. I think the environmental community would be more than pleased to discuss this with DEEP, PURA, and their advisors as well as directly with the governor and offer some well thought out alternatives.

Joel Gordes is an Environmental And Energy Security Consultant from West Hartford.

CTViewpoints welcomes rebuttal or opposing views to this and all its commentaries. Read our guidelines and submit your commentary here.

Last votes of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 09:58:37 GMT

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Vanessa McGee, far left, and her husband Sam McGee take a selfie with their children after voting last November at the Hartford Public Library.

Finally, the election season is over. The historic elections we saw in this cycle were intriguing. The runoff elections for the U.S. Senate in Georgia put a cap on the campaign season. For many people this could be described as a COVID-19 election. I would argue that this was an election influenced by a pandemic but determined by the killing of unarmed Black people with no adequate justice for the Black community. Losing a job and losing a life is not a fair exchange.

Chion Wolf :: Connecticut Public Radio

Gary A. Franks

Remarkably this is only the second time in modern history when the white vote went overwhelming to a presidential candidate that lost the election. The first time that happened was as a response to four years of President Barack Obama. This was done with a degree of frustration, mixed with pride to help a Black man who it was felt was not given a fair opportunity to be as successful as his abilities would warrant. The echoes of a white Republican leader boasting to make Obama a one- term president at the very start of his presidency underscored this perception for many. Blacks had to “have Obama’s back” which was encouraged by the Obama-Biden team that utilized this tactic during their re-election campaign.

The results were astounding on many levels. It was highlighted by a landslide loss of the white vote by 21 points and especially crushed by the vote of white males. Even more astounding was how the Black vote participation eclipsed the white vote participation percentage for the first time in America’s history. More that 1.7 million more Blacks voted in 2012 than even 2008.

Blacks responded loudly and in an unprecedented manner. Obama received 95/97% of the Black vote and together with the statistic on turnout he was able to win a second term as President.

What followed was a rapid increase in the deaths of dozens of unarmed Black men by white police officers which would parallel the resurgent deaths of unarmed Black people by white police officers that we see today. Even prior to the Senate race in Georgia, another unarmed Black man was killed by a white police office, Andre Hall.

Note I said earlier that this was the first time to see this phenomenon in modern history. We saw it post slavery during Reconstruction. It is quoted in Booker T. Washington’s autobiography – ‘Up From Slavery’ – that back then “Blacks would know who to vote for by listening to white people talk in the stores. Whomever the white man was for, they would be against.”

This did not work well for Black Americans, however. The killing of unarmed Black men by white people enforcing their form of law and order and justice resulted in more than 4,000 lynchings alone and nearly no arrests. The acts of terrorism led to a reformation/migration of the Black population from the South.

So, what did we witness this election cycle? Contrary to what the mainstream media was telling us prior to the election, white women supported Donald Trump and white men did so in a landslide. The white vote went overwhelmingly to Trump. Sounds familiar. But this time the reason for the occurrence was not so much due to Black pride, despite Kamala Harris being on the ticket. The reason was the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the many examples of similar incidents with no sign of meaningful constructive change.

The wheels of justice can move slowly, if at all. For 87% of Black Americans, the trust in this vital institution is lacking. And, when you can be shot seven times in the back and there is no indictment, that 87% can only increase.

The record Black vote in 2020 was a direct response. Blacks cannot control or influence the justice system despite the number of Black elected officials. The loss has been extremely painful for the Black community and an embarrassment for the vast majority of the white community. Most Blacks recognize that tactics of the 1960s – protests and riots can be ignored or met with punitive repercussions. Thus, the best immediate way to address this feeling of pain from the loss was to make others lose something they also valued, their political status.

President-Elect Biden and Vice-President-Elect Harris have been given everything they have sought – House, Senate and White House. Let us pray that we can all work together as Americans to fix what is broken.

Gary A. Franks served three terms as U.S. representative for Connecticut’s 5th District. He was the first Black Republican elected to the House in nearly 60 years and New England’s first Black Member of the House.

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The revolution will proceed reclining: the Capitol mob, their past, and the future of democracy

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 09:58:30 GMT

Looking at pictures of Richard “Bigo” Barnett in the U.S. Capitol last week, grinning, his foot resting on a staffer’s desk in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and his arms extended, I recognized a jarringly familiar if initially hard to place tableau. Barnett appeared to be acting, according to Saul Loeb, the Agence France Press photographer who snapped the picture, “just sort of like he owned the place.” Where had I seen this before?

Barnett and I are the same age, 60, and we’re both white men. I’d like to believe that’s where the resemblance ends. I’m not a Trump supporter, Second Amendment enthusiast, or from Arkansas. But we do, also, share generational experience. We both came of age against a backdrop of insouciant rebels resting their feet on the desks of authority figures.

When we were kids, in 1968, I vividly remember what at the time seemed an inexplicable photograph: a Columbia University student smoking a cigar, feet propped on the desk of the school’s president, Grayson Kirk, after taking over Low Library. I ingested a similar image a decade later. It was season 7, episode 1, of the hit television series MASH. Korean War anti-hero Hawkeye Pierce, famously portrayed by Alan Alda, reluctantly assumes temporary command of his unit. Suggesting disdain for authority even while exercising it, Pierce wisecracks and deadpans, feet on Colonel Potter’s desk, until the boss returns. That Columbia undergrad and Captain Pierce both seemed impossibly cool to young me.

Barnett’s pose, a trope from our childhoods, suggests something important about what motivated one of the more unlikely and disturbing mobs in American history. The rioters were, to a surprising degree, graying, white, male, overweight and short-of-breath, hardly figures of radical chic. More died of “medical emergencies” than from violence. Much has been made, rightly so, about the impact on them of social media, right-wing websites, the President’s words, and QAnon. But that still begs the question of what turned so many 50-, 60-, and 70-somethings into insurgents.

Their formative years may provide answers.

People my age grew up in a trough between two eras. Our childhoods and early adolescence are rooted in the 1960s. Television was our portal into the sixties’ violent implosion: the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, protests and police brutality at the 1968 Democratic convention, urban riots driven by black frustration, defeat in Vietnam, and Watergate.

Our early adulthoods were overshadowed by America’s right turn in the late seventies and 1980s: government dysfunction, deindustrialization and “stagflation” in the Carter years, Reagan’s assertion that “government is the problem” and his promise to “make America great again” by unleashing private sector entrepreneurialism.

Too young for the bonding experience of sixties activism, my generation was just embarking on adulthood when the working and middle classes started falling apart. Our teenage years transpired at a moment defined by novelist and social critic Tom Wolfe as “the ‘me’ decade.” We turned inward.

Little wonder that so many of the pop-culture icons of that time were deeply alienated loners: Robert De Niro’s taxi-driving Travis Bickle, Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo, Mel Gibson’s Max the road warrior. These anti-heroes, laconic white males flecked with racism and misogyny, all experienced betrayal by government –which was invariably depicted as corrupt, imbecilic, out-of-touch and the agent of catastrophe. Therefore, they had to live violently, by their own moral codes, blurring lines between justice and vigilantism.

The dominant message, especially potent for young white males whose sense of identity is plastic, was that we were on our own. Neither government nor group action could help us.

Individualism has always been a significant part of the American character, but coming of age when we did made my generation particularly tone deaf to collaborating and prioritizing collective good. It’s doubtful that the “greatest generation” that endorsed the New Deal and fought World War II would have taken umbrage at the idea of wearing a mask during a pandemic. My generation does.

That leaves us ill-suited to the realities of 2021: combatting a global pandemic, fighting climate change, and rescuing democracy. None of these crises will yield to loner posturing.

My generation needs different stories on which to base our behavior. I was lucky to go to college and graduate school to study history. I learned that all the great reforms in the American experience derive from cooperative effort: abolition, women’s suffrage, the rise of labor to middle-class status, triumph in World Wars and over great depressions, scores of civil rights, healthcare, and scientific gains.

My generation remains susceptible to the power of stories. Lounging infamously in Speaker Pelosi’s office, “Bigo” Barnett clutched a cell phone in his right hand. Having grown up watching history unfold on TV, Barnett and his selfie-taking comrades apparently saw themselves as screen-worthy shapers of events. The challenge for the incoming administration, and for politically-inclined artists and activists, is to shift the lens of people like Barnett from themselves to the group, to get their feet off the desk, backsides out of the chair, hands off the phone, to get them working together, building not destroying.

Chris Doyle, PH.D teaches history at Avon Old Farms School in Avon.

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CT’s U.S. Representatives join the vote to impeach President Trump, and the state braces for ...

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 04:31:20 GMT

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi signs the Article of Impeachment on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021.

The vote Wednesday by the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach President Donald J. Trump for inciting a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol came as lawmakers in state capitals like Hartford digested briefings on the threats that may await them.

Connecticut’s five House members, all Democrats, joined in the 232-197 vote to impeach Trump for a second time, a first in U.S. history. Ten Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with 222 Democrats.

The vote came exactly seven days after a pro-Trump mob occupied the Capitol, briefly stopping Congress from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s election, and seven days before Biden is to arrive at the same Capitol to be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.

On the floor, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, urged Republicans to imagine how their votes will be seen in coming years, not in the hothouse of cable news and social media. He suggested they consider their oaths, reflect on their legacies and think about the final judgment of their relationships with Trump.

“Where he goes in history, you go in history,” Himes said. “Unless, today, you make a stand.”

Himes was in the House gallery, seated above and behind the speaker’s rostrum, when the mob overwhelmed Capitol police unprepared for an assault that had been planned in plain sight, on the internet in chat rooms and on social media.

The Article of Impeachment says Trump instigated the assault.

“Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, DC. There, he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.’ He also willfully made statements that, in context encouraged – and foreseeably resulted in – lawless action at the Capitol, such as ‘if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’ ”

Hundreds of National Guard troops nap inside the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center as the House prepares to debate on an article of impeachment against President Trump.⁠
⁠
???? J. Scott Applewhite / AP pic.twitter.com/EnsR9waonj

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 13, 2021

Arriving members of Congress found that armed National Guard troops had slept on floors throughout the Capitol. Sturdier fencing already had been installed.

In Hartford, the governor’s chief of staff, commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, and the adjutant general of the Connecticut National Guard briefed the six top leaders of the General Assembly on preparations to protect the state Capitol and other government buildings.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, and House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, already had decided on one safety measure: A House session scheduled for Jan. 20, the day of the inauguration, would be held on Jan. 14.

Protests by Trump supporters have been promised Sunday at every state Capitol, and the briefers told lawmakers that their belief is Hartford will see demonstrations. Security is being increased at a number of facilities that officials declined to identify.

Earlier, Ritter marveled at the timing of the assault on the U.S. Capitol, just hours after a peaceful demonstration by a variety of protesters at the state Capitol, where the House and Senate convened outdoors to take the oath office, a precaution against COVID-19.

The virus is now a distant concern. Ritter says there will be no more outdoor sessions.

The impeachment debate in Washington went forward, as did smaller matters of state politics and politicians. Republicans tried to assess the sudden resignation of their state chair, J.R. Romano, a steadfast supporter of the president.

More routinely, Democrats elected Nancy DiNardo to another term as their state chair.

Gov. Ned Lamont briefly surrendered his gubernatorial powers to Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz. While the Republican president was being impeached, the Democratic governor underwent hip replacement surgery in Stamford. By nightfall, he was home in Greenwich.

At 4 p.m., the state Department of Public Health posted its daily COVID update: another 3,529 cases, another 87 deaths.

On a very somber day, this picture reminds me of what a great people we can be. https://t.co/6uYXb8cXnI

— Jim Himes (@jahimes) January 13, 2021

Marianne Clark of Avon, a member of the Republican State Central Committee, made calls to help a friend, Thomas Becker, to gauge support for his candidacy for state chair.

Only when asked did she mention the impeachment. She is a supporter of the president, and she is troubled by the effort to remove the president so close to the end of his term.

“Enough is enough,” Clark said.

She said she believes the president won the election, that Biden was the beneficiary of fraud, and that it was Antifa, not Trump supporters, who were responsible for the violence. Clark said she knows the FBI and other law enforcement agencies say that is untrue.

“I don’t believe them,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, perhaps thinking of the Republican distrust about what happened last week, quoted Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the 3rd-ranking House GOP leader and one of the 10 who voted to impeach, in explaining her own vote:

“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said in a statement that the facts are clear.

“There is no question that the president helped to foment and incite an attack on our Capitol and our democracy on January 6^th, and representatives from both sides of the aisle came together today to show that there are consequences for these sorts of actions,” Courtney said.

Rob Simmons, the Republican unseated by Courtney in 2006, no longer has the floor, not in Congress. There are no Republican voices in the Connecticut delegation. In 2006, three of the five were in the GOP.

Simmons still likes to debate, but now it’s only on talk radio. He’ll be on with Lee Elci on WJJF in the morning. On Wednesday night, he offered a preview: He finds the current level of Republican discourse empty, an endless demonizing of Democratic bogeymen.

Good riddance to Romano, whom Simmons says had only two or three talking points: Trump was always right, Democrats were always bad, and any Republican who disagreed was a RINO with no place in a tiny GOP.

“Every time I get a fundraising letter, it’s ‘We’re for Donald Trump, and we’re against the bogeyman,” Simmons said.

But if still a member of Congress, he would have been with the 197 Republicans who voted against impeachment, not the 10.

“It’s a total waste of time,” Simmons said. “It’s a total waste of time. The whole impeachment debate and process was a vindictive effort by Nancy Pelosi and her minions to just take another whack at President Trump. It serves no useful purpose.”

Simmons counts himself among the skeptics about who really committed the assault on the Capitol, even if most those arrested were found to be Trump supporters.

“They were anarchists. They were professional protesters,” Simmons said. “The FBI knows it, and a lot of people down there know it. It was a disgrace.”

Chris Shays, the last Republican from Connecticut to serve in the House, would have voted as did Himes, the Democrat who unseated him in 2008.

Shays said he would have preferred that Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet remove Trump by invoking the 25th Amendment. But once Pence declined, impeachment was the only option.

“This was sedition,” Shays said. “This was an attack on democracy.”

Romano says slow fundraising prompted his resignation

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:24:27 GMT

Kyle Constable :: CTMirror.org

State Republican leaders speak at Donald Trump\’s rally in Fairfield in 2016. J.R. Romano is second from right.

The struggle to raise money for the Connecticut Republican Party as a lame-duck state party chairman in a volatile political environment helped push J.R. Romano to resign five months before the end of his term in June, Romano said Wednesday.

“It’s probably a more challenging environment than I have had to deal with over the last few years,” Romano said. “It’s also one of the reasons why I think it’s important for the party to have a new voice and new face.”

Romano has been the voice and face of the Republican Party for five 1/2 years, taking over in June 2015, a year before Donald J. Trump emerged as the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee.

He has been a consistent supporter of the president, while declining to join Trump in denying the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory — a claim blamed for last week’s attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, and another obstacle to fundraising.

“I think there are major donors who did not support the president, and we had major donors who stepped up because of him,” Romano said. “It’s been kind of mixed.”

The timing of his resignation, delivered Tuesday night by email, inevitably links it with the House vote Wednesday to impeach Trump for a second time, a first in U.S. history.

Trump’s refusal to accept Biden’s victory has driven major donors away from the GOP, with corporate PACs and others swearing off support of any member of congress who voted to reject the certification of the vote.

But contributions had already begun to fall off last year. The state GOP, in its federal account that provides most funding for the party, raised only $57,000 after Labor Day. Over the two-year cycle, the party raised $1 million.

Romano said COVID also hurt party finances by forcing the cancellation of fundraising dinners and cocktail parties.

In the most recent state and federal filings, the GOP had $64,187 in its federal account as of Nov. 23 and $28,183 in its state account as of Dec. 31.

Liz Kurantowicz, a political consultant and former executive director of the Connecticut Republican Party, said fundraising always has been difficult when a party has no statewide elected officials or members of Congress, the natural rainmakers for a party.

The party has to decide if its role is simply to provide a structure for nominating candidates, or if it is an organization capable of raising sufficient funds to provide services to candidates and town committees.

“There is a lot of work to be done, and I hope that the state central committee members will find the right person to do the work. We’re not short on ideas,” said Kurantowicz, who is not a candidate for the job. “This is not just the chairman’s job.”

At least four Republicans were considering seeking the post, which will be filled in February by the Republican State Central Committee: Ben Proto of Stratford, an elections lawyer and political operative; George Logan of Ansonia, a former state senator; Chris Lancia, who managed a congressional campaign last year; and Thomas Becker, an Avon lawyer.

Marianne Clark, one of the four state central committee members who voted against Romano’s re-election in June 2019, said, “I think people have some buyer’s remorse over the way he exited.”

Lamont does a Zoom speech, then gets a new hip

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 23:52:00 GMT

Jacqueline Rabe Thomas :: CtMirror.org

Gov. Ned Lamont and his wife, Annie, walk into the State Capitol on the opening day of the session last week.

Gov. Ned Lamont delivered the keynote speech at a virtual conference of municipal officials Wednesday, then he cheerily signed off: “Take care everybody. Appreciate the chance to be with you. I gotta go get a new hip.”

Then he did.

After addressing the Council of Small Towns from his office at the state Capitol in Hartford, he was driven to the Stamford affiliate of the Hospital for Special Surgery for a scheduled hip replacement he’d been considering since before taking office in January 2019.

Lamont, who turned 67 this month, was recovering at his home in Greenwich by nightfall.

“He is feeling well and will undergo physical therapy to aid in his recuperation,” said Max Reiss, his communications director. “Governor Lamont’s medical team says he is on track for a speedy recovery. The administration will provide updates on his progress as they become available.”

Total hip replacements are performed 450,000 times a year in U.S. hospitals, and there are currently about 7 million Americans living with prosthetic hips.

CT House moves up session out of ‘abundance of caution’

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 22:35:11 GMT

Yehyun Kim :: CTMIRROR.ORG

Mixed groups of protesters outside the State Capitol on opening day last week

The mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last week and concerns about potential unrest next week prompted Connecticut House leaders Wednesday to abruptly move up to Thursday a session necessary to act on expiring judicial appointments.

The move is prompted by “an abundance of caution” and not specific threats of disruption next week in Hartford, the House leaders said. The state lawmakers had been expected to meet next Wednesday, Jan. 20, the same day as the inauguration of Joe Biden in Washington.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, and House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, agreed to suspend the rules concerning advance notice and act quickly on the nominations of 13 jurists.

“We have a responsibility for the safety of legislators, staff, Capitol Police and the general public – and we take that responsibility seriously,” the leaders said in a joint statement. “Given the current uncertainty and unpredictability, we want to act on the judicial nominations that are before us as soon as possible.”

Judges are appointed to eight year terms, subject to re-nomination and legislative confirmation. With the end of the judicial terms rapidly approaching, a delay next week could have forced them, at least temporarily, from the bench, Ritter said.

Supreme Court Justice Andrew J. McDonald is the most prominent of the jurists up for reappointment. The confirmations of four Superior Court judges and senior judges and eight trial referees also are on the House agenda.

“The speaker and I discussed it late last night and made the final decision this morning at 6 a.m.,” Candelora said.

There is concern about protests and disruption in state capitals across the country as the inauguration approaches.

“So, we’re just trying to get our work done sooner,” Candelora said.

The General Assembly opened its 2021 session last Wednesday morning, hours before a mob supporting President Donald J. Trump breached the U.S. Capitol and briefly stopped the certification of Biden’s victory.

On that day, the biggest threat to state lawmakers was deemed to be COVID-19. The state House and Senate convened outside the Capitol to take the oath of office and elect Ritter as the new speaker by acclamation.

“We would not have been able to do that on Wednesday had that incident at the U.S. Capitol occurred prior to that,” Ritter said.

The legislature’s top six leaders and a representative of the Office of Legislative Management were briefed on security issues Wednesday by: Paul Mounds, the governor’s chief of staff; James Rovella, the commissioner of emergency services and public protection; Francis J. Evon Jr., the adjutant general of the National Guard; and Luiz Casanova, chief of the Capitol Police.

The State Capitol remains closed to the public due to COVID. Legislative committees are working virtually, their meetings and hearings carried live through links of the legislature’s web page and on the public affairs network, CT-N.

But lawmakers must be at the Capitol or in their offices at the Legislative Office Building to cast floor votes on legislation and nominations. Access to the chambers is limited to lawmakers who are lined up to debate.