Yehyun Kim :: CT Mirror

Joe DeLong of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, shown here in July 2020, said “It’s a lot to ask a municipality to give a property tax break … when that is primarily their only source of revenue.”

After Gov. Ned Lamont ordered municipalities to waive penalties and ease taxpayer deadlines last year during the worst of the pandemic, legislators gave communities the option to continue some breaks this year.

But after decades of being forced to rely on property tax receipts for their fiscal survival, cities and towns aren’t warming to the idea of forfeiting any revenue they’re not forced to give up.

“We wanted to avoid that kind of situation,” said Betsy Gara, executive director of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns, which represents 110 communities with populations below 30,000. “Anything that undermines the ability to collect those property taxes is going to be a problem.”

“All of this goes into [Connecticut’s] absurd over-reliance on property taxes,” said Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, the chief lobbying group for all 169 cities and towns in the state. “It’s a lot to ask a municipality to give a property tax break, or some type of incentive, when that is primarily their only source of revenue.”

The property tax is by far the largest tax or fee levied by municipalities.

CCM estimates that municipalities collect about $20 billion per year in property taxes, roughly double what the Connecticut income tax — the state’s single-largest revenue engine by a wide margin — generates annually.

But unlike the income tax, the property tax is regressive, meaning owners are charged the same rate, regardless of their earnings or wealth.

Many tax reform advocates long have argued Connecticut’s system traps many low-income households in poverty, while hefty property tax rates are a deterrent to business growth and economic development in general in urban centers.

Lamont took steps last spring — when the coronavirus had closed many businesses and left as many as 292,000 filers receiving weekly unemployment benefits — to ease state and local tax burdens.

The governor pushed the state income tax filing deadline back from mid-April to July 15.

And he ordered municipalities to offer at least one of two forms of relief to property taxpayers: either add 90 days to the deadline for paying July 2020 property tax bills or reduce the penalty for delinquent payments from 18% to 3%. All communities complied, and some offered both forms of relief.

This year the General Assembly passed, and Lamont signed into law, a bill that empowered local legislative bodies to offer the same two options for offering relief in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 fiscal years — but didn’t mandate anything.

Both DeLong and Gara said they weren’t aware of any municipalities that are participating. And neither CCM, COST nor Lamont’s budget office is tracking participation — another sign that the program isn’t being embraced.

The legislature’s Planning and Development Committee raised the optional relief measure and Rep. Cristin McCarthy-Vahey, who co-chairs the panel, said the lack of participation isn’t too surprising. 

“Sometimes, with things like this, it can be a hard option to choose,” she said, noting that economic uncertainty has many municipal and state officials concerned.

Even though Connecticut’s economy has regained more than half of the jobs lost in the early months of the pandemic, the Department of Labor says 120,000 filers still are receiving weekly benefits.

And temporary federal relief for the jobless, which boosted typical unemployment benefits in Connecticut from $300 to $600 per week, expired on Sept. 4.

Municipalities received more than $1.5 billion in direct federal aid  through the American Rescue Plan Act to help with this fiscal year and next. 

And  state legislators expanded municipal aid in the new biennial budget they and Lamont approved in June. That plan boosts a major non-education grant program by about $240 million over this fiscal year and next, combined, while increasing education grants by an average of about $70 million per year.

But municipal officials say that aid, while appreciated, was not enough to reverse a trend that has gone on for a decades, a pattern of increasing burdens on cities and towns as long-ignored pension debt has begun to consume more and more of the state’s operating budget.

DeLong said many communities are using the additional federal and state aid simply to close deficits in their local budgets, avoid property tax hikes, and to reverse previous cuts to core services.

Municipal leaders said the pandemic took a heavy toll on cities and towns.

CCM projected back in June 2020 that during the first three months of the coronavirus, municipalities were down about $400 million in tax revenue tied either to delinquent or deferred payments. And though much of those funds eventually was received, the early months of the pandemic also added about $63 million in emergency costs to towns.

As a student success manager for the RISE Network, I have had a front-row seat to the resilience and creativity school communities have shown over the past 18-months. The efforts made by educators during the pandemic to not only reach students but also partner with their families have been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

Karleka Norman

Research shows Grade 9 on-track status — whether a student earns enough credits their first year of high school to promote on time to the next grade level — is the best predictor of whether a student will graduate from high school within four years. Overcoming tremendous obstacles, educators I partner with found many students achieving beyond target on-track rates by the end of the school year. How they did that is a remarkable achievement we will be learning from for years.

At the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, students and educators resumed teaching and learning in an uncertain world. Many of them found remarkable ways to be successful despite the challenges posed by the pandemic. The recently published RISE Network ‘Plugged In: Challenge Normal’ report highlights several of these success stories of education during COVID-19.

My job is to lead a team of On-Track Coordinators in high schools in Hartford, Stamford, and Norwalk while supporting a larger network of On-Track Coordinators across six additional schools in five other districts across the state. Each of these On-Track Coordinators work with a group of 60 Grade 9 students who are most at risk to provide targeted mentoring and coaching to help them stay on track as they navigate the transition into high school. By embracing new practices in collaboration with students, families, and other educators, On-track Coordinators in the schools where I work found that in some schools up to 98 percent of the students they support were on track at the end of the school year.

As information about the impact of COVID-19 on education outcomes over the past year continues to come in, it is important that we understand where students are at for the upcoming school year this Fall.

This fall, as uncertainty still surrounds us, we want to hit the ground running. We’ve always known students have unique strengths and needs. What the pandemic has taught us is that these differences should be a starting place for supporting all students to succeed.

Here are a few things that stood out to me as being crucial to student success this past year and will play a critical role going forward:

• Equitable Grading: Grading in an equitable manner has proven to accelerate students’ learning. Equitable grading means taking all factors contributing to a student’s learning when deciding on their level of achievement. We have learned that traditional grading can often be more reflective of how a teacher grades than what a student learned. In the past year, by using equitable grading practices like offering students multiple ways to show they have learned a skill or rethinking how different aspects of a student’s performance (e.g. attendance, homework, assessments) are weighted, a larger percentage of students stayed on track or were able to get back on track by the end of the school year.

• Family Engagement: I always knew parents and families were an important part of the process. We learned this past year how to better work alongside them to the benefit of their child, the student. We often found that developing the relationship with the parent or other caretaker first was important. ‘How do you best like to be contacted? What is your schedule like?’ are critical questions to get established from day one. We need to develop those relationships from the start and continue to invest in them throughout the school year through regular communication and resources to help keep them involved.

• Student Outreach: Through initiatives during the 2020-2021 school year, such as porch visits in Middletown, Saturday Sessions in Stamford, and Spring Break sessions throughout the state, RISE found that taking unique approaches to engaging students paid off. Porch visits were used to reengage students whose attendance was slipping. The Saturday Sessions brought remote students into the classroom on the weekend for in-person learning and resulted in a clear improvement. Spring Break Sessions provided a similar opportunity for remote and in-person students, giving students a chance to catch up to in-person students by coming in for additional support during their vacation.

• New Technologies: One of the most exciting developments of what was a difficult year was the embrace of new technology to assist in the job of teaching. In many of our schools, we used TalkingPoints, a two-way multilingual family engagement platform that helps teachers and families to stay connected via text message. This app makes it so that important messages do not get literally lost in translation. We also used new technology to schedule college visits and time with school counselors.

Many of our On-Track Coordinators ended the 2021 school year with more students they work with on-track than the previous year. It is remarkable to think of what students, parents, and educators accomplished by pivoting and facing the new normal.

As we welcome students back to school post-pandemic we must take the lessons of the past year with us.  While these programs may just seem like good practice, we understand there are a number of barriers and potential obstacles that require dedication and creativity to overcome.

The next several months will present new challenges, but we bring to them new experiences, new tools, and a new outlook.

Karleka Norman is a Student Success Manager for the Connecticut RISE Network.

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Bruce Fein, constitutional law specialist who has testified before Congress approximately 200 times, calls Congress “an inkblot.” Let’s see if he is exaggerating.

Ralph Nader

1. Congress has abdicated its duties and constitutional authorities to the president regardless of party affiliation. Presidents start wars, spend unauthorized money recklessly, defy congressional subpoenas, snoop unlawfully on their citizens, and lazily enforce the laws against corporate outlaws flouting the status of an indifferent Congress.

2. Since 1992, Congress has let the Pentagon violate a federal law requiring all federal departments to provide auditable data for its annual budget. By far the DOD has the largest operational budget in Washington and it is ridden with waste and is unauditable, thanks to a weak-willed Congress.

3. To evade its responsibility under the Constitution’s Declare War Clause, Congress resorts to Overseas Contingency Operations, a slush fund for the Pentagon to fight undeclared wars with tens of billions of dollars in discretionary funds. This is abdication big time!

4. Congress doesn’t conduct hearings or broadly investigate “forever” White House wars to determine changes in policies or to stop such wars as it finally did with the Vietnam War. Then, Congress simply cut off the money.

5. Congress is less accessible to citizens’ calls, letters, and emails on policy matters than ever. Yet many members of Congress and Hill staffers become closer to corporate lobbyists who write drafts of legislation before taking members for a wine and dine with campaign cash flowing before and after.

6. Congress starves the IRS budget leaving one trillion dollars a year in uncollected taxes according to IRS chief Charles Rettig. If collected, this money could be used to rebuild our infrastructure needs. The super-rich and giant corporate CEOs laugh all the way to the bank. Tax escapees are feeding at the trough like never before, as Congress aids and abets tax evasion.

7. Members of Congress have allowed, subsidized, and personally benefited from ravaging energy, healthcare, and financial industries. Trillions are wasted annually, with large preventable losses of life and property.

8. Congress has frozen the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour, allowed corporations to loot worker pensions, and perpetuated the most anti-labor laws in the western world (e.g., the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947).

9. Congress, repeatedly informed and warned for decades, allows the climate crisis and disruptions to get worse yearly. They’ve long known the future has to be an energy efficient and solarized society. Yet Capitol Hill remains stubbornly fossilized.

10. Perhaps the worst abdication is Congress actively enabling the vast expansion of corporate power over the constitutional sovereignty of the people. Unprecedented immunities and unaccountable harms pose the gravest peril to our posterity. No public hearings, no update of the feeble federal corporate crime laws, and restraining the few federal cops on the corporate crime beat means Congress is overwhelmingly soft on corporate crime.

11. Smug and operating in mostly safe-district silos, members of Congress will not reform our First Branch of government. The debilitating Newt Gingrich changes in 1995 cut committee staff, abolished the critical Office of Technology Assessment, and concentrated power in the hands of the four House and Senate leaders with paralytic effects that were maintained when the Democrats took over and remain in effect to this day.

We used to count on open-minded House and Senate committee chairs to conduct hearings and lay the basis for the enactment of environmental, labor, and consumer laws as well as Freedom of Information and whistleblower rights. No more, committee chairs now have to get permission from the top congressional leaders. The invisible costs to the public need exposure by a large Congressional press corps too occupied with official source journalism.

12. No political institution has gamed public trust into public apathy more skillfully. There are 535 senators and representatives whose names are known. They embody the most powerful legislature in the world and can remedy, diminish, or prevent scores of injustices by lawmaking and oversight of the executive and judicial branches. Yet Congress has so lowered the public’s expectations, by fueling cynicism and always blaming others, that people do not realize how easy it can be to turn Congress around and improve our society. Less than one percent of voters, backed by public opinion can organize such decisive power for change. (See, Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think).

People can start with protecting voting rights by organizing small Congress Watchdog groups (call it a hobby) and demand Congress work more than three days a week between long recesses and midweek fundraising.

Of course, I’m referring to Congress collectively. There are some good legislators who are honest and knowledgeable, but they are nowhere near as assertive and networked as they need to be, given the super-serious urgencies of our country and the tormented world around it.

Without adding to this list, it is permissible to charge Attorney Bruce Fein with exaggeration. Congress is less than an inkblot. It’s a streaming vacuum of usurpation that ignores our nation’s basic necessities and jeopardizes our future generations.

Ralph Nader of Winsted is a consumer advocate and former candidate for president of the United States.

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Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Amberlyn Nicastro, left, and Yee Ting Chan work at the mobile walk-in vaccination site in Manchester.

Connecticut’s COVID-19 landscape has changed rapidly in recent weeks. Gov. Ned Lamont said Tuesday that he expects to extend his COVID-19 emergency declaration for at least 90 days to maintain key mandates, including a statewide requirement for wearing masks in schools and for educators and health care workers to be immunized.

President Joseph Biden last week announced a vaccine mandate for all companies with more than 100 workers. Employees who do not get a shot will face weekly testing.

Biden has also ordered that all health care workers, federal contractors and a majority of federal staff be vaccinated. Employees who refuse could face disciplinary action.

And executives from Pfizer recently said the company this fall will seek approval for use of their vaccine in children ages 6 months to 11 years old.

Here’s what you need to know.

Mask mandates

Students and staff in K-12 schools are currently required to wear masks.

While there is no statewide mask mandate, Lamont has left it up to cities and towns whether to impose that requirement for indoor settings.

Twenty-five towns have imposed some form of mask mandate so far, according to The Hartford Courant.

Lamont’s executive orders covering schools and towns are set to expire on Sept. 30. He is seeking an extension of his emergency powers for at least 90 days, though his staff said the powers could be extended as many as 120 days, covering the period until the General Assembly convenes in February. That would allow mask mandates and other requirements to extend beyond the end of the month.

State vaccine requirements

Lamont has ordered all state workers, including educators in K-12 schools and day care employees, to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sept. 27. For those who opt out, weekly testing is required.

The governor has also mandated that employees of nursing homes, assisted living centers, residential care homes, chronic disease hospitals, intermediate care facilities and managed residential communities be immunized against the coronavirus by Sept. 27. Home care workers are not currently included in the edict. And while medical and religious exemptions are available, there is no opt-out choice to instead get weekly testing.

An extension of Lamont’s emergency powers would keep the vaccine mandates in place beyond Sept. 30.

In late June, Connecticut’s 27 acute care hospitals agreed they would all impose vaccine requirements for their staff, including contractors who work with the hospitals. Many have set their deadlines for the last week of September.

Federal vaccine mandates

Biden announced last week that he would order all businesses with 100 or more workers to impose vaccine requirements or weekly testing. The rule would affect about 80 million employees, the New York Times reported. Employers must offer paid time off for staff to get the shot.

In an expansion of an earlier push to vaccinate the federal work force, Biden signed an executive order requiring all executive branch employees and federal contractors to be vaccinated, with no exception to test out of the mandate, the Times reported.

The president has also pledged to require COVID-19 shots for nursing home and home care workers. The mandate is a condition for those companies continuing to receive Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Most federal workers must be vaccinated by Nov. 22. Biden has not yet set a deadline for nursing home and home care employees.

Vaccines for children

 The start of the school year has turned a spotlight back on the status of vaccines for young children. Currently, only children 12 and older qualify to receive a COVID-19 immunization.

Pfizer has said it plans to seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in early October to use its vaccine in children ages 5 to 11. On Tuesday, the company’s chief financial officer said it would apply for authorization in November to expand the shot to kids aged 6 months to 5 years, Politico reported.

The news comes as the highly contagious delta variant continues to spread, causing an increase in hospitalizations across the U.S., including among children ineligible for the vaccine. During the week that ended Aug. 22, new hospital admissions for children reached their highest levels since the U.S. started tracking pediatric cases a year ago, peaking at an average of 303 new admissions per day, CNBC reported, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA gave full approval to the Pfizer vaccine in August. It is the first coronavirus shot to get full authorization.

Booster shots

The FDA last month signed off on third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for people with compromised immune systems. That includes residents who have received solid organ transplants or are taking medication to suppress the immune system, those who are receiving active cancer treatment for tumors or cancers of the blood, those who have had a stem cell transplant within the past two years, and those taking high-dose steroids, among other conditions.

As of Sept. 13, the most recent data released by the state Department of Public Health, 19,490 Connecticut residents had received a third dose.

Nationally, 1,859,878 third doses have been administered, according to the CDC.

CT Mirror Reporter Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this story.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Darryl Thames, the chairman of the Manchester Board of Education, getting vaccinated in March against COVID-19. Under Lamont’s orders, teachers must follow suit or get tested weekly.

Like Connecticut, Massachusetts mandates that masks be worn by students and staff in schools and that educators, state employees and certain health care workers be vaccinated to stem the spread of COVID-19. 

But the mask requirement in the Bay State was ordered by the education commissioner and the latest vaccination mandate came from the public health commissioner and Massachusetts Public Health Council, not the governor.

As the General Assembly prepares to return in special session to vote on a resolution extending Connecticut’s state of emergency until February, the Massachusetts experience is prompting political and legal questions.

Republicans (and some Democrats) are asking why Gov. Ned Lamont needs the extraordinary emergency powers afforded him to do what the administrations of Gov. Charlie Baker and others have done without them?

And Democrats want to know if the Republican opposition to extending the emergency is about what Lamont theoretically could do, not what he actually has done or is likely to do? 

Those questions are likely to be the heart of the debate when the General Assembly returns before the current state of emergency — one initially declared on March 10, 2020 and periodically renewed — expires on Sept. 30.

House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, said the Massachusetts approach to the pandemic may offer lessons for Connecticut.

“Massachusetts has a model we could have a conversation about,” Candelora said. “I can’t say all Republicans would support it.”

Baker made national news in June when he issued an order relinquishing his powers under the state of emergency declared on March 10, 2020 — the same day Lamont declared the emergency in Connecticut.

“Effective at 12:01 a.m. on June 15, 2021, the declaration that I issued on March 10, 2020 pursuant to the Civil Defense Act and Section 2A of Chapter 17 of the General Laws is rescinded and the state of emergency initiated by that declaration is terminated.”

Overlooked in those stories was the fact that Baker had declared a different state of emergency little more than two weeks earlier — and it remains in force.

That declaration delegates to the commissioner of public health, with the approval of the Public Health Council, the authority to mandate measures related to COVID-19 testing and vaccination and to “respond as necessary to outbreaks of the virus as they may arise.”

The 14-member Public Health Council is composed of 12 appointees of Baker and is chaired by his commissioner of public health.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said the Massachusetts law still does what Republicans say they find objectionable: It delegates legislative authority — the ability to enact significant health mandates — to the executive branch in an emergency.

 “If you don’t delegate it to the governor, you’d be delegating it to who? To the commissioner of public health? Is that better, an unelected official?” Ritter said.

Ritter said he could better understand a debate about the executive orders issued by Lamont, such as the requirements for vaccinations (with a testing opt out) or the wearing of masks in schools, rather than an abstract one about what Lamont theoretically could do.

Candelora said the issue might be abstract, but not unimportant.

“A broad declaration of power in perpetuity is what it has become,” Candelora said of the emergency.

Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said that is disingenuous, given that Candelora and Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, have not identified specific executive orders as an abuse of power.

“The perception is that somehow the governor is engaging in a power grab and the Democrats in the legislature have been quiescent,” Looney said. “It is a false narrative, but it’s all they have.”

Ritter said the most extraordinary orders — closing bars and limiting the operation of restaurants and other public venues — were loosened once Connecticut’s initial surge of cases passed. With the availability of vaccines, Ritter said similar closure orders would be rejected by the legislature.

“As much as I agree the governor needs an extension when it relates to things like vaccine requirements for people who work at a nursing home, if the governor tomorrow said we’re shutting down restaurants or gyms or barber shops again, I wouldn’t support that,” Ritter said. “I have told the governor that.”

The General Assembly passed 235 bills in the annual session that ended in June, including a bipartisan budget. Looney said Connecticut has not been dictated by one man.

When the General Assembly voted during a special session in July for the current extension of the emergency powers, it also enacted a measure of legislative oversight: Any executive order could be vetoed by a majority vote of the six top leaders of the General Assembly.

The so-called Gang of Six is composed of four Democrats — the Senate president pro tem, House Speaker and the Senate and House majority leaders — and two Republicans, the Senate and House minority leaders.

Looney and Ritter said they promised Candelora and Kelly a vote on any executive order they wish to oppose.

“You don’t like a mask mandate in schools? All you’ve got to do is let somebody know in a timely basis and we’ll call the meeting,” Ritter said.

Candelora said he would like to see the legislature hold public hearings on the governor’s executive orders.

Looney acknowledged that some Senate Democrats asked in a recent caucus why some other states are getting by without a state of emergency. The answer, he said, is that comparing the executive powers of different states is complex, often a matter of “apples to oranges.”

Some states, such as New Jersey, have done what Connecticut has not: Passed laws granting specific new powers to the governor to manage the pandemic. In Connecticut, legislators codified in law executive orders pertaining to the ability of restaurants to sell take-out mixed drinks and to offer outdoor dining.

Paul Mounds, the governor’s chief of staff, said the governor has been careful in exercising his authority and will continue that practice.

“The administration is working under the construct of the law, which provides us the ability to put forth measures to keep the people of Connecticut safe in an emergency,” Mounds said.

When the governor calls the legislature back into special session, he will submit the list of 10 executive orders he wishes to keep in the place, Mounds said. The special session will be held on Sept. 27, 28 or 29.

Buildings and real estate provide countless opportunities for sustainable choices that positively impact the bottom line, safety, and energy resilience.

As we have seen recently with the increasingly intense storms of Ida, Henri, and others, we are forced to make the hard decisions of planning towards the future to protect our communities.

Irving Steel

There exist readily available technological innovations and solutions that could help provide for more efficient buildings and more energy resilience. Some of these solutions might take public and private partners in order for them to be achieved.

One existing solution is to create micro-grids of solar panels combined with a battery backup system. Utilizing a source of direct current (DC) power, buildings are able to save on average over 10 percent of their energy costs. Solar panels collect naturally readily available energy from the sun in the form of DC and can transmit that power to a house or building in order to use right away, given that the appliances and other items are also DC appliances. If they aren’t, conversion by an inverter must be made whereby energy is reduced and lost in the process. This loss, according to the Department of Energy (DOE) in the United States, says that over ten percent of energy could be lost. Is there a better way?

Definitely.

Adding a backup power and battery solution combined with an increasing number of DC appliances allows for a more viable solution.

Batteries, particularly those that are made from lithium, are able to store large amounts of energy that could be used in times of need. A recent video (please don’t pay attention to the brand of the battery!) of a family with a rather large house in Arizona demonstrated the flexibility of the solution: the family turned off their power supply from the grid for the entire weekend and only utilized their solar panels and two batteries in their garage as backup / stored energy. The family was able to use all of their appliances, ovens, TVs, and other things throughout the weekend.

Of course we must consider that Arizona has a stronger sun concentration than many other places in America or in the world, however the solution demonstrated the ability to have less reliance on the larger grid system where tremendous amounts of energy are lost, and more flexibility in terms of providing their own energy to their dwelling.

Batteries stored in the garage or basement are able to store a range of amounts of energy: anything from 10kWH to 20 or more. The batteries are able to be charged through the solar panels or from the typical power supply. There are options whereby the batteries could be leased for a small monthly payment — and insurance policy against potential storms and power outages. Imagine a week or two without energy? Now imagine, paying a small amount (or nothing at all if with solar potentially) to ensure you have energy regardless of storms or extreme weather conditions.

As we are seeing with the storms in Louisiana and Texas, these sorts of solutions would allow people to have some sort of power when the grid is completely knocked out.

Irving Steel lives in East Lyme.

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Photo courtesy of WNPR

Cybulski Correctional Institution in Enfield.

Unions representing prison workers warn that state facilities don’t have adequate staff and that the Department of Correction system as a whole is short about 400 officers.

Add in upcoming retirements and the department could face a staffing disaster, say members of Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. They expect staffing shortages to get a lot worse in the next year as another 400 staff become eligible for retirement.

“We’re currently facing a mass exodus by way of retirements among the multitude of other staffing issues, such as extended leaves due to staff assaults and personal or family illness as well as resignations due to safety concerns,” said Amanda Tower, an officer at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield and union steward for AFSCME Local 391.

Brian Larson, an officer at the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire, said extended workdays aren’t uncommon.

“Right now no one is going to work for eight hours,” said Larson, who sits on the executive board of AFSCME Local 387. “There is an abundance of mandated overtime due to exhaustion due from COVID outbreaks and staff shortages. We operate on rolling 16-hour shifts, during which we arrive at our designated time, work our shift and get drafted for another eight hours.”

Overtime pay records tell a similar story. The department has paid the most overtime of all state agencies for the last five years, according to data from the Office of Fiscal Analysis. Overtime spending in the past year was the highest, with a 16% increase compared to the year before.

DOC Commissioner Angel Quiros said “maintaining safe staffing levels has always been and will continue to be a priority of this administration.” He added that the staffing status is not unusual. On top of the pandemic, the department is also dealing with shortages resulting from workers’ compensation and military leaves.

Quiros said the department expects to have about 200 more new officers by the end of the year.

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Stamford Mayor David Martin concedes to Caroline Simmons.

Stamford Mayor David Martin lost a Democratic primary Tuesday to state Rep. Caroline Simmons, setting up a contest in November between Simmons and former baseball manager Bobby Valentine.

In Hamden, Lauren Garrett easily defeated Mayor Curtis Leng in her second run for the office. Like Simmons in Stamford, Garrett had won the endorsement of the local Democratic committee. 

The other Democratic chief elected officials facing primaries were: Julia Pemberton, the first selectman of Redding, and Nancy R. Rossi, the mayor of West Haven. Both were victorious.

According to unofficial results, Pemberton won with nearly 74% of the vote, defeating the Democratic town chair, Mike D’Agostino. Rossi won with nearly 58%, defeating John Lewis.

First Selectman Barbara K. Perkinson of Woodbury was the only Republican chief elected official in a primary. She defeated Lisa Amatruda, 52.6% to 47.4%.

The Stamford mayoral primary was the marquee contest among the 15 Democratic and five Republican municipal primaries Tuesday. There also was a Democratic contest for probate judge in the New Britain-Berlin district.

Simmons, 35, who was elected to the state House in 2014, ran strong across the city, according to unofficial results that showed her with 63% of the vote. Martin, 68, was unable to capitalize on his city’s economic and population growth.

He conceded less than an hour after the polls closed, pledging his support for Simmons and dismissing Valentine as someone who should not be running the city, “despite all his celebrity status.”

The 2020 Census showed Stamford to be Connecticut’s second-largest and fastest-growing city.

Leng declined to say if he would support Garrett, according to the New Haven Independent. Garrett won with 56% of the vote in a three-way fight with Leng and Peter Cyr.

In New Britain, state Rep. Bobby Sanchez easily won the Democratic mayoral nomination, defeating Alicia Hernandez Strong for the right to oppose Republican Mayor Erin Stewart in November.

In a Democratic primary for a probate court vacancy, William C. Rivera of New Britain defeated Robert A. Scalise Jr., 51.3% to 48.7%.

Republicans in Burlington chose Douglas K. Thompson over the town committee-endorsed candidate, Dwight C. Harris. Thompson won 64% of the vote.

By more than a 2-1 margin, a conservative slate endorsed by the town committee defeated incumbent Board of Education members in a Republican primary in Guilford.

In Bloomfield, Democrats appeared to split their ballots, nominating three endorsed candidates and three challengers for council. The winners included Suzette DeBeatham-Brown, who has the title of mayor, but was not endorsed by the town committee.

After facing a global pandemic, our road to full economic recovery may be a long one.  But we’re beginning to take important, initial steps.

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) began the process of restarting our national economic engine, including offering significant emergency relief to small businesses.  One of the key aspects of the ARP was the acknowledgement that our child care infrastructure is fundamentally made up of thousands of small businesses across the country, and the services of child care providers are crucially important for our entire economy.

Business leaders have come to understand these truths more clearly in recent years.  A 2019 research report from the national business-leader group ReadyNation showed that a lack of access to affordable, high-quality child care for infants and toddlers alone dealt staggering damage to our economy.  Thanks to those child care challenges, our economy loses a shocking $57 billion per year through lost productivity, revenue and earnings.  Connecticut’s share of that economic hit is an estimated $765 million per year.

Again, that’s the economic damage due to a lack of child care just for infants and toddlers, and those figures are pre-COVID.  The problem has certainly gotten worse.

A new ReadyNation report shows how that’s happened.  The report, “Female Labor Force Participation Is Key to Our Economic Recovery,” reveals that female labor force participation, which is a critical factor in our gross domestic product (GDP), fell to its lowest rate since 1988 in the wake of the pandemic.

The child care crisis unmistakably connects to this drop in labor force participation.  The child care sector shrank by about 167,000 jobs nationwide during the pandemic, which amounts to an alarming one-in-six workers overall.  This reduction in an already-scarce supply, coupled with the other impacts of COVID, forced many parents to make a hard choice.  Often, those parents (usually mothers) elected to focus on child care needs at home, causing them to leave the workforce themselves.

That drain on the workforce not only has a direct link to child care, but also reflects an essential truth that many business leaders have come to understand: in order to have the most focused, productive workforce possible, employees need to rest easy in the knowledge that their children are cared-for and safe during work hours.

Yet, child care doesn’t just impact the present-day workforce.  A high-quality, nurturing environment for young children helps them build essential behavioral and cognitive skills that can lead to better academic and life outcomes as they grow, setting the stage for future success in the workplace.

We’re grappling with these issues at a time when our nation is having a larger conversation about significant public investments in early childhood programs.  The business community is as prepared as it ever has been to work to find solutions to its employees’ child care challenges.

The recent ReadyNation report reflects this truth.  The report included a survey of over 400 senior executives, with more than three-quarters saying that federal or state government incentives would boost the chances that their businesses would enhance child care support for their company’s workers.

The straightforward takeaway is that, while business leaders recognize that they have to do their part to help employees access high-quality child care, this isn’t a crisis that can be solved by the private sector alone.  Overcoming the child care crisis will take collaboration by employers and parents, coupled with essential investments and reforms from state and federal policymakers.

The ARP was a good start, but the challenges of the child care crisis will require sustained investments and a genuine commitment to systemic change.  To begin to make that commitment, lawmakers should provide incentives to connect employers with child care providers, and encourage established business owners to assist child care businesses in opening or expanding operations (particularly in areas with limited child care options), update the employer child care tax credit, and modernize employer-sponsored flexible spending accounts.

These steps alone won’t mean the end of the child care crisis, but they’ll go a long way toward helping employers effectuate real, near-term change when it comes to making sure workers have affordable, high-quality child care options.  Those efforts will boost our current workforce— including helping many to return to work—as well as giving our next generation a better shot to succeed in school and life.

Roy Bostock of Greenwich is the Retired Vice Chair of Delta Air Lines and the Former Chairman of Yahoo!. He is also a member of the ReadyNation CEO Task Force on Early Childhood.

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Most of us are at least generally aware that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects American citizens against government censorship or repression of what we say or publish. The concept of free speech as an absolute right has been challenged or reinforced innumerable times at every local and federal jurisdiction level in our land. The earliest conditional exception to this established law was introduced by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, when he invoked the principal that only when a public utterance constituted a “clear and present danger” to our democracy did it not have lawful protection.

It’s surely true that Justice Holmes could not have contemplated the extent of our early 21st century disarray, provoked in huge measure by an unnumbered swarm of misinformation sources. What retired professor Shoshana Zuboff of Harvard terms our now- installed and virtually unregulated condition of Surveillance Capitalism is shot through with lies and specious arguments designed to distract us from truth and serve as support for many growing, harmful, commercial, or political agendas.

Whatever understanding we developed as young Americans that a democracy’s foundation rests largely on the principle of shared truths is being severely compromised by these forces.

For instance, nearly half of our electorate has bought into what has been characterized as the “Big Lie,” referring to the utterly false thesis that our 2020 national election was stolen from the then incumbent president. The peddlers of this “Big Lie” have borrowed a popular axiom of dictators, one that stipulates a lie will be accepted as fact if repeated often and broadly enough. Advocates of this undermining technique have an abundance of irresponsible and unaccountable media platforms, of which they make fullest use to keep abhorrent distortions in front of us. This contemptuous tactic is an insult to all who notice it, but notice it and counterattack it we must, because it is, in fact, a very scary clear and enormous present danger to our democracy. But who or what should lead such an urgently needed recovery?

Before exploring answers to that question, all of us need to consider the nature of the threat, its implications, and the motivations of its root sources.

First of all, the threat is almost overwhelmingly pervasive. It surrounds us through tactical use of cell phones, websites, social media, television, publications, and unsolicited mail. Exposure is virtually unavoidable. A principal implication is that lies can seem plausible and implementable. A major political motive is to divide our country into hostile camps and thereby weaken the structure of democracy, which is a condition aided and abetted by our Russian and Chinese competitors, who despise a level playing field in international commerce.

Other motives are to commercialize our life patterns which are observed, packaged and sold as commodities to marketing agencies, to stimulate us to acquire things we probably don’t need or even don’t really want. Perhaps more importantly, most of what we do is observed and made available to whoever might be curious and motivated by goodness knows what. In other words, privacy is a vanishing feature of American life. Leadership to confront such a broadly and deeply planted menace will have to arise on many local, community, state, and national platforms.

A highly critical concern has to be with how our young people, our future leadership cohort, develop their discernment and accommodation skills. Their insights into the fundamental nature of a functional democracy’s dependence on shared truths, and their appreciation for our culture’s need for citizens to develop personal value structures that can serve both individual and community issues faithfully, are by far best first developed and refined within families, under the thoughtful involved guidance of understanding parents.

Children and teenagers who are blessed to grow within a family structure that truly communicates and demonstrates sincere mutual interests in how they relate to each other and their communities are enormously advantaged over contemporaries not so fortunate, and they tend to rise as natural leaders. Their abilities to hold political lies in perspective and understand the extents to which social media deviate from reality are major structural components of their increasingly adult awareness. Their parents could make no greater contribution to American society than to provide the kind of at-home leadership that brings forward such well-equipped young people.

It is unrealistic to anticipate the Congress enacting helpful regulatory measures in the information technology universe in anything like the near-term future. There are a few positive-sounding things starting to be discussed and even started by the current administration, but things like meaningful new anti-trust and monopoly control laws are many moons away from us. Big money interests and assorted rogue ideology worship will continue to delay even popular democratic innovations. Pressure from the population may force something useful eventually, but much damage to our ways of life is being done as we speak.

A national government that can’t bring itself to even begin marshalling its several branches coherently to address huge issues like climate change, gun control, existential public health threats, and embedded economic and racial inequalities, can’t be expected to suddenly change its spots, especially in an area where communications/information technology has raced far ahead of any related body of law.

The foregoing being the case, concerned citizens still have the means to change things for the better, even if it takes a while. They can engage with the multitude of familiar agencies at hand in every community. Almost all of us already belong to things like civic clubs, business associations, houses of worship, school boards, professional societies, etc. and these can serve very well to swell the voices of the people to points that cannot be ignored by politicians and their parties. They can frame their concerns in the context of elected official accountability, than which there is probably no more sensitive lever. Helpful changes can start to happen when it becomes vividly apparent that, after all, people really do count in this country, and elected political office holders are supposed to serve at the pleasure of the governed.

Throughout our history Americans have come together to defend our freedoms whenever seriously threatened. As a people we have been able to recognize external threats for what they are and come together in vigorous common cause. What we have on our hands now is something new and sinister; a nasty combination of external cyberattacks along with an internally generated misinformation war that has us divided to the point of being less able to protect our cherished freedoms.

Our representative democracy seems to be at a tangential point where, especially at policy levels, there is a prevailing attitude that holds people who disagree as enemies who must be thwarted. This condition blocks reaching the sort of common sense compromises directed toward the public good that have characterized our history. It is most surely unrealistic to hope that changing that atmosphere can be achieved by governmental top-down initiatives alone.

More promising are the possibilities envisioned and pursued locally. We have many sorts of community engagement channels, both those mentioned above and many others, to give us persuasive voices for insisting on positive change. Framing arguments in the context of how national issues are harming local well-being, and being specific about how promising hands-on initiatives can make positive local differences, seem to be a powerful way to influence better governance at all levels. Such arguments can open up new channels for accountability questions that, over time, politicians will find it increasingly hard to ignore.

I think the ball is in our court, not theirs. E PLURIBUS UNUM

Charles M. Ericson lives in Farmington. This commentary was written in collaboration with Sedona Ericson of Spokane, WA.

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A proposal that would place a cap on emissions and charge certain producers “allowances” for pollution from the fuel they sell is not likely to get a hearing during an upcoming special session.

Health leaders across Connecticut are warning state legislators about the dangers of dirty air. But the head of the state Senate said Monday the Transportation and Climate Initiative will not be on the agenda during a special session expected to occur within the next two weeks.

“I’m hoping we can do this in a special session, but it won’t be in the September special session,” said Senate President Martin Looney during a phone interview. “It’s not fully put together as of yet … [In the] September session that we will do within the next two weeks. I think the sole agenda will be extending the governor’s emergency powers.”

TCI would place a declining cap on emissions and charge certain producers “allowances” for pollution from the fuel they sell. The charge would likely raise the price of gas by a few cents, but a portion of that money would be reinvested in some of the state’s neediest communities, which are disproportionately hit by air pollution and associated health problems like asthma.

Still, the bill’s likely impact on gas prices effectively killed TCI last legislative session.

Looney said that while his caucus backs the basic idea of TCI and its goal of reducing fossil fuel consumption and emissions, he’s concerned about potential financial impacts.

“I think our caucus is strongly supportive of environmental initiatives, but at the same time strongly supportive of shielding low- and moderate-income people from a disproportionate burden on the tax side,” Looney said. “We are actively engaging in trying to find a somewhat more progressive way to package it.”

Looney said those ideas may include gasoline tax credits for low-income families or an overhaul of electrical rates, which could benefit lower-income customers.

While debate about implementing TCI continues, the state’s traffic pollution problems are only getting worse.

Speaking to students and environmental advocates at Gateway Community College on Friday, Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said it’s largely because of rising emissions from transportation that Connecticut is now on track to miss its clean air targets.

“We are falling behind,” Dykes said. “We’re actually not going to meet our target for 2030.”

“Our target is not … an exceptional target.” Dykes said. “It’s actually the minimum of what we should be doing, to do our share to reduce emissions. And it’s because emissions in transportation and buildings are still increasing.”

While Connecticut’s overall emissions are dropping compared to pollution rates in 1990 and 2001, year-over-year data from 2017 to 2018 show emission levels are actually going up.

And since 1990, state data show transportation-related emissions have actually increased and now exceed the combined emissions of the electrical and residential sectors.

Dykes said dirty air from vehicles disproportionately hits the health and wallets of people in cities.

“If you live next to [Interstate] 95, 91, 84, you’re breathing air that is, on average, about 20% more polluted than the air in suburban or rural parts of our state,” Dykes said. “Chances are you’re suffering a lot of challenges from that air pollution: higher levels of asthma, which means health care costs, calling out sick, kids missing school, parents missing work.”

A coalition of health care professionals, advocates and students is urging legislative leaders to pass TCI, saying the proposal would save lives and money.

“Working in a busy pediatric clinic nestled along the I-95 corridor, I see countless cases of poorly controlled asthma and allergies each year,” said Cheryl Anderson, a practicing pediatrician and the Connecticut chapter climate advocate of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement. “We know that transportation and vehicle emissions account for the majority of air pollution and contribute to increases in greenhouse gases.”

“There is a strong association between air quality and pollution and childhood asthma,” Anderson said. “Many of my patients live in neighborhoods directly adjacent to the highway, increasing their exposure and therefore their risk.”

Still, it’s not entirely clear to what extent the potential health impacts of a climate-related bill will resonate among lawmakers debating TCI’s financial impact.

Looney said that passing TCI could “potentially” have positive impacts on human health.

“I don’t know to what degree,” he said, “but certainly everything that helps, incrementally, is important.”

Thomas Breen :: New Haven Independent

A New Haven official conducting a COVID code inspection last year. Currently, mask requirements in stores are a local option.

Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative leaders indicated Monday that key COVID-19 mandates will remain beyond Sept. 30, the expiration of Lamont’s current emergency declaration. 

Exactly how to make that happen — another extension of an emergency declared March 10, 2020, or passage in a special session of laws codifying those individual mandates — will begin to unfold today.

Lamont’s chief of staff and general counsel will brief legislative leaders on the administration’s view of the current threat posed by the pandemic, as well as the executive orders it considers vital to continue.

“We’re going to provide an overview of the executive orders that are in place and have, I would say, a very thorough conversation about what the next steps should be come Sept. 30,” said Paul Mounds, chief of staff.

In interviews, no one suggested that the General Assembly will block Lamont from continuing his mandate of mask wearing in schools or vaccinations for state employees and workers in schools, day care, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

But leaders of the Democratic majorities and Republican minorities are divided over whether the threat posed by the current level of COVID infections justifies a continued state of emergency.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Democrats are trying to set reasonable expectations about a pandemic that is largely under control in Connecticut but must be carefully managed over a period of months, not weeks. 

“To me, how you do it is the debate,” Ritter said. “But if the argument is whether or not we’re going to be living through COVID-19 for the next four to five months, the answer is undoubtedly yes, and we have to have policies that accompany that.”

Mounds, and leaders of the Democratic majorities that control the General Assembly, said that there is an 18-month track record on which to judge the Democratic governor’s exercise of emergency powers.

“This governor, this administration has utilized the power to provide executive orders for the benefits of the safety of people during COVID-19, with a very cautious, judicial and careful manner,” Mounds said. “That’s not going to change after September 30.”

Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said they hope the governor seeks an extension of the emergency, with Duff calling for an extension until the next legislative session in February.

House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, said the governor has not abused those significant powers, but the time has come for a more conventional legislative approach —holding hearings, then debating and voting. 

“I think because these edicts come down without any type of public hearing or discourse, they don’t get the scrutiny that they should be getting,” Candelora said. “And so, I would hope that the administration would want that level of scrutiny, not so that the public can come out and rally for or against these issues, but that they’re properly scrutinized.”

Candelora is not opposed to a mask mandate for students in K-12, but he questions whether the impact on younger children in pre-school, who still are acquiring language skills, outweighs the benefits. He said that would be an appropriate topic for a public hearing.

Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, and his deputy, Sen. Paul Formica, R-East Lyme, questioned the need for another extension.

“I don’t think we’re in that crisis that we once were,” Kelly said. “I’m not trying to diminish what COVID means. I think it’s still something that needs to be taken seriously.”

“I think Connecticut residents are getting weary of this extension after extension after extension at a time when it seems that the emergency is under control,” Formica said.

Formica said he does not believe the school mask requirement is onerous to children, but it could reasonably be left to local school and health officials, perhaps with state-mandated metrics about infection rates to guide them.

Candelora and Formica said that President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will seek to force large employers to either require vaccinations or regular testing has aggravated sensitivity to governmental powers.

MARK PAZNIOKAS :: CTMIRROR.ORG

Students wearing masks recently at a Newington school visited by the governor.

Looney and Duff said in separate interviews they found it noteworthy that the legislative argument against an extension revolved around process and precedent, not the governor’s actual orders.

“They can only argue the process, because there’s really nothing else for them to hang their hat on,” Duff said.

Looney said the legislature addressed legitimate complaints about the balance of power by amending the emergency power laws in July, when it extended the emergency to Sept. 30.

The new law allows the six top leaders of the General Assembly, by a majority vote, to veto any executive order issued under the emergency powers.

Lamont said Monday he welcomes legislative oversight.

“I’m somebody that welcomes input from the legislature, as long as they could do it on a timely basis,” Lamont said. “We’re having good discussions with the legislative leadership.”

Lamont has tried to walk a careful line on mandates. On the question of a broad mandate for masks, he has left to local authorities whether to require them in stores and other settings.

With schools, he said the masks are necessary, because there is no approved vaccine for children under 12. While ordering vaccinations for state employees and certain health care and school employees, he had declined broader vaccine requirements like the one announced by Biden.

“But I understand where the president’s coming from,” Lamont said. “There are a lot of states that are in a very different position right now. There are a lot of states that are flaring up. There are a lot of states that have kids who cannot go to school.”

The meeting Tuesday will be conducted via Zoom.

Long-standing inequities in our society have been intensified by the events that have occurred over the last two years. The devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the tragedies resulting from racial and social injustices have shone a light on the harsh realities faced by vulnerable members of our society and raised awareness of their ongoing struggles and life experiences. Nowhere is this awareness more important than in health care, because greater sensitivity to the experience of others can improve the quality of life for millions of people, and even prolong or save lives.

Cesarina Thompson

The ongoing pandemic certainly has intensified observed disparities in health outcomes for at- risk individuals and communities. COVID-19 has affected communities of color at a much higher rate and with more disastrous outcomes than observed in their white counterparts. The pandemic has contributed to a decline in overall life expectancy by one year for Americans, with the Latinx and Black communities experiencing a decline in life expectancy of about three years.

A variety of factors, known as social determinants of health, impact individuals’ health outcomes. The ability to access care is certainly a major determinant. Unfortunately, not all are able to access quality care at the time that they need it. Aside from a lack of financial resources, there is evidence that people of color, who are often among the underserved and at-risk populations, are less likely to receive effective medical treatment from their providers. Hence, it is not surprising that those who have experienced unequal health care treatment may demonstrate a lack of trust in the health-care system. When COVID-19 vaccines became available, communities of color had lower vaccination rates than hoped for and demonstrated greater vaccine hesitancy.

Unacceptable health-care practices may be due simply to a lack of provider knowledge or result from implicit biases that exclude the patient’s perspectives and unique health needs, leading to poor treatment decisions. We cannot accept any approach that discounts the patient’s perspective and/or results in unequal treatment. We must ensure that current and future health-care providers are equipped with the knowledge and skills to deliver culturally competent and sensitive care.

As a nurse and an educator, I believe the most effective way to influence health-care practices is to educate a more diverse population of future professionals and better prepare all of our students to care for the diverse needs of their patients. We must infuse our health-care education programs with the knowledge and experiential learning opportunities that will enhance students’ awareness, sensitivity, and competence when caring for individuals who present with very different life experiences than their own.

Diversifying the health-care workforce is another critical element to addressing health-care disparities. Studies show that patients who receive care from providers who look more like them report higher levels of satisfaction in their care. At the University of Hartford, we are taking advantage of our unique ability to influence the health-care providers of the future. As an institution committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we will continue to recruit a diverse student population.

In the College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions, we are using a number of strategies to contribute to a more diverse and culturally competent health-care workforce. We are diversifying our teaching staff by hiring over a dozen faculty members over the next three years, with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. They will educate UHart’s diverse student body on issues of health inequities related to systemic racism, and help form partnerships with local communities of varying race and social classes.

We also are strengthening our curricula by creating intentional learning experiences focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion to ensure our students consider the background and perspective of their patients. An example is integrating knowledge related to the social determinants of health into our curricula and designing simulated learning experiences so students will be better equipped to deliver the right care to all individuals. Given the interdisciplinary nature of our college, we offer students the opportunity to learn with and from each other, which not only broadens their own perspectives, but enables them to practice being members of interprofessional teams who must collaborate.

With respect to health care, the need for greater sensitivity, empathy, and respect has perhaps never been more obvious. Those of us who prepare future health-care providers are in a unique position to make a long-lasting impact on health outcomes by ensuring that the next generation of health-care professionals are sensitive to and capable of meeting the health needs of their clients in an inclusive and equitable way.

Cesarina Thompson is dean of the University of Hartford’s College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions (ENHP).

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

Keith M. Phaneuf :: CTMirror.org

Ned Lamont at the University of St. Joseph for a debate on the economy in 2018.

The COVID recession hit Connecticut’s economy harder than much of the rest of the United States, and it will take longer for the state to recover, according to a new report from policy think-tank Connecticut Voices for Children.

The group’s annual “State of Working Connecticut” report found that since the Great Recession, Connecticut’s economic output has lagged nearly every other state, and the COVID recession continued that trend. Economic output in Connecticut contracted 4.1% in 2020, compared with the nationwide pullback of 3.5%.

Connecticut never fully restored the jobs lost during the last three recessions, and in 2020, the state once again experienced deeper job loss relative to the United States as a whole, the report found. The number of non-farm jobs declined 14.7% nationally between February and April of 2020; in Connecticut, they fell 17.2%.

“Like the three prior recoveries, the recovery from the recent recession will likely significantly lag the pace of the U.S. as a whole,” the study’s author, Patrick O’Brien, said on a call with reporters Monday. “The U.S. is on track to close its current job shortfall in about 9 months, whereas Connecticut is on track to close its current shortfall in about 23 months,” he said.

The impact of inequality

That’s in part due to the state’s wide economic inequities. For several decades, real wages have been rising faster for those already earning the most. And that’s truer for Connecticut than most other states.

Last year, the top 10% of earners in this state made 5 times more per hour than the bottom 10% — higher than the national figure of 4.8. Connecticut also exhibits wider wage gaps by race and ethnicity, and by gender, than the broader U.S., the report found.

That “highly inequitable distribution” harms families in low- and middle-income brackets, O’Brien said, and it can hamper economic growth.

“There’s a definite relationship between both of these components — this idea of the size of Connecticut’s economy and the distribution within it,” O’Brien added. “In the simplest sense, if you give money to a working class family, they’re going to spend a much greater percentage of that money to go directly into the economy.” Wealthy families, on the other hand, might be more likely to save money or spend it outside of the state, he said.

Solutions

The report concludes with a handful of progressive policy recommendations, including tax reform that would shift the “tax burden on working- and middle-class families to the wealthy” and spending reform that would shift “spending to programs that more directly benefit working- and middle-class families.” An overall increase in both taxes and spending would go even further to fostering economic growth, the report argues.

“Many of the things that they’re talking about are incorporated into our current budget document,” said state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague. That includes the earned income tax credit, raising the minimum wage and additional support for things like group homes and food banks, she said.

“Can there be more done? Yes,” Osten said. “But are we addressing a lot of the issues that they call for? Absolutely.”

Chris DiPentima, president of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, said he’s wary of tax reform after two major tax hikes in 2011 and 2015. “We kind of tried that experiment already,” he said. “It actually did the opposite, it just dragged on the economy.”

DiPentima said according to a recent survey of his organization’s members, “affordability” is a top concern for Connecticut businesses and residents alike. The idea of raising taxes or government spending is anathema to solving that affordability problem, he said. “To reprioritize what we spend money on, that obviously should be the focus,” he said.

DiPentima said he agreed with the report’s finding that inequality — particularly how it plays out in education and workforce development — is holding Connecticut back. “You can have businesses here, but if you don’t have the workers here, you’re not going to realize your true potential.”

For her part, Osten also highlighted recent efforts to build out adult education, certificate programs and other workforce development. “Those are the things that are going to move the needle on both jobs, revenue coming in, and on the ability for us to address the issues of those most in need,” she said.

Allison Minto :: Connecticut Public

A local food bank for residents in the P.T. Barnum Apartments complex in Bridgeport.

Dione Dwyer lives in Bridgeport’s largest public housing complex, P.T. Barnum Apartments. She remembers moving in 19 years ago and just being thankful for something to call her own.

At the time, she was a single mother to two young daughters and had no stable income. She had been living with her father, a real estate investor, and was tired of moving around.

“I found out about public housing through a friend. When she told me about it I had no idea where to find it, to be honest,” said Dwyer, 44.

She applied and was approved in a few weeks, she said. And the first apartment she was offered, she took.

“I thought it would be a good place to start getting back on my feet, something to level me out so I could provide for my kids,” Dwyer said.

Her rent was based on 30% of her gross income. But over time, Dwyer came to realize that her three-bedroom apartment for her family wasn’t that great of a deal.

She lives just a short walk from an asphalt plant, a recycling plant and a garbage disposal plant. The complex, built in the late 1900s, is not a comfortable living arrangement, Dwyer said. She said there are problems with maintenance, conflicts among residents and a lack of the kind of support she thinks would help her family. Still, she’s been there 19 years, and she says finding anything remotely affordable in Fairfield County is hard.

“It might have saved me as far as not being homeless, but at the same time, I’m stuck here. I can’t get out,” Dwyer said.

A new report funded in part by the Connecticut Department of Housing has found that Dwyer is not alone. It says Connecticut is short more than 86,000 rental units for residents like her in the 0%-30% area median income. Area median income is determined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

About a third of the shortage is in Fairfield County.

“This isn’t surprising. This is one of the most expensive real estate counties in the country,” said Christie Stewart, one of the researchers behind the findings and director of the Fairfield County’s Center for Housing Opportunity.

More than half of residents in Fairfield County are already cost burdened, or pay more than 30% of their income on housing costs. And where the “rent eats first,” many are left to cut back on food, health care and other necessities, Stewart said.

The result of high housing costs is that many low-wage earners can only afford housing in just four out of the 23 municipalities in the region.

“Fairfield County has four urban centers in Danbury, Stamford, Norwalk and Bridgeport. There’s a disproportionate share of residents at the 0-to-30 area median income, and we don’t get a proportional share of the state investment,” Stewart said. “For folks who live in those urban centers and are barely able to get by, they live in overcrowded housing, they live in old housing stock [and] some are doubled up.”

‘Pregnant with opportunity’ 

But Stewart says Connecticut is in a good place to start chipping away at the issue. And her organization is one of over 50 housing organizations calling on the state to use once-in-a-lifetime federal funds to build more housing. Stewart said advocates estimate the state has hundreds of thousands of dollars left over from the American Rescue Plan Act. The federal stimulus package gave Connecticut more than $6 billion to help the state recover from pandemic-related impacts.

A majority of the money has already been allocated to local health departments, COVID relief, education and more.

So far, around $35 million has been allocated to some housing concerns, including support to level the playing field in housing court for those at risk of eviction. But there is no money set aside for more permanent housing solutions to address affordability.

“This moment is pregnant with opportunity for Fairfield County, and the state on the housing front. We have the data and we have the baseline. We just need the public will and leadership to take the next step,” Stewart said.

The funds could be used to incentivize private developers or be put into a housing trust fund on the state level. The trust fund could then be used to fund projects in municipalities with the greatest need.

The Connecticut General Assembly was expected to convene for a special session this fall to discuss the leftover federal dollars. But Speaker of the House Matt Ritter told Connecticut Public Radio that’s not likely.

Ritter said the money already allocated hasn’t been distributed completely. So the legislature will probably hold off on allocating more.

But he understands the importance of affordability.

“The definition of affordable housing in Fairfield County is not really affordable for a lot of people, so we have a lot of work to do here in Connecticut,” Ritter said.

If funds from the American Rescue Plan were allocated to housing on the state level, they couldn’t go toward public housing, as it’s already funded by federal dollars. But they could increase the overall housing stock — which would be a plus for Dione Dwyer.

“If we have more affordable housing across the state, it’s a win-win for all residents and public housing complexes,” said Dwyer, whose yearly income is around $20,000.

With rents for a multi-bedroom apartment nearing $2,000 in Fairfield County, it’s no surprise she’s felt defeated every time she has tried to go apartment hunting, she added.

“It’s like a lottery,” Dwyer said, describing the likelihood of finding something outside of public housing.

Beyond the money

But more money won’t fix the issue completely, especially in Fairfield County.

“We need a narrative shift,” Stewart said. “It’s human nature to not like change. But this false dichotomy that some will lose if others win is really doing some damage.”

Over the years, many affordable housing developments have been met by opposition from residents and local planning and zoning boards in Fairfield County. From Fairfield to Westport, public hearings for affordable housing developments have made headlines after residents expressed concerns about sizing, overcrowding and fear of change to the “character” of the municipality.

The pushback is largely because people don’t realize who needs affordable housing, Stewart said.

“When we talk about affordable housing, we’re talking about housing that is affordable to your neighbors and the people that make up the community that you live in,” Stewart added. “It’s fair housing options for the people that teach your children or keep your streets safe. It’s housing for your aging parents or children when they come back from college.”

Ryan Caron King :: Connecticut Public

Kathy Falandys, in her home in a mixed-income affordable housing complex in Fairfield on Aug. 12, 2021.

Lifelong Fairfield resident Kathy Falandys is an example of who benefits from affordable housing. Born and raised in Fairfield, Falandys said she never wanted to leave her hometown. And when she had her two children, she did everything she could to stay.

“This is what I grew up with, and I wanted them to have the same,” Falandys said. “So I worked my whole life. I lived paycheck to paycheck. I was so thankful I could pay my bills at the start of the month, but then I was broke.”

She said her rent was always her biggest expense. And she remembers paying up to $2,000 for rent over the years.

“I needed to make arrangements with electric and gas monthly to keep the utilities on,” she said.

She said that was her reality for most of her life up until now. Falandys lives at Pine Tree Apartments, a mixed-income affordable housing complex in Fairfield with about half of its units reserved for low- to very-low-income residents. Renovated five years ago, her one-bedroom apartment has an accessible bathroom, energy-efficient washer and dryer and a modern kitchen with appliances.

“They met every need,” she said. “And for the first time I have reserve savings.”

At 72 years old, after years of working, she relies on just her Social Security benefits. And pays $167 a month in rent.

Falandys said she’s blessed to have an affordable option in the town she loves so much. But knows she’s one of the lucky ones.

“There needs to be more information about affordable housing. Everyone knows someone who needs affordable housing. It’s for seniors, young families and professionals,” Falandys said.

Stewart said that’s the kind of stability needed across the region.

“If this is kicked down the road, I think low-income families are going to be pushed out completely. Their only options are going to be substandard overcrowded options or not living here at all,” Stewart said. “We’ll have an economic shock in Fairfield County felt across the state.”

The hope is the state takes action one way or another. But at the very least, Stewart said, the report should help all residents realize that affordability is a concern for all, and affordable housing isn’t affordable if the most vulnerable income bands are left out.

Cloe Poisson :: CTMirror.org

Bishop John Selders and his wife Pamela Selders, co-founders of Moral Monday CT, chant “Black Lives Matter” to a large gathering of protestors at the state Capitol in 2020.

The state Criminal Justice Commission has identified four finalists under consideration to be the state’s first-ever inspector general, a special prosecutor that will investigate and, if necessary, prosecute police officers’ use of deadly force.

They are are Moira Buckley, Robert Devlin, A. Ryan McGuigan and Liam Brennan.

The applicants were named in an agenda on the Criminal Justice Commission’s website. They will be interviewed in an open hearing on Sept. 27.

The inspector general will be tasked with investigating deaths in police and Department of Correction custody and determining whether to pursue criminal convictions. Coupled with a statutory change narrowing the circumstances in which police can use deadly force, these provisions of the bill are intended to shake up the status quo and hold police accountable for violent misconduct.

Legislators created the position in a special session in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. But only existing prosecutors were able to apply for the job, leading advocates to question whether the office was truly independent, given how closely state’s attorneys and police work.

Members of the Criminal Justice Commission initially split on which career prosecutor to nominate for the job, prompting legislators to pass another bill expanding the applicant pool so that civil rights and defense attorneys, judges and federal prosecutors could apply.

At least two of the applicants have experience in criminal defense work. Buckley is currently an assistant federal defender. An attorney since 1997, she has defended people charged with criminal offenses in state and federal courts. She was an assistant public defender in the state’s Public Defenders Office, where she specialized in appellate defense for clients convicted of serious felony offenses. She represented people charged with crimes ranging from misdemeanors to capital felony murder when she was a partner at Shipman and Goodwin, LLP and was the sole member in the Law Office of Moira Buckley.

McGuigan is a principal attorney at Rome McGuigan, P.C. A former prosecutor in the Stamford and New Britain Judicial Districts, McGuigan specializes in criminal litigation but has experience in corporate fraud, white-collar criminal investigations and civil litigation. His biography on his firm’s website said he’s tried numerous cases to verdict and has won acquittals for major felonies in state and federal courts.

Devlin is the chair of the Connecticut Sentencing Commission. He has been a judge in appellate and superior courts, hearing criminal cases in judicial districts across the state. From 2010 to 2017, he was the chief administrative judge for the Superior Court’s Criminal Division, where he oversaw criminal judges across Connecticut. Before getting appointed to the bench, he was a federal prosecutor the U.S. Department of Justice’s Organized Crime Strike Force. He was recognized by the U.S. Attorney General in 1992 for his work on the prosecution team that secured convictions for higher-ups in the New England mob.

Brennan was a federal prosecutor for 10 1/2 years, serving as the director of the Public Corruption Task Force in Connecticut from 2015 to 2018. Before that, in 2014, he was one of the prosecutors who tried former Gov. John Rowland, ultimately securing a conviction that led to a 30-month sentence.

Before his current job as the executive director of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, Brennan was an attorney in the Community and Economic Development Unit at the New Haven Legal Assistance Association.

The finalists, all of whom are white, are interviewing for a job to hold police officers accountable George Floyd’s murder reignited calls for racial justice across the state and country.

Experts estimated in an analysis of last year’s police accountability bill that it would cost almost $1 million to fund the inspector general employees’ salaries and benefits. The staff would include the inspector general, a senior assistant state’s attorney, five inspectors, a forensic analyst and a paralegal. The analysis estimated the office would conduct 25 investigations each year.

The League of Women Voters mission is to empower voters and defend democracy.  This means we advocate for voting rights.  Redistricting may not sound like voting rights, but it is—district lines determine who is on your ballot.  Redistricting can even affect voting behavior. If voters don’t feel their vote will count, because all the candidates on their ballot are shoe-ins or because their preferred candidate has little chance of prevailing, they don’t vote.  Voter alienation equals voter suppression.

This year, we are focused on ensuring that the just-released census data is used to draw fair, representative voting districts. How Connecticut draws the districts is defined in our state constitution.  We can’t change the process for this year, but we can expect this year’s process to be transparent, to provide opportunity for public input, and to engage the public in good faith.

What is redistricting?  Our U.S. Congress members, state legislators, and many city council and school board members are elected by people grouped into districts.  Once a decade, after a census, these districts are redrawn using the new population numbers determined by the census.

Why do we do it?  As population shifts between and within states, districts have to be redrawn to ensure that each one has the same number of people. This is called the principle of “Equality of Population” and it is required by the U.S. Constitution.   If district populations are uneven in population, some residents have more access to their representatives while some have less.

What’s the urgency?  The U.S. Census Bureau released the results of the 2020 Census in August—five months later than usual.  This late delivery increases the chances that the process will be rushed and opportunities for public input diminished.  That’s what looks to be happening: the Reapportionment Committee has begun holding public hearings and here is the schedule:

 Challenges for Connecticut’s redistricting process:

According to the state constitution, the Reapportionment Committee—four Democrats and four Republicans chosen by party leaders in the State Senate and House in February —must submit a plan to the General Assembly and have it approved by a tw-thirds majority in both houses by September 15.

If that deadline passes without an accepted district plan, responsibility is transferred to a Redistricting Commission.  These are the same eight legislators with a ninth member selected by the eight previously selected commissioners. They are charged with preparing a plan that at least five members support, by November 30. If they cannot agree, the state supreme court can compel them to agree to a plan, and if that fails, then the court can draw the boundaries itself. The plan must be done by Feb. 15, 2022.

It’s a complicated process which, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures hasn’t worked well for several cycles: “Since 1981, the legislature has been unable to redistrict by the state’s constitutional deadline…”

 How can we make redistricting better? 

The League of Women Voters supports establishing independent special redistricting commissions, with membership that reflects the diversity of the unit of government, including citizens at large, representatives of public interest groups, and members of minority groups.

Some states have already done this, replacing their partisan commissions with non-partisan citizen committees more likely to draw maps that prioritize the needs of the community, not the desires of the legislators.

  California Independent Commission   Oregon Legislative Committee: 

Connecticut\’s current congressional district map.

Making redistricting in Connecticut better now

While we can’t change the timeline for 2021-2022, there are a number of ways we can influence the outcome.  We can insist the committee conduct the process in full view by insisting that they:

1. Create and maintain a public website that lays out their plans for map creation and public hearings.
2. Share the draft maps and political and demographic data they are using.

In other words, we need the Committee to share their thinking with the public, including any conversations they have been having with other legislators.  As it stands now the redistricting process in Connecticut is legislator-centric—we believe that it should be public-centric.

What you can do: We encourage everyone to elevate their voices by attending the public hearings around the map-drawing process listed here. You can also contact  your state Legislators and convey the message that the redistricting process should be open and transparent. Include your own House and Senate representatives in addition to the Reapportionment Committee members.

The 2021-2022 Reapportionment Committee members are: Senators: Sens. Kevin Kelly, R-21, Co-Chair, Mary Daugherty Abrams, D-13; Douglas McCrory, D-2; Paul Formica, R-20; Representatives: Gregg Haddad, D-54, Co-Chair, Vincent Candelora, R-86, House Minority Leader; Tammy Exum, D-19, Jason Perillo, R-113.

• Contact the League of Women Voters of CT with any concerns about your community or questions at Redistricting@lwvct.org.

Want to learn more about redistricting?  Read the five-part LWVCT Summer Redistricting  Series: 1) Redistricting is Here!2) Who Draws the Maps and How; 3) Criteria for Drawing the Lines; 4) Math and Maps; 5) Key Messages and Questions

Fair and equal maps are key to a representative democracy.

Laura Smits is the President of the League of Women Voters of Connecticut. 

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

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

One of over 290 Digital Realty data centers across the world is located in Trumbull, Connecticut. It is the highest-profile data center currently in Connecticut.

As more and more businesses have shifted IT operations to the cloud, state leaders around the country turned to data centers — the giant server warehouses that power the internet — as one way to rejuvenate their economies coming out of the Great Recession.

Over the past decade-plus, more than 30 states have created tax breaks or other incentives for data center construction, and the technology sector’s biggest players, from Facebook to Google and Amazon, have taken full advantage.

This year, Connecticut joined the race.

In late February, state lawmakers passed emergency legislation allowing the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, for the first time, to offer tax incentives to certain data center developments.

Specifically, the state will waive sales and property tax obligations for 20 years for data centers that invest at least $200 million in Connecticut — or just $50 million if the facility is located within a state-designated enterprise zone. The tax exemptions could be extended to 30 years if a $400 million investment is made, or a $200 million investment in an enterprise zone.

But with so many other states offering incentives, and Connecticut arriving relatively late to the game, the legislation’s expedited passage through the Assembly struck some observers as odd. The bill obtained emergency certification — sending it immediately to the floor for a vote, with no committee referrals or public hearings.

DECD Commissioner David Lehman said that was all because of one particular detail: Connecticut agreed to waive its right to impose a financial transactions tax on any qualifying data centers. At the time, New Jersey lawmakers were considering passing a $0.0025 tax on every financial transaction processed electronically in the state. Given how much of Wall Street’s exchange server infrastructure is located in New Jersey, the proposed tax had massive implications for the finance industry.

“We were moving very quickly,” Lehman recalled. “The governor, myself and others were having conversations with these companies around potentially relocating their exchanges to Connecticut … This legislation was really important if they were going to make the move.”

Connecticut lawmakers had the data centers bill on Governor Ned Lamont’s desk within a week. Lamont signed it on March 4.

Lehman estimates Connecticut could have seen as much as $750 billion in data center investment if New Jersey had passed the financial transactions tax. But New Jersey’s bill has stalled in committee, and it looks like the data centers powering Wall Street are staying put for now. “There’s no imminent move from the financial exchanges at this time,” Lehman said. 

Richard Auxier, a tax policy analyst with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said he’d be surprised to see any state pass a financial transactions tax, or FTT, given the possible negative economic consequences and the tenor of the opposition it’s raised to date. Plus, he added, “my guess is states are too busy with [American Rescue Plan] funds and other pandemic-related issues to start tackling new taxes like this at the moment.”

So, about that emergency bill

The prospects have dimmed for Connecticut to wrest Wall Street’s back-office data infrastructure from New Jersey. But in several communities, particularly in the eastern part of the state, other kinds of data center developments — aimed at a broader clientele — are beginning to take shape.

Depending on the agreement they work out with the local municipality, new data centers will typically make an annual flat-fee payment in lieu of paying local taxes on the property value of their real estate and equipment. It’s a significant discount, but supporters say it could be worth the trade-off.

“This gives more opportunities to some of our rural towns that may have farmland being taxed at the [lower] farmland tax rate,” said Republican Sen. Heather Somers of Groton. “Some towns are looking at generating millions of dollars off this.”

Somers also said that, compared to other industrial sites, data centers are “low impact.” Once construction is completed, there are no trucks or heavy-duty machinery on site, and the small number of employees means there’s essentially no impact on traffic in the surrounding area, she said.

mark Pazniokas :: ctmirror.org

David Lehman, commissioner of economic and community development.

“Usually on property tax exemptions, we get very hesitant,” said Randy Collins of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. His group worked with legislators to include language in the bill that would protect towns in cases where the developer doesn’t hold up their end of the deal. “We wanted to make sure a municipality wouldn’t be taken advantage of,” Collins said.

At the same time, CCM didn’t want to cut off an economic opportunity for distressed communities. “When you take a town with no economic prospects for this parcel — sure, in a perfect world, I’d get $5 million on this parcel but I take $1 million. Maybe the economic development around it will build off what they’re doing,” Collins said.

For developers, the up-front investment and lead time for data center projects is substantial. In some cases, the towns they’re targeting will have to draft new zoning rules, since many laws on the books hadn’t contemplated this particular type of development. Data center developers can apply for the state incentive program only once they’ve worked out a fee agreement with the local town. From there, they negotiate a power purchase agreement with the local utility and begin construction.

In the short-term, construction could create well over 1,000 jobs per site. But data centers generate far fewer permanent, full-time positions. Lehman estimated each project could result in 25 to 50 permanent jobs. He and others described those jobs as “white collar,” noting the higher salaries would boost payroll tax revenue.

Not everyone saw eye-to-eye on the program’s costs and benefits.

State Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, one of five senators who voted against the bill, expressed his concerns during the Senate debate in February before the vote was taken.

“We are gathered here to try to lure an industry to Connecticut that, as far as I can tell, will provide few lasting jobs but provides major costs,” he said. “Those costs are to taxpayers who will be providing the industry with significant 30-year tax breaks.”

Data centers “chew through” computer equipment, and operators spend several million dollars a year to replace servers and other hardware, said Bill Hassan, a specialist in data center site selection with commercial real-estate brokerage CBRE. Under Connecticut’s new incentive program, those equipment purchases won’t be subject to the state sales tax. If they were taxed at Connecticut’s 6.35% rate, each data center could potentially owe several hundred thousand dollars a year to the state.

DECD’s Lehman said that’s a moot point, because “The key thing around any incentive is, if you didn’t provide it, would this still happen?” Many other states grant sales tax exemptions for data center equipment, he said, and in order to compete, Connecticut needed to offer the same.

“I think we can say, hand on heart, we would not have the investment over the next 10 years unless we put forth this legislation,” Lehman said.

The Office of Data Infrastructure Administration and Security, within the DECD, launched July 1. Lehman said so far the office has fielded a handful of requests for applications from developers. Within three years, he said, he expects the number of approved new data center projects to be in the “mid- to high-single digits.”

Power struggle

Connecticut’s current data center tally stands at 14, and their overall data capacity is small compared to that of other states. The main reason for that is the relatively high cost of power in the state.

These facilities use a massive amount of power, which means most development to date has happened in parts of the country where electricity prices are low. The average price per kWh for industrial customers in Northern Virginia, for example, is 5.5 cents. In New Jersey it’s 8 to 9 cents, and in Connecticut it’s 12 to 13 cents. So a user who might pay $750,000 a year for power in Northern Virginia would be paying more than $1 million in New Jersey and more than $1.5 million in Connecticut, according to CBRE calculations.

David Silverstone, who represents customers of the public electric utilities known as Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative, said there’s plenty of power available to add data centers to the grid. “However, you’ve got to get the power to the customer,” and that involves building a bigger power line out to the location in order to accommodate the additional capacity. “If you’re a data center, there’s no pole in the street. There has to be a whole system to bring the power to you.” That would be another part of the power-purchase negotiation between the developer and the electric company — as well as additional cost, he said.

Data center developers don’t just chase cheap power. They’re also looking for strong broadband infrastructure and minimal risk, CBRE’s Hassan said. While developers in Connecticut could theoretically tap the fiber line along I-95, locations along the coastal corridor present other hazards, he said, such as hurricanes or the possibility of car fires and major accidents on the interstate. That could force a facility offline; in the internet infrastructure business, that just can’t happen.

The fastest-growing data center markets today — Northern Virginia, Portland, Ore., and Phoenix — have found the sweet spot. In Connecticut, one developer is finding his.

A few years ago, Tom Quinn, chief executive of developer Gotspace Data Partners, started making inroads in parts of the state where electricity costs are lowest — namely, towns that have public electric utilities and can potentially negotiate lower rates. Many of those are in eastern Connecticut, where there are currently no data centers.

Quinn declined to be interviewed for this story, but a paid advertorial this July in the trade publication Data Center Knowledge said Gotspace has “developed exclusively entitled campuses, covering more than 1,700 acres, all located within these low-cost-of-utility areas.” (The piece also credits Gotspace with “creating the big data draft incentives, working with the State of Connecticut and the DECD Commissioner, and lobbying the bill to supermajority approval.”)

Before the legislation went into effect July 1, Gotspace had already inked host fee agreements with Griswold, Groton, Bozrah and Wallingford — all towns with public electric utilities. On the company’s website, a drop down menu lists eight Connecticut locations under “Our Data Centers.”

DECD’s Lehman said, “the initial interest is in areas where there are local utilities that have the ability to provide more competitive rates,” but Gotspace isn’t the only company expressing that interest. He added that DECD expects to see “joint ventures and other forms of partnership as these data centers start to get built.”

Proponents hope that one or two big projects will attract a cluster of development, making Connecticut a hub for data centers. And if that happens, the argument goes, there’s the potential for broader economic impacts. In a 2019 study, the Metro Hartford Alliance estimated the construction of a 32MW data center (the power capacity Gotspace and others are targeting) could boost the state economy by $312 million and support 2,065 jobs, including 140 permanent positions with an average annual wage over $100,000.

For some, that’s still a big “if.”

In his first several months in office, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona had largely steered clear from controversy. But recently he’s waded directly into a debate roiling school boards and state houses across the country: whether schools should require all students and staff to wear masks.

“We cannot sit around,” he said last month, as the Biden administration pushed back against states banning school mask mandates. “We have to do everything in our power, including civil rights investigations.”

Soon after, he announced investigations into five states — Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah — saying they may be violating the rights of students with disabilities.

Republicans blasted the move as federal meddling. “It is inappropriate for the Office for Civil Rights to spend taxpayer dollars to intimidate states that are responsive to parents’ needs and balance freedom with public health,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, the ranking Republican on the House education committee. “Biden and his cronies are using the Department of Education as a propaganda tool against states and governors that disagree with them.”

The partisan breakdown is clear. What’s less clear is whether the department’s effort to encourage masking is on strong legal ground and whether it’s likely to succeed in changing state policies. So Chalkbeat asked a number of lawyers and legal experts.

Here’s what we found: The feds have some legal basis, but they also face a number of legal, political, and practical hurdles in stopping states from banning masking requirements. However, the department’s actions may bolster lawsuits from parents and advocates advancing similar claims — which, if persuasive to federal judges, could quickly halt state mandate bans.

The department’s argument: Bans on universal masking keep kids with disabilities out of school.

Barring mask requirements could effectively limit access to school for some students who have medical conditions that put them at greater risk of getting severely ill from COVID, the feds argue. They point to a number of parents of children with disabilities who say they feel forced to choose between an in-person education and their health.

That, the Biden administration claims, could violate those students’ right to a “free appropriate public education” and amounts to illegal discrimination under federal law.

In opening an investigation, the feds have not made a determination of any such discrimination and they have promised to be a “neutral factfinder.” But Cardona has made clear where his sympathies lie. “This Department will continue to use every tool in our toolbox to protect the health and safety of students,” he wrote in a blog criticizing states that bar masks requirements.

A number of lawyers and legal scholars say the department has a decent legal case.

“It is a viable claim, for sure,” said Joshua Weishart, a law professor at West Virginia University. “Even if that were not the purpose of statewide bans on mask mandates, federal law prohibits administering policies in ways that have the effect of excluding students with disabilities.”

“I think that it is a very reasonable way to protect children’s health,” said Julie Underwood, an expert on education law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Any kind of ban on the masking that would preclude children with disabilities from being able to attend school because it would be dangerous for them if they were to catch COVID impedes their right to access education,” said Selene Almazan, legal director at the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which advocates for students with disabilities.

The arguments on the other side

Other legal scholars are more skeptical of the Biden’s administration’s claims. “I don’t think their legal position is terribly strong,” said Joshua Dunn, a professor at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs who regularly writes about education law issues.

Indeed, there are a number of arguments that critics of the department’s position might raise.

For one, some students with disabilities might find it difficult or impossible to wear a mask throughout the school day — that creates a challenge if some students with disabilities need universal masking but others need exemptions. “It wouldn’t be surprising to find another group of parents saying, ‘for my child these mask mandates are particularly harmful and in violation of their IEP,” said Dunn, referring to individual education programs, which spell out accommodations for disabilities.

Dustin Rynders, an attorney at Disability Rights Texas, which sued the state over its ban on mask mandates, says those tensions aren’t irreconcilable and that his organization has supported various masking accommodations for students with disabilities. He added, “If you have a child who truly can’t wear a mask, it makes it all the more important that everyone who can does.”

A number of polls shows that more parents support mask mandates than oppose them, although there is little if any data specifically on the view of parents of students with disabilities.

Skeptics of masking in schools also claim that the evidence doesn’t support the practice, and therefore shouldn’t be legally required. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for instance, cited a recent New York Magazine article, which questioned the prevailing recommendations of universal school masking from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics. (There is little empirical evidence about the effects of masks in schools, but there is stronger evidence outside of school settings, which some experts say likely apply in schools too.)

A final potential weakness of the department’s argument is that it would effectively require universal masking in all districts across the country. “If it is your position that students with disabilities are entitled under Section 504 to be educated in schools in which everyone is wearing a mask, does this policy apply to all school districts?” Republican members of the House education committee wrote in a pointed letter to Cardona.

The Biden administration isn’t going that far, though, perhaps because that could create a massive political backlash.

Kelly Leon, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, emphasized the value of local decision-making. “Statewide bans make it impossible for schools and school districts to make local, on-the-ground assessments of the needs of their school and students,” she said.

The feds face practical challenges in getting states to lift bans on mask mandates

Aside from the legal issues at play, experts and advocates say there is another major hurdle that the department faces in pushing states to rescind masking requirements: time.

“Interviews, reviewing facts and statements, drafting a decision, determining corrective action, and clearing internally are lengthy processes at the best of times and [the department] will want to be thorough here,” said Julia Martin, an education lawyer who advises states and districts. Federal investigations sometimes take months or longer.

States also have the right to appeal any investigatory finding made by the department.

But as the school year unfolds, time is of the essence for advocates and parents who say mask mandates are needed to protect students with disabilities. It’s not clear that the feds will be able to intervene in time to make a meaningful impact.

Leon said the department “will begin collecting data from each state … in a timely manner while ensuring the process is done thoroughly.”

The other challenge is how to enforce a decision. The feds’ chief leverage is the ability to cut off federal funds to recalcitrant states. But this would be an extreme and unprecedented move that the department would be reluctant to undertake. Typically, the department reaches some resolution with a state. But with the politics so fraught, such a resolution might be unusually difficult.

“Ultimately federal agencies have the power of the purse,” said Rynders. “The hard part there is: are you ultimately willing to cut off funds to a state to enforce your priorities?”

Private lawsuits may offer a clearer and swifter path

Critics of mask mandates bans don’t just have to rely on the Biden administration, though. In fact, parents have filed lawsuits in a number of states — Iowa, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah — advancing a similar legal theory as the Department of Education.

They may be able to get results quicker. In Tennessee, parents have already won a temporary restraining order against the state’s mandate ban. “Plaintiffs have identified ways that they have been excluded from participating in school programs and activities, including from physical education classes, and socializing with their peers when within the school buildings and at lunch,” wrote federal district court judge Sheryl Lipman.

Shep Melnick, a professor at Boston College, said the federal investigations could help existing private lawsuits and encourage others. “A lot of these investigations are aimed at imposing various costs on states and school districts and publicizing the issue,” he said. “There is a symbiotic relationship between the investigation” and the lawsuits.

In Iowa, a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 11 parents cites the department’s investigation as evidence against the state’s mask mandate ban.

“We view the Department of Education investigation as being congruent with our lawsuit, as are the other similar lawsuits that have been filed around the country,” said Veronica Fowler, spokesperson for the ACLU of Iowa. “This is a very clear disability discrimination situation.”

Leon said the department does not comment on pending litigation but that officials are “closely monitoring” existing lawsuits around masking.

In Texas, the lawsuit from parents of students with disabilities goes to trial in early October.

“I think the lawsuits are, of course, what tends to have a more impactful difference,” said Rynders, whose organization is bringing the suit. “But I welcome [the department] to use their platform and their soapbox to communicate what is right for students with disabilities.”

This story was first published Sept. 8, 2021, by Chalkbeat.

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

With families of 9/11 victims threatening to protest his appearance at events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the attacks, President Joe Biden took the notable step last week of ordering the Justice Department and other agencies to disclose new portions of their long-secret files on the Qaida plot.

The executive order on Sept. 3 appears to stave off the prospect that the president might be picketed on the eve of 9/11 memorial services, just days after the final, chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

What remains in doubt is whether the declassification of FBI documents will resolve the mysteries that still surround the case or provide evidence to support the families’ claims in a federal lawsuit that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia bears some responsibility for the attacks.

“He has the power to give us closure,” a spokesperson for the families, Brett Eagleson, said of the president. “He has now made us a promise, but he still needs to fulfill it.”

The relatives’ years-long fight against Justice Department secrecy has lately centered on a list of 45 FBI documents that the government has identified as relevant to the families’ lawsuit in a federal district court in New York.

Lawyers for the families said those documents represent only a small fraction of the government files they should be entitled to under a 2018 judge’s order. That order limits the plaintiffs to information on a handful of figures who have been tied to the first two Qaida hijackers to arrive in the United States, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

The two Saudis flew into Los Angeles from Bangkok on Jan. 15, 2000. Although they had been trained as terrorists, they spoke almost no English and had only the vaguest notions about how to operate in a Western society, people who knew them told the FBI after the attacks.

The pair quickly made their way to a new mosque that the Saudi government had built in Culver City, California, not far from Sony Pictures Studios. During a purportedly chance meeting at a nearby cafe, they were invited to settle in San Diego by Omar al-Bayoumi, a shadowy middle-aged Saudi graduate student who had already been investigated by the FBI as a possible spy for the kingdom.

The CIA had been following Hazmi and Mihdhar as they met with other Qaida operatives in Malaysia in early January 2000. The agency somehow lost their trail when the hijackers flew with their own Saudi passports to Thailand and on to Los Angeles. Even after the CIA learned in March 2000 that at least one of the terrorists had entered the country, it did not notify the FBI until late August 2001.

CIA officers would later interrogate the architect of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, about why he sent the first two hijackers to Southern California and whether they had any support network waiting there. (The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found his account implausible.) But most FBI agents investigating the attacks had limited access to the CIA’s intelligence, and even less of that information has since been made public.

Among the other potential pieces of evidence that have never emerged from the government’s investigation are closed-circuit videotapes showing Hazmi and Mihdhar’s arrival at Los Angeles International Airport. Former FBI investigators said they were never able to locate any tapes despite their repeated requests, leaving questions whether anyone had met the hijackers’ plane.

The FBI’s handling of evidence it did gather has raised even sharper questions. Just last week, representatives of the 9/11 families wrote to the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, asking that he investigate whether the FBI might have deliberately hidden or destroyed some evidence to avoid its disclosure.

That request followed claims by the government in federal court that it could no longer find some materials and information it had gathered in the inquiry, including FBI witness interviews and telephone records of people linked to the hijackers. Among the items that the bureau has said it had lost is a home video from a party in San Diego where Bayoumi introduced the two hijackers to a group of his friends.

A report in 2020 by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine recounted that soon after the FBI launched Operation Encore, a follow-on investigation to the original 9/11 case, in 2007, agents learned that FBI archivists were about to dispose of evidence seized from Bayoumi in the days after the attacks.

Those materials included a diagram that seemed to show the trajectory of a plane crashing to the ground — resembling the way that American Airlines Flight 77, which Hazmi and Mihdhar helped to hijack, had flown into the Pentagon. A former commercial airline pilot who reviewed the diagram in 2012 told FBI agents there was “a reasonable basis” to suspect that it might have been used in preparation for the attacks, according to a newly disclosed statement in the federal litigation.

At the center of the 9/11 families’ lawsuit is the theory that Bayoumi and a Saudi religious official based in Los Angeles, Fahad al-Thumairy, provided help to the two hijackers. In an interview with the 9/11 Commission, Bayoumi claimed he had no idea the men were Qaida members. Thumairy told the commission staff he did not even recall meeting the two men.

Most of the U.S. national security establishment has long discounted the possibility that the Saudi royal family might have knowingly supported the plot. The kingdom viewed Osama bin Laden as a subversive enemy, and the attacks had overwhelmingly negative repercussions for Saudi interests.

But questions remain about the ties between the Qaida operatives and Saudi religious institutions. Saudi clerics operated with considerable autonomy before 9/11, propagating the kingdom’s conservative Wahhabi doctrine around the world with generous funding from the state. They also supported a number of charities tied to al-Qaida and other militant Islamist groups.

After 9/11, two teams of FBI investigators began to examine the activities of Saudi religious officials who had been operating in the United States. By 2006, the bureau had quietly forced dozens of accredited diplomats and others to leave the country, usually without filing any criminal charges.

Operation Encore, which is also referred to as “the subfile case,” concentrated closely on Hazmi and Mihdhar and the people who assisted them in California. But the investigators also left behind big holes: Although they discovered that Bayoumi was not actually studying and was being paid indirectly by a Saudi defense agency, for instance, they were unable to determine whether he had ties to the kingdom’s intelligence services or its religious bureaucracy.

Encore received little support from senior FBI officials, agents involved in the effort said. It was effectively shut down in 2016, when the chief of a New York counterterrorism task force disbanded the small team of investigators and analysts who were working the case.

However, as ProPublica revealed last year, a senior analyst on the Encore team left an important marker behind. Before moving on to a new post, other investigators said, the analyst compiled a detailed 16-page summary of the Encore findings and filed it electronically so that it could not be easily deleted from the FBI’s computer system. That document, dated April 4, 2016, is one that Biden specifically ordered the Justice Department to review for declassification “no later” than Sept. 11 of this year.

Until last month, the Justice Department had argued repeatedly in court that the FBI could not disclose key documents from the 9/11 inquiry because its investigation was ongoing. Since 2017, though, virtually no significant investigative activity has been cited in FBI files that have been shared with lawyers for the families.

During his campaign, Biden wrote to the 9/11 families that he supported their quest for “full truth and accountability” in the attacks, promising new transparency if he was elected. After more than 1,700 family members warned him to avoid memorial events this year unless he made good on his pledge, the Justice Department announced on Aug. 9 that the FBI had finally closed the Encore investigation and would work to “identify additional information appropriate for disclosure.”

That wasn’t good enough, the families responded. As they moved forward with plans for anti-Biden protests one day before the 20th anniversary, the president issued his executive order.

The aggressive secrecy of the Justice Department peaked under the Trump administration and former Attorney General William Barr, who asserted in 2019 that materials from the FBI investigation must be protected as state secrets. But efforts to safeguard both intelligence sources and Saudi sensitivities date back to the Bush and Obama administrations.

“The Bush administration was cozy with the Saudis, and Obama didn’t want to fight and was concerned about keeping Saudi support because of ISIS,” one former senior intelligence official said. “Now, there is an opportunity for this administration to say, yes, the Saudi relationship is important, but we can take a different approach to this issue.”

This story was first published Sept. 9, 2021, by ProPublica.org.