by Suzanne Bates | Feb 1, 2013 | Blog, Education, Features, General, Politics, State Budget, Taxes & Spending
Gov. Dannel Malloy announced on Thursday that he wants to borrow $1.5 billion over the next 10 years to strengthen the science, technology, engineering and math programs at the University of Connecticut. This announcement raises a few questions. First, how much of...
by Katherine Concepcion | Jan 31, 2013 | Features, General, State Budget, Taxes & Spending
The Department of Public Health paid one employee for 28 hours of work in a single day, according to auditors. DPH made the payment for a combination of on-call hours and regular working hours. “We were told that employees are paid for on-call duty even when they are...
by Zachary Janowski | Jan 25, 2013 | Features, General, State Budget, Taxes & Spending
Taxpayers owe a growing debt to state employees for their unused paid time off, recently totaling more than $700 million or $11,500 per employee. In other words, if every state employee retired today, taxpayers would owe them more than $700 million for their unused...
by Zachary Janowski | Jan 16, 2013 | Features, General, State Budget, Taxes & Spending
Auditors found a state employee worked overtime “for approximately one hour a day for almost the entirety of fiscal year 2009” without approval from the agency’s commissioner as required by department policy. Despite the claim by auditors that they found no evidence...
by Zachary Janowski | Jan 11, 2013 | Features, General, Politics, State Budget, Taxes & Spending
Despite already outnumbering rank-and-file members, Connecticut’s legislative leadership grew this year to 99 leaders in the 187-member General Assembly. Each legislator with a leadership title gets a small pay increase. Twenty-seven committee chairmen and 19 ranking...
by Suzanne Bates | Jan 10, 2013 | Features, General, Health Care, Politics, State Budget, Taxes & Spending
According to all signs and indicators Connecticut is in a financial mess. While other states are starting to see signs of recovery and job growth, Connecticut still faces high unemployment, continued budget deficits and an onerous tax burden on the state’s families....
