Under the proposal, which Lamont plans to include in his upcoming biennial budget, the state would partner with a nonprofit that purchases medical debt at a fraction of its original cost, then forgives borrowers.

Officials say the initiative would use funds from the federal American Rescue Plan. Residents would not have to apply and would simply receive notification that their medical debt has been forgiven.

Not only did the zoning commission rebuff an effort to tighten the six-month-old regulations for recreational cannabis sales, but members approved a previously rejected application for the city's second dispensary.

The hybrid retail and medical cannabis establishment would be located at 15 Dewey St., an office/industrial building between Interstate 95 and Mountain Grove Cemetery.

The commission rejected the dispensary's first application. But this time, the developer's attorney passed out a petition containing the signatures of 281 residents in favor of the application. He claimed his client had met with several neighborhood leaders and won them over.

An Oxford man whose wife died after giving birth at Danbury Hospital in 2020 has filed a lawsuit against the medical professionals that treated her in the final weeks of her pregnancy. He alleges that a chest X-ray she was referred for — and didn’t receive — five weeks prior would have revealed an undiagnosed 15 centimeter tumor that led to her death.

Lisa Sullivan delivered her baby via C-section on June 10, 2020, and began going downhill soon after, suffering cardiac arrest and brain damage from a lack of oxygen, according to the lawsuit. She died June 15, 2020, after which the tumor — a 15.5 centimeter large B-cell lymphoma — was found, the lawsuit states.

The Constitution State would remain CT's official nickname. Here's part of the story, from reporter Daniel Figueroa IV:

The bill would cast pizza into the ranks of other state symbols like the sperm whale, the state animal; the praying mantis, the state insect; the charter oak, the state tree; and the mountain laurel, the state flower.

There’s also a state mineral, almandine garnet, and state fossil, a three-toed footprint that likely belonged to a relative of the dilophosaurus.

The bill, SB 390, was introduced jointly by nearly all of the legislature’s New Haven delegation — all Democrats.

A version of the bill introduced during the 2021 session passed the State House nearly unanimously, only receiving nine “no” votes, but didn’t get a read on the Senate floor. Colin Caplan, an architect and historian who operates Taste of New Haven authored the bill.

- Casey

ChatGPT even had a knock-knock joke:

Prompt: Write a knock-knock joke about New Haven

“Knock knock"

Who’s there?

New Haven

New Haven who?

New Haven’t you heard of the great pizza in this city?”

-Casey

Huh? No lies here. The town itself has said this is an issue, hence their pledge to take action and make roads safer. - Casey

Sitting in front of the Town Council in a wheelchair, Kelly Hamann-Book emotionally relayed what's happened to her since she was hit by a vehicle on South Main Street on Dec. 17.

"I was the pedestrian who was hit on Main Street," the West Hartford resident said at Tuesday night's meeting. "I spent 15 days in the hospital. I had suffered two broken legs, two broken cervical vertebrae that have been fused, two surgeries on my right leg, which may or may not be usable in the future, spinal nerve injuries, a traumatic brain injury."

Hamann-Book spoke on the night the Town Council would consider and later approve a resolution that commits West Hartford to a Vision Zero policy to eliminate all roadway fatalities and serious injuries. The move came after five roadway deaths — two of which were pedestrians — in the span of a week at the end of December. Three people died in a two-vehicle crash on Christmas morning.

Hamann-Book said she is the living result of the aftermath of vehicular violence.

"Prior to my injury, I was a nurse practitioner at Hartford Hospital in endocrinology," she said. "I don’t know that this is something that I’m going to be able to do after what has happened. I’m scared I might not be able to do my job again. I hope that I can. It’s not just the people who died; it’s the people who survived, too. While my injuries might not have been life-threatening, they’re definitely life-altering. It’s really important to recognize that we live in a town right now where people don’t feel safe."

- Casey

Ah, okay! The link I shared is a follow-up with a response from the former CT housing commissioner responsible for the relief program. This was included in our story:

In a phone interview Tuesday, Evonne Klein countered that the state prioritized low-income residents, offering aid to wealthier households only when there was money left over. She added that not everyone who lives in an expensive house is necessarily wealthy.

"Folks on the upper end of the income scale were the last to receive any kind of funding," she said. "The majority of the funding went to people in lower income brackets."

Klein said HUD audited Connecticut's dispersal of funds at the time and did not raise any concerns. She also noted that Bridgeport, which saw relatively little funding from the relief program, received more than $40 million in disaster resilience funding as part of a separate grant."

Edit: In the Politico story, Klein appears shocked about some higher income folks getting aid:

“Wow. Wow,” said Evonne Klein, who oversaw the disaster aid program as Connecticut’s housing commissioner, after E&E News told her that some of the money had gone to the owner of a $5.5 million home.

-Casey

I searched the subreddit before posting but couldn’t find it. My bad on that - Casey

Amid revelations about Connecticut's dispersal of Superstorm Sandy disaster relief funds to wealthy homeowners a decade ago and concerns about what some advocates see as a misuse of federal aid, the state's former housing commissioner says the state simply adhered to federal guidelines for administering the program.

"Connecticut followed all of the federal regulations," said Evonne Klein, who left Connecticut's housing department in 2019 and now leads the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness. "The program that Connecticut developed was based on federal guidelines, and we did not veer off."

On Tuesday, Politico revealed in a lengthy report that a portion of the federal funds intended for low-income Connecticut homeowners affected by Hurricane Sandy were distributed instead to wealthy residents, such as a Greenwich family whose house was valued at $2.6 million. Altogether, Politico reported, owners of houses worth more than $1 million received a total of $6.4 million, about 15 percent of the $44 million in total aid from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

- Casey

"Billy's Law," officially the Help Find the Missing Act, is named for William Smolinski Jr., who was 31 years old when he went missing from his Waterbury home on Aug. 24, 2004.

His parents, Janice and William Smolinski Sr., for years have pressured police to follow tips and combed thousands of acres of woods and fields themselves in an unwavering search for their son. Their determination inspired Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., to champion the legislation.

The law is designed in part to better coordinate missing persons databases and raise awareness among law enforcement and relatives of the missing about the availability of information and how families can update background and descriptions and track developments.

"I hope that other families get a chance to realize that there is hope," Janice Smolinski, formerly of Cheshire, said recently in an interview from her Florida home.

Billy Smolinski is among tens of thousands of Americans who remain missing for more than a year, what many agencies consider cold cases, according to the National Missing Persons and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).

An estimated 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered each year and about 1,000 of those bodies remain unidentified after one year, according to the agency, part of the National Institute of Justice. Because of gaps in databases, however, missing persons and unidentified remains are not often matched.

In their frustrated attempts to find their son, Janice and William Smolinksi Sr. faced many systemic challenges, most significantly federal databases that were incomplete and uncoordinated, according to Murphy, who had tried for years to gain bipartisan support for the legislation.

-Casey

TL;DR: Experts and state leaders say it could take up to a decade or more to solve the state’s high electricity prices.

Why are CT costs higher than the national average?

Even before the proposed Eversource and UI rate hikes, CT’s electricity costs put it in the top five most expensive states, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Much of the reason for those costs has to do with the region’s reliance on natural gas to fuel its power plants, along with a limited supply of cheaper, renewable alternatives such as hydroelectric or solar power.

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has also led to higher natural gas prices in particular.

Short-term solutions

We’re mostly out of luck. State officials have already said they have little authority to oppose the price increases, which will last from January until June.

Some households may be eligible for the Connecticut Energy Assistance Program, where you can receive $200 to $600 depending on income level and household size.

https://portal.ct.gov/dss/Economic-Security/Winter-Heating-Assistance/Energy-Assistance---Winter-Heating

Some energy officials have proposed waiving the Jones Act, a federal law requiring that cargo transported between U.S. ports be carried on American ships.

In an October letter to President Joe Biden, Eversource CEO Joseph Nolan said that such a waiver would allow foreign-flagged vessels carrying liquid natural gas to stop at multiple U.S. ports, including import facilities in Everett, Massachusetts. Nolan also proposed using the Defense Production Act to boost domestic energy supplies.

Long-term solutions

A longer-term solution to increasing the supply of natural gas to New England would likely require adding additional transmission pipelines beyond the three that currently serve Connecticut, officials said, though doing so would be a costly initiative that could take years and would likely meet fierce opposition from environmental groups.

The pipeline infrastructure that transports gas has not been updated to meet the region’s demand, particularly in wintertime.

The CEO of Avangrid Networks, the utility division of United Illuminating's parent company, pointed to the decommissioning of four nuclear power plants in New England in recent decades as another cause of the reliance on natural gas.

“If we had more pipelines into the region, which is something we may need to consider someday, that would I think help to stabilize prices,” said Frank Reynolds, the president and CEO of United Illuminating.

Several of the state’s top officials, including Gov. Ned Lamont and his commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Katie Dykes, have instead pointed to the state’s efforts to transition away from fossil fuels entirely by 2040 as a vital component to reducing energy costs.

The earliest estimates for the completion of grid-scale renewable energy projects — such as a wind farm slated to be built off the coast of Rhode Island — are measured in years, however, and even then they are likely to account for only a fraction of the region’s energy needs.

- Casey

TW: Sexual assault, harassment

"In interviews, six current and former AMR New Haven employees – most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity – described a culture where women have for years been subjected to sexual comments and other inappropriate behavior at the hands of men they worked with, including supervisors."

One EMT has sued AMR New Haven. This is what her lawsuit alleges, from the article linked above.

"In late 2020, EMT Anna Broggi shared disturbing allegations with her supervisor at American Medical Response’s New Haven branch, according to a pending lawsuit.

Broggi told her supervisor that on a recent night out socializing and drinking with colleagues, one coworker forcibly kissed and molested her, using his hand to silence her as she repeatedly pleaded for him to stop, the lawsuit claims.

Company officials downplayed her allegations and responded mostly with inaction, dragging their feet to investigate and never offering her resources to cope with her trauma, the lawsuit says.

It alleges Broggi’s treatment was part of a broader pattern at an organization that allowed sexual harassment to take place with impunity." - Casey

https://www.ctinsider.com/living/article/Andy-Warhol-CT-estate-sale-drawing-auction-17587051.php

A woman found Warhol’s “Drawing of Queen Elizabeth II” at an estate sale underneath a pile of frames, an auctioneer with Connecticut’s Nest Egg Auctions said. The piece is drawn with red crayon on brown paper, and estimated to be either from the 70s or 80s.

The artwork will go on sale starting Dec. 31. The pre-sale auction estimate is between $10-20k but some of his more notable drawings can fetch upward of $60k, an auctioneer said.

- Casey