New bills, cold weather response, election news

Here are highlights from last week’s political news in Connecticut.

Connecticut Senators Chris Dodd (D) and Joe Lieberman (I) announced that a little more than $1.4 million from the Assistance to Fire Fighters Grant Program will go to 16 fire departments in the state, aimed at improving fire fighters’ services and safety.

Representative Rosa DeLauro (D, CT – 3rd District) introduced a bill that would prevent foreign corporations from influencing the electoral process in the country. A week earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that the government cannot limit foreign individuals, foreign corporations or foreign associations from influencing the country’s political process. According to Representative DeLauro, multinational corporations controlled by foreigners will not receive the same protection as the ones controlled by Americans, if the bill passes the two houses and is signed by President Obama.

Another legislation that Rosa DeLauro introduced is a bill that would “establish a bank defined as an independent entity that would leverage private dollars to invest in transportation, environment, telecommunications, and energy products of merit,” as reported on her website.

The House Judiciary Committee passed unanimously Representative Chris Murphy’s (D, CT – 5th District) “Billy’s Law,” aimed at helping people whose loved ones have gone missing by easing their access to information about their missing person and also add information themselves about that person. According to Representative Murphy’s website, the bill would provide case profile for the missing that only their loved ones would know.

In Hartford, Governor M. Jodi Rell announced that the state will help Nestle Waters, Inc. keep its North American headquarters in Fairfield County in an effort to preserve 475 jobs at its corporate offices, and add 25 more over the next three years, or find a different Connecticut location – allegedly near its two branch delivery locations in the towns of North Haven and Bozrah. The state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) is offering the company a $4 million low interest loan in helping it move. Other incentives are also included.

State residents can now print their UC-1099G tax form printed directly from the state Department of Labor’s website thus reportedly creating a more efficient environment to report recipients’ benefits to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Governor Rell directed the state Department of Social Services (DSS) and the state Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (DEMHS) to coordinate a statewide effort with police departments, fire departments and local emergency managers in providing shelters to the ones who need them due to the extremely low temperatures throughout Connecticut these few days.

Meanwhile, CTNewsJunkie reports that the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, Inc. (CAHCF) filed a federal lawsuit against Governor Rell. The organization claims that the state has underpaid nursing homes $100 million annually and that it doesn’t assure that its Medicaid beneficiaries have access to efficient, economical or quality nursing facility services to the same extent as Medicaid beneficiaries elsewhere. M. Jodi Rell’s spokesman, Rich Harris, claimed that Connecticut’s payment rates were among the highest in the nation. It was also reported that the state currently pays nursing home care $1.2 billion a year for treating its Medicaid patients.

A Superior Court jury in Waterbury ruled that Connecticut will have to pay Computer Plus Center Inc. the sum of $18 million for violating its owner’s civil rights and ruining her business with false claims that she had broken her contract with the state. Among these claims were that the company was selling the state computers that lacked the proper parts. In 2003, the state seeked $1.75 million in damages from the company in a lawsuit filed by today’s state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura (D) announced that he is not going to run for Attorney General but added that he might run for Governor. Contenders, confirmed or potential, for the Democratic Party nomination for the highest position in Hartford already include Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont, former Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy, former state House Speaker Jim Amann, state Senator Gary LeBeau, Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi, Simsbury First Selectwoman Mary Glassman and health care activist Juan Figueroa.

On the Republican side, MetroHartford Alliance regional chamber of commerce CEO R. Nelson “Oz” Griebel entered the race. He joins Lieutenant-Governor Michael Fedele, businessman and former U.S. Ambassador in Ireland Tom Foley, former U.S. Representative and current professor on national security policy at the University of New Haven Larry DeNardis, and Chester First Selectman Tom Marsh. Among possible contenderst for the governor’s office that are widely mentioned are Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton and former U.S. Representative Chris Shays but they have not officially begun exploring or entered the race yet.