The Courant is till keeping the pressure on Jim Amann-D and Larry Cafero-R over their day jobs and whether those jobs constitute a conflict of interest or ethical issue. From the Courant:

In his life outside the legislature, House Majority Leader Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, works for a state employee union that is a political player at the state Capitol.

Across the aisle, House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, is a partner in Brown Rudnick, an international law firm with a subsidiary that lobbies the General Assembly.

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The budget season is barely under way and already I feel a sense of deja vu while sitting through the Department of Public Works presentation. The highlights? DPW prepared a tabbed binder to go through the budget requests. It was very thick. They went through every tab, and no, I don’t mean the diet soda.

Ok the Public Works Dept Requested 18,234,000 which is an increase of $2 million or a 15.2 % increase.

Tom Hamilton recommend 16,056,066 or a 1.45% increase. He gave a quick explanation involving accounts for workers comp reduction, other general liability calculations reductions, (these are based on actual loss experience), and the Pubic works department praised the DPW for some success in reducing workers comp filings.

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To being with, thanks to all of you for stopping by and reading. It’s been quite the busy day with comments flying in from as far as Italy. I tried to answer as much as I could today, but I missed something, please let me know. Tonight I attended the BET review of the DPW budget, so they’ll be a post on that in a bit. Meanwhile there’s been some interesting posts about many things going on in Norwalk that have people concerned. I hope to highlight some of those in addition to my usual rants. Speaking of which, there’s been a few emailers who suggested that I create an open spot for people to use to post anything that’s going on. So, I’ll be creating a daily rant page/section/something to accommodate whatever is on your minds.

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A little self promotion here, today’s Hour and Advocate feature articles about this site and yours truly and the mysterious workings that fuel the blog coverage of Norwalk. Overall, the coverage is nice and positive, except for Democratic Town Chair Galen Wells, who had this to say From Matt Breslow’s Advocate article:

But Democratic Town Committee Chairwoman Galen Wells said a problem with blogs by Lightfield and others is the lack of oversight by an editor to ensure accuracy.

“Much of what she says is just plain not true,” Wells said.

There are people Lightfield doesn’t like, Wells said.

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The last time I attended a political party town committee meeting, it was the Democratic Town Committee meeting and I got to to preview the new voting machines and sit through a very long meeting with many references to points of order. In stark contrast, the RTC meeting was light on substance and way more casual, starting promptly at 7:30 pm and ending at 8:03 pm. It struck me that the Republicans managed to get through an entire meeting agenda in the same amount of time that the Democrats, well only a couple of Democrats really, managed to get through the question of whether to kick in $30 for an charitable ad book buy. Tonight, the DTC also held their meeting next door to the RTC meeting and while I had hoped that I could swing both, I decided to let the spotlight rest on the Republicans tonight and will cycle back to the Democrats the next time.

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The fixation with how many luxury cars are registered in Greenwich is annoying. Somehow, the discussion about eliminating the car tax always turns to Greenwich, and how rich people will get a bigger tax break than any one else if the car tax was eliminated. This is such a silly argument. With a mil rate of 7.5, Greenwich car owners barely pay a car tax to begin with. Let’s look at the list of registered “luxury” cars in Greenwich courtesy of today’s Courant article:

3,769 BMWs

3,474 Mercedes-Benzes

931 Porsches

94 Ferraris

90 Bentleys

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Part of the art of blogging is finding things that people want to read about and better yet, talk about. So I often check other blogs for what is news in the blogsphere. Tonight I found a post by Weicker Liker on Connecticut Local Politics (CLP) which linked back to MyLeftNutmeg (MLN). And the comments following that post were less than happy over the post appearing on MyLeftNutmeg, which is an interesting reaction to what seemed to me a fairly interesting post. Roiling debates with people that have differing views is a good thing, but at MLN, it’s batten down the hatches time, and attack the dissenter. For me at least, I prefer the dissent and debate, it’s what makes watching the British Parliament way more interesting than watching C-Span. But I digress … the post for your review:

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One thing that strikes me about the debate about the budget cap is that there’s even a debate. When the Tsunami flooded Indonesia and Thailand, the world rose to the occasion of helping the victims. When Katrina, Rita and then Wilma swept in from the Gulf sea, again the world recognized that we all needed to help out. I’m not saying that the flooding in Norwalk is as significant by any means. But the failure of the levies in New Orleans bear a similarity in that those New Orleans levies failed because the investment in improving them was not made. And here’s Norwalk’s little Katrina moment, because parts of Norwalk is flooding, increasingly each month. Norwalk’s flooding is not a mystery.

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It’s always a good thing to check and measure progress towards a goal, and tonight we have a nifty document containing the historical BOE budget, the student enrollment and some other numeric details that really make you wonder if the BOE collectively needs a historical finance instruction specialist to help them out.

Granted inflation takes it’s toll, and energy costs take a toll as well, but the inescapable fact is that this BOE simply will not trim, will not defer, will not compromise. It’s like they collectively channel Winston Churchill, and I paraphrase;

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Cafeinated Geek Girl (CGG) posts the update on Connecticut Local Politics announcing the vote tally on SB 1343 An Act Concerning Compassionate Care for Victims of Sexual Assault What is that Bruce Morris listed there under the Nays? From her post:

List of Committee Members who voted Yea:

• Sen. Jonathan Harris, Co-Chair
• Rep. Peter Vilano, Co-Chair
• Rep. Catherine Abercrombie, Vice Chair
• Rep. Lile Gibbons, Ranking Member
• Rep. Jason Bartlett (one of 1343’s co-sponsors)
• Rep. Larry Butler
• Rep. Michael Caron
• Rep. Clark Chapin
• Rep. Karen Jarmoc
• Rep. Linda Orange

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