Not much too comment on here, this AP article highlights, and lowlights the body of work the 5 month legislative session produced. From The Courant:

Major legislation that succeeded and failed in 2007

WINNERS:

JAMES TILLMAN - East Hartford man given $5 million in compensation for serving a prison term of more than 18 years for a rape that DNA evidence determined he did not commit.

ENERGY REFORM - After two years of debate, lawmakers passed large bill that includes everything from tax breaks for energy-efficient appliances to ways to reduce electricity demands at expensive peak times. But no immediate rate relief is expected.

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According to the powers that be in Corda’s administration this is the year that the impending dangers about the intercom system at Norwalk High, must, simply must, be addressed. No matter that there’s some doubts expressed about what is wrong with the system, but $200k is being requested to fix the problem.

Buried in Amando Pinto’s article is the other shoe, that is the one that Opdahl promised to drop at the only BOE finance committee meeting held this year. Opdahl managed to skate past the paper tigers of the BOE with his request to raid the Jefferson School rennovation funds to add some things that were apparently “missed” in the grand plans of rennovaitng Norwalk High.

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Jodi Bishop-Pullan was quoted as saying that the BOE isn’t supposed to meddle in how Corda’s administration is run. She was speaking of the budget process and oversight of the budget then. But this is now, and under her lackluster leadership, which gave us the ban on bake sales earlier in the year, we know see what she meant exactly by not meddling.

In full misguided glory, Jodi Bishop-Pullan is pushing the idea that any volunteer who, according to The Hour, who travel on overnight field trips, spend time with students outside of school, communicate with students electronically, or work with students multiple times, would be subject to self-financed fingerprinting and background checks.

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The Discovery channel started a new show aimed at teaching how it is that things like hockey sticks, get made. In the wee hours of the morning, shows like this play in between the infomercials that try and sell you weight loss pills and how to get rich selling real estate with no money down. Congress, in many ways, resembles this mix of hucksterism and process, with the occasional tabloid drama thrown in.

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This afternoon Chris Perone -D Norwalk shepherded through a bill that would create the first step towards creating high speed broad band Internet access. So what does it all mean? First, WIFI is Internet access that you get wirelessly. WHen you walk into a Starbucks and see people hunched over laptops they are more than likely busy emailing, IMing and surfing over WIFI.

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