It’s really been a slow news series of days. Sure there’s some weird news of Norwalk items, like former Mayor Alex Knopp getting a job after 3 years. Is the economy really that bad that this makes a news report? I can’t wait to read how former dog catcher buys a cat next. Then there’s the hat being tossed into the ring of registrar, with BET member Stuart Wells wanting to clean up the registrars office. Wonder if he means to revisit his role in the Pagano porn incident? I’m sure that will make the race between Betty Bondi and Stuart Wells oh-so interesting. With both incumbent registrars looking at challenges, the election season is shaping up to be a veritable mud bowl. Remember bud bowls? Ahem, I digress.

Meanwhile, it turns out that those UCONN students who found dead people on the voter roles weren’t exactly accurate. The secretary of state issued a longish press release on that subject, and the author of the Courant article said just having one dead person on the rolls shows there are problems. Er, one? Is that what it came down too? And not in Norwalk? Now I’ll never get the script optioned.

After the press conference at City Hall, the Hour is reporting that there are three DPW grievances filed with the state. And in other labor management news, management has decided that labor should be replaced by outsourcing.

The Connecticut legislature is busy trying to end the session with a flurry of activity. The House passed a persistent offender bill, the Courant provides highlights:

- Under current law, a persistent offender with one previous violent conviction faces up to 40 years in prison for a second offense. The bill doubles the minimum and can increase maximum sentences a judge can impose.

- Under current law, a repeat criminal with two prior violent convictions faces up to life in prison, defined as up to 60 years. This bill keeps the life sentence as the maximum penalty, but triples the minimum sentence that can be imposed.

- Applicable persistent felonies include murder, manslaughter, arson, kidnapping, assault, sexual assault, home invasion, robbery and burglary.

- Bill requires a prosecutor to state on the record specific reasons for not seeking enhanced penalties for someone with two prior, dangerous felony convictions.

- Bill sets aside $10 million to hire more prosecutors, public defenders, correctional and parole officers. Funding also included for GPS tracking of parolees, alternative housing for parolees, truancy prevention, drug programs, and more staff at the State Police Major Crime Squad.

Which makes the next item sort of surprising. Both Democratic and Republican legislators are willing to just pass the budget, which after 3 months of debating means that they could have just passed the budget early on and worked on something important, like property tax reform. The budget, for the record, is the same one they crafted last year. For point of reference, last year gas was barely breaking $3/gallon, the stock market was 30% higher, and the dollar was stronger. Nothing to tweak here, keep moving along. Here’s a priceless quote:

“It looks like Connecticut must do what families across the state are doing, and that is tighten our belts,” Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn, said in a statement released by his spokesman. “We need an agreement by early next week or there won’t be a new budget.”

The change in attitude on the budget came as top legislators and budget analysts for the Office of Fiscal Analysis and the Office of Policy and Management studied the downtrend in state revenues as the economy continues to slow. The state is likely to finish the current fiscal year with barely any surplus. The latest projected surplus is $15.7 million, which is far less than one-half of 1 percent of the overall state budget of more than $18 billion.

Word started spreading around the Capitol on Friday night, but some of the top representatives for the nursing homes and the nonprofits were not in the hallways.

“They’re going to be horrified,” said Rep. Denise Merrill, D-Mansfield, the co-chairwoman of the budget-writing committee. “I’m horrified. We just can’t make it add up. What can I say?”

With time running out in the legislative session, legislators sat down in a major meeting on Friday and started moving toward a growing consensus that doing nothing might be the best way.

“This is D-Day. We have to make a decision,” Merrill said. “We don’t think we have the revenue. … It’s terrible. We just don’t have enough money.”

Last I checked, tightening the belt means spending less. Bad choice of metaphor there.

Lastly, but not leastly, there is an individual who keeps posting here using other people’s words without attribution. That is called plagiarism. It will not be tolerated. I will be taking down the ones that I discover. Free speech means your speech, not someone else’s.