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Here’s Gov. Rell’s release after deciding to wait another month on funding the $15-million, 36,000-square-foot treatment and detention center planned for Bridgeport, which has been the subject of so much free election year publicity for people including Rep. Chris Caruso, who believes that the facility would be better off in Rell’s hometown of Brookfield or the Waterford district of Sen. Eileen Daily, a member of the State Bond Commission who would approve the Bridgeport project if it comes to a vote. Caruso’s release follows Rell’s.                                                                                                                                                                        

“Governor M. Jodi Rell today said that she is willing to delay for one month a decision by the state Bond Commission on funding a secure juvenile treatment center for girls in the hope of locating a suitable alternative location within the city of Bridgeport.

            But the Governor stressed that the facility is desperately needed and said if a new location cannot be identified she will go ahead with the current site at the Bond Commission’s next meeting.

            Rebutting allegations that she has not visited the site, Governor Rell said she has been there several times – most recently yesterday, when she made an unannounced tour of both the Virginia Avenue location where the girls’ home is scheduled to be built and several potential alternative locations.

            “This is not the first visit I have made to the site – but in light of the continued concerns some Bridgeport residents have expressed, I was willing to view that location one last time and look again at the alternatives,” Governor Rell said. “The alternatives I saw were not large enough. Perhaps there is still a suitable alternative out there, but time is running out. These girls are in need of a suitable treatment site – and they have been for years. The state has been without a place to provide services to these young girls since Long Lane School in Middletown was closed in 2003.

            “I am asking the Mayor and city officials to provide a list of acceptable alternative locations, including city-owned land, that Bridgeport may be willing to donate,” the Governor said.

            “Many of the concerns that people have about this proposal are misplaced,” Governor Rell said. “This is a place to provide treatment, not a correctional facility. It is like a home and school with extra security on the doors.”

            Contrary to the inflammatory rhetoric used by opponents of the home, the project has been under discussion with Bridgeport officials and residents since at least July 2008. Meetings were held in October 2008 including a session with the Department of Children and Families (DCF) community advisory council for the city and with the pastor of a neighborhood church. State Representative Toni Walker (D-93), co-Chair of the Legislature’s Human Services Committee, toured the site in December 2008.

            Opponents’ claims that the project has not been subject to state bidding procedures are also patently false. A public Request for Qualifications was issued by the state Department of Public Works on February 11, 2009, for project No. BY-YS-166-DB.

            The Governor said the 10-member Bond Commission is expected to approve the project whenever it is placed on the agenda. State Senator Eileen Daily (D-33), co-Chair of the Finance Committee, has committed to vote for the project at the next Bond Commission meeting if the effort to find an alternative location is unsuccessful.

            “The simple fact is the state has a responsibility to these girls,” Senator Daily said. “They have been getting the short end of the stick for too long. They need a place where we can give them the help they need to turn their young lives around.”

            The 36,000-square-foot center will accommodate girls 18 years old or younger who have been convicted of a delinquent offense. The facility will be relatively small, with 16 secure beds and 8 beds for girls transitioning from the secure center back to community residential facilities. DCF has worked with the advocacy community to design the facility and the program exclusively to meet the specific needs of girls.”

 CARUSO:

“This is a significant short term victory for the good people of Bridgeport. While we appreciate the decision by the Governor to delay for one month a vote by the state Bond Commission, the next step is for all appropriate parties to meet and select an appropriate alternative site. All of this could have been avoided if the administration had acted in good faith.”

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Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi is touting his long-shot gubernatorial candidacy’s platform supporting tolls on the interstates and this morning announced that he has a new web-based advertisement calling for electronic, barrier-free tolls.

“These tolls take traffic at regular speed, without slowing, and they could generate $1 billion a year,” Marconi said in a statement. “We pay tolls to drive through New York and Massachusetts. Why shouldn’t they pay to drive through Connecticut?” He says that the tolls would provide necessary money for transdportation expenses, possibly ignoring the fact that the General Assembly would raid the cash for operating funds; and attract business to the state. He recently called for tolls in an op-ed column in the Connecticut Post.

It can be found at: http://www.ctpost.com/default/article/How-barrier-free-tolls-can-save-Connecticut-292647.php

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 Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, whose office photograph of Ella T. Grasso is one of many indications that she wants to be governor, has planned a news conference this morning in the Capitol Press Room to announce that she has filed documents with the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals requesting that it reverse a decision made in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport last year that overturned sections of Connecticut’s landmark 2005 campaign-finance law.

 Bysiewicz, who has had an exploratory committee looking at the possibility of running for governor this year, will meet reporters at 10:30 and talk about becoming the first candidate to ask the appeals panel to overturn the district court judgment, which threw out major portions of the 2005 law. The lower-court judge charged that the General Assembly created massive obstacles for independent and minor-party candidates to obtain public financing. The state, led by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, is appealing the decision. House and Senate leaders have failed to agree on a compromise fix to the law, meaning that the 2010 elections could be thrust into chaos if the Second Circuit supports the lower court. Then there’s the issue of lawmakers raiding the election fund, created by a pot of unclaimed property, to balance the state’s budget. If we get a few more candidates for governor, it could conceivably bankrupt the fund.

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In one of the better rhymes of the new year, a “de-rail the jail” effort in the Capitol tomorrow with feature Rep. Chris Caruso and his former nemesis, Mayor Bill Finch, in a news conference aimed at the long-shot effort to defeat the $15-million, 36,000 square-foot Department of Children and Families treatment and detention facility for girls planned for Bridgeport’s Virginia Avenue in the Upper East Side. Caruso succeeded in getting the item postponed before the October meeting of the State Bond Commission, but Gov. Jodi Rell wants to dial it in on Friday. The opponents, including local politicians, business leaders, residents and state lawmakers, will be talking with reporters at 11 a.m. in Room 1-B of the Legislative Office Building.

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If you’ve wondered why first-term House Majority Leader Denise Merrill of Mansfield wants to run for secretary of the state, consider the state’s budgetary free fall, a desc3ent driven by a massive dropoff in revenues. Why would anyone want to run for election to the General Assembly this year or next?

Here’s Comptroller Nancy Wyman’s release from earlier today about how the state deficit “improves slightly” to a whopping $513.3 million:

“State Comptroller Nancy Wyman today projected the state will end the
2010 fiscal year with a budget deficit of $513.3 million – a modest
improvement since last month.

The $36.2 million improvement in the deficit was due to a net increase
in revenues of $9.4 million and net spending reductions of $26.8
million, Wyman said.

The revenue jump was mainly attributed to $58.4 million tied to the
Treasurer’s sale of unclaimed property escheated to the state. That
offset a $39 million drop in receipts of the sales tax and a $10 million
drop in collection of the tax that corporations pay on profits.

Collections of the income tax are expected to end the year about $212
million below original estimates, driven by the loss of more than 88,000
jobs in Connecticut since the recession began in March 2008. Those job
losses are wiping out any revenue gain associated with the recent tax
rate hike for upper-income residents.

Wyman noted that the payroll tax accounts for about 65 percent of the
state’s total  income tax receipts, which this year are expected to be
about $6.4 billion.

“Until the state stops losing jobs and the payroll taxes that go with
them, this deficit will continue to present difficult challenges for
policymakers,” Wyman said.

The $513.3 million deficit is based on a budget of $18.6 billion for
the fiscal year that ends June 30, 2010. The Governor’s budget office
is currently projecting a deficit of $327.9 million.”