Political Capitol

Who knew? If you call Attorney General and Greenwich resident Richard Blumenthal’s press office, there’s a good chance Chris Hoffman will answer.

I won’t call Hoffman Blumenthal’s spokesman because Blumenthal likes to call reporters directly as opposed to having Hoffman or other staff speak on his behalf.

But it turns out Hoffman also loves food and writes about it on a cool blog of his own here.

I’ve actually never met Hoffman face-to-face, and learning this was kind of like bumping into a school teacher in the grocery store. You never really considered they had a life and interests outside of the classroom.

During her confirmation hearing last week to be appointed to the state Board of Education, Linda McMahon, CEO of Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment, provided lawmakers an impromptu history lesson.

McMahon’s nomination – announced by Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in January – has been criticized by a few legislators who disapprove of the violence and sex in WWE programming.

At one point McMahon defended her business – which she continually said was a form of entertainment, not a real sport – by asking legislators: “Did you know Abraham Lincoln was a professional wrestler who traveled around on the carnival circuit?”

In honor of Lincoln’s birthday I decided to spend a few moments trying to find out if this is true. And it looks like it is, sort of. He did engage in a couple of wrestling matches, although I could not find anything indicating he did it professionally to make any sort of living.

His wrestling activities did not warrant recognition on the new pennies.

Maybe McMahon was thinking of that episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk meets Lincoln and the two end up brawling with a bunch of historical figures on an alien planet.

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell has extended invitations to the General Assembly, municipal groups, a state construction association, and various state departments to help her determine the final list of “shovel-ready” projects to be funded by federal economic stimulus cash.

The administration earlier this winter asked city and town leaders to submit information on any infrastructure projects ready for a ground-breaking should federal lawmakers provide states with the money.

In late January Rell spokesman Christopher Cooper told me her office had received about $5 billion worth of proposals, including submissions from the state departments of Transportation, Public Works and Economic and Community Development.

And some local elected officials from Bridgeport and Stamford have actually been urging Congress to send the money to them DIRECTLY because they don’t trust the state’s ability to fairly divvy it up and get the cash out the door.

So it’s safe to say there is going to be A LOT of pressure on the folks helping Rell make the hard choices, particularly the state legislators and representatives from the Connecticut conferences of municipalities and small towns.

Another Rell spokesman – Rich Harris – said today the first meeting to review the list is Feb. 26th.

“I can’t tell you with any certainty how long it will take us to sort through (it),” Harris said. “It’s obviously a priority.”

It’s probably not a big surprise to anyone that Greenwich resident Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today refused to show even a hint of excitement about his standing in the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

Not only is Blumenthal, a Democrat, generally pretty popular, but he would also beat U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the self-described “independent Democrat” from Stamford,  should he choose to challenge him in 2012.

In a brief interview this afternoon Blumenthal laughed when asked if he got a little smile on his face upon hearing of the Q poll results. He gave his standard response when asked about his political future – that he is focused on continuing to be the best AG he can and on winning re-election in 2010.

But something tells me tonight, when his staff has headed home for the day and Blumenthal is burning the midnight oil, he’s going celebrate like Christopher Walken in that Fatboy Slim video.

Then visit Sen. Gayle Slossberg’s, D-Milford, office at the capitol.

Slossberg is co-chairman of the Government Administration and Elections Committee, which will be vetting all the proposals to restructure state government as lawmakers grapple to close the gaping budget deficit.

They’ll start with changes proposed last week by Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in her budget address.

But Slossberg has her own ideas, and they’re beginning to take shape on the walls of her office. She has taped up different colored sheets of paper listing the make-up of state departments, their costs and if/how they relate/coordinate to other agencies.

Slossberg gave me a glimpse of the arrangement tonight and joked her colleagues are telling her she’s acting like the math genius in the film “A Beautiful Mind.”

At one point Rep. John Hetherington, R-New Canaan, whose office is next to Slossberg’s, stuck his head in the doorway and said “So that’s ‘the wall’.”

During her budget address Wednesday Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell recommended cancelling around $400 million in projects the General Assembly – both Democrats and Republicans – over the past few years had authorized be funded.

The list of those projects was released yesterday and myself and many other reporters at the capitol wrote stories about the impact Rell’s cancellations would have on their cities and towns.

I was amused by the responses I got from some legislators on both sides of the aisle about how it’s really not a big deal because the money was NEVER a sure thing.

The way the process works is the legislature agrees to a so-called bond package that represents a certain amount of money they are willing to borrow to pay for these items – everything from work on a tourist attraction to park improvements to flood mitigation and emergency response equipment.

But then it’s up to Rell, as chairman of the state Bond Commission, to put the items on that group’s agenda so the money can be released. Democrats in particular have long griped that Rell never releases enough bonds and tends to favor her own pet projects. The Governor asserts, as she did Wednesday, that she is carefully controlling the state’s long-term debt.

So anyway, yeah, lawmakers responding to Rell’s proposed “cancellations” all downplayed the decision as not mattering much because it was questionable whether she’d ever have released the bond money.

And yet it’s not hard to find the press releases legislators sent out about past bond packages trumpeting the money they had secured for their towns.

Here’s a press release from a few years ago out of Norwalk. Here’s one from Stamford. And here’s a press release from Greenwich.

So basically the message from legislators is money in the bond package is “real money” when they are able to take credit for passing it, and “play money” when the Governor cancels their projects.

Linda McMahon, CEO of the Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment and a Greenwich resident, was grilled this afternoon by lawmakers over her being nominated by Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell to the state Board of Education.

Several Democrats on the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee expressed concerns about McMahon’s lack of education credentials but also about the product she promotes through WWE.

Rep. Shawn Johnston, D-Putnam, said he was watching some WWE footage on the internet before the hearing and had to get up and shut the door to his office.

“I was afraid someone was going to walk by and think I was watching pornography on a capitol computer,” Johnston said. He said he admires McMahon’s business background but has concerns about appointing someone “who has made their living selling things I do not thimk we shoudl sell to our children” to the school board.

Republicans like Sen. John McKinney, R-Fairfield – and McMahon herself – argued their colleagues need to seperate the entertainment she promotes from the business skills and outsider’s perspective she could bring to the voluntary role.

Stamford Mayor and potential gubernatorial candidate Dannel Malloy agrees. Malloy, a Democrat who will take most opportunities to criticize Rell’s leadership, submitted a letter to lawmakers on McMahon’s behalf.

“Ms. McMahon has expressed a strong interest in improving the lives of young people in our community and as a global leader in media and entertainment, her community-mindedness and business leadership bring keen insights to public policy making and program administration,” Malloy wrote. “By enlisting such corporate leadership, government weaves the business community into the everyday rhythm of our state thereby ensuring long term public-private cooperation and success. Ms. McMahon’s background presents just such an opportunity for the state as she is considered by your committee.”

Malloy’s letter was packaged behind one sent on McMahon’s behalf by another gubernatorial hopeful – Democratic Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s new two-year budget proposal includes funding to staff a reconstituted Department on Aging.

Rell in December had axed money set aside for the department to deal with the current fiscal year’s deficit. I blogged about it, which was a mistake because it caused her office staff to call me on a day I took off for Christmas shopping to complain she had not actually abandoned the proposal. So I now associate the Department of Aging with Borders Books and the hot chocolate I was drinking when I called Rell’s office back that day.

But Rell IS axing the Commission on Aging – which her budget director, Robert Genuario of Norwalk, acknowledged probably will not go over well with some of the same people who have been pushing for the Department on Aging.