Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
Not One Red Cent!
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 05/17/2009 - 19:33
It isn't often that I agree with, or promote conservative Republican websites. However, I found this website today, and thought it was too important to pass up.
Various conservative Republicans are urging their counterparts not to contribute One Red Cent to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
I couldn't agree more. Please, do not contribute to the NRSC. Here in Connecticut, there are two possible Republican candidates considering running against Sen. Dodd. Neither of them are particularly good candidates and we would all be better off if the NRSC doesn't spend money on a race against Sen. Dodd given the current crop of potential Republican candidates.
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 18:58The idyllic evening light faded on the children as they ran across the school ground. Inside, parents were chatting over the remains of a potluck dinner. It had brought back memories of my childhood, when I was one of the children running with the pack. The only thing that was missing was the fireflies, but it was still a little too chilly and too early in the year for them to be out. Sure, I spent time talking about town politics with new friends and Kim was at home feeling ill, but perhaps it was all that simple.
That was last night at the Multi-Age Group dinner at Beecher Road School in Woodbridge, CT. This morning, we continued with the spring idylls. Yes, the first stop was to get new medications for Kim, but while she was waiting to have her prescription filled, Fiona and I raced across the street to buy seeds and gardening tools.
Our yard is mossy and well shaded; not a prime location for a vegetable garden. We still manage to dry our clothes outside, and I gathered in some clothes this morning before the coming rain.
For our garden, the town of Woodbridge has community gardens. People can go rent a nice sunny and fertile plot of land to grow their own vegetables. We currently get our vegetables from a local community supported agriculture, or CSA farm. For our small family, we have difficulties using up all the vegetables we get each week. We don’t really need to raise additional vegetables.
Yet for me, the eighty dollars that we’ve spent on tools, seeds and the plot itself is perhaps more about relaxation, therapy, exercise and education for Fiona than about whatever we might ever get for food from our garden.
Our plot has lain fallow for a few years, and needs a lot of work. We’ve been doing all of it by hand, slowly clearing a bed and in the process discovering a small rose bush we hope to nurture back to health. Yet today, a man with a tractor at a neighboring plot offered to plow the whole plot under for us. We gladly took him up on the offer and when he was done, we started our planting.
At home in the evening, we had a simple meal; sausage, roasted potatoes and salad. The sausage was raised here in Connecticut and salad was made from greens in our CSA box. We washed it down with some hard cider that we had brewed from fresh cider from a local cider mill and bottled last fall.
Soon, we will sit back and watch a video that we checked out of the local library as we wait for the band of thunderstorms expected to pass through in the middle of the night.
Yes, it could be that it was all that simple then. It could be that through the current economic woes, more of us will find our way back to the simple pleasures of yesteryear. If so, wave at me when you pull up weeds in your plot in the community garden. I’ll give you a hand the way a neighbor gave me a hand today, and perhaps we can all share a couple bottles of home brewed hard cider afterwards.
The Future of Public Access Television in Connecticut
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 05/14/2009 - 08:03A few months ago, I was appointed to fill an opening in our town’s Government Access Television channel and then also to serve as our First Selectman’s designee to the Cable Access Provider for our region. Now, there is a bill before the Connecticut General Assembly concerning public access television channels, which includes the Government Access channels and it seems a good time to try and make sense out of what is going on in our state with respect to public access television.
Before I go any further, I must admit that my knowledge is incomplete and I continue to try to gather more information. To the extent that you can help me better understand the structure and issues around public access television, I would greatly appreciate it.
First, let me provide a little context. Cable television was initially offered as a regulated monopoly. They used public rights of way to run their cables to subscribers’ houses and as such need to be, at least in part, serving the public good. One way of doing this was to provide public, educational, and government access programming, or PEG programming.
A certain amount of their subscribers’ fees were to be set aside to provide this programming, and in the early days, cable companies provided studios and equipment for the public to use to create their own programs, as well as for schools and governments to use.
This was typically done on a regional basis tied to the cable companies’ franchises. For example, Woodbridge is part of Region 2, comprised of Bridgeport, Fairfield, Milford, Orange, Stratford, and Woodbridge. Cablevision is the cable company providing the service in this region.
Within each region is a Cable Advisory Council (CAC) which addresses issues of the cable company’s operation within the region. Somewhere along the line, people became concerned with the way cable companies were providing services to public access producers and a provision was made for third party providers, or Cable Access Providers (CAP) to handle the public access services.
In our region, a non-profit organization named Sound View Community Media is providing this service. Yet even this has not worked as well as people had hoped. Many municipalities wanted to set up their own town specific government access channels. This has been widely done and in Woodbridge the Woodbridge Government Access Television (WGATV) channel being highly successful.
So, where does the money come from and go? In our region, approximately $600,000 is collected from Cablevision subscriber fees. Most of this goes to Sound View Community Access. However, as a result of the move towards town specific programming, some of the money goes to yet another group that provides grants to towns for their government and educational programming. In addition to this, many towns provide additional funding for government and educational programming in their town budgets.
If this isn’t complicated enough already, cable television has now been opened up to competition. AT&T is offering a service called U-verse. The licensing changed. Cable companies have been licensed as Community Antenna Television Companies (CATC). These licenses are typically for a region. A new type of license has now been created for Cable Franchise Authorities (CFA). These are typically statewide licenses. My understanding is that Cablevision has applied for and received a CFA license now, in addition to its CATC license. There are also rumors that Verizon is likely to file for a CFA license by the end of the year.
As the cable market opens up to competition, questions have arisen about the future of Cable Advisory Commissions and Community Access Providers. Will, or should CACs be subsumed into the Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC)? People have often complained about DPUC being a little too close with the utilities that they are supposed to control, and such an action might result in considerable pushback. In addition, the CACs provide an important role in keeping a local and regional voices in the process.
In addition, as state wide Cable Franchise Authorities emerge, what how should local community access programming be handled? Currently, in region two, there are three channels, a public channel, an educational channel and a government channel that are specific to the region, and in some cases are town specific. In addition, there is the CT-N network which broadcasts events from the State Capitol.
Will state wide CFAs provide the same sort of coverage, or will they try to roll up various channels to statewide channels? There are pluses and minuses to this. For the local government and education access channels, it looks mostly negative and only an exacerbation of the issues between town specific and region specific programming. Yet for the public access and perhaps in some cases the educational access channels, there is a potential advantage of having your programming viewed by a larger audience.
All of this leads us to the bill currently being considered by the General Assembly. HB 6604, An Act Concerning Public Access Television Channels attempts to address some of these issues. The bill was initially debated back in March with the League of Women Voters along with representatives of community and government access channels and Cable Advisory Councils speaking in favor of the bill.
AT&T strongly opposed the bill during the hearings and I am told is currently lobbying hard against the bill and particularly against language introduced by Rep. Vickie Nardello clarifying what companies like AT&T must carry and strengthening oversight of the process.
People have reported that AT&T threatens to pull out of the cable market if these provisions are passed. However, they did not pull out of Illinois when stricter provisions were passed, and it is hard to image that they would cede further market share to the cable companies that are providing integrated telephony, cable and Internet access.
Others have opposed the bill because they view it as being too weak in supporting community access. In these days where we see the significant decline of local news coverage by new newspapers, it is all the more important to maintain and promote community access television and HB 6604 should be strongly supported along with Rep. Nardello’s amendment, despite any potential shortcomings.
Fair Elections Now Act
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 14:09Hartford - Chair of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman John Larson was in town today to talk about the Fair Elections Now Act, a bill he has introduced in the House of Representatives to publicly fund congressional races. Congressman Larson joined in an informal chat with bloggers and the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives, Representative Chris Donovan, and the President of Common Cause, former Congressman Bob Edgar. They talked about various sponsors of the bill, including Congresswoman Chellie Pingree. Ms. Pingree represents the First Congressional District in Maine. She is the former President of Common Cause, as well as the mother of Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, Representative Hannah Pingree.
Maine is one of the states that has public financing of state legislative races, and they talked about Representative Pingree’s campaign where she had the opportunity to go door to door speaking with voters instead of spending time on fundraising.
They spoke about United States Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano who had run for and been elected governor of Arizona under that state’s public financing of elections. Secretary Napolitano spoke about how the public financing laws in her state allowed her to have fundraisers in poorer neighborhoods, something that wasn’t feasible under the previous system.
Congressman Larson went on to reference the great quote of Louis Brandeis, “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory”. Connecticut, Maine and Arizona have acted as laboratories to establish successful programs for the public funding of elections.
Speaker Donovan spoke about what has been learned here in Connecticut. He noted that we have gotten to this new system of funding elections via the old system. He acknowledged that there had been some resistance and that there have been a few bumps along the road. However, he considers the program to be a great success, particularly in terms of getting candidates better in touch with their local constituents.
Following the informal chat, Congressman Larson, Speaker Donovan, and former Congressman Edgar went to a formal press conference which included Congressman Chris Murphy and Congressman Joe Courtney. All the members of the Connecticut Congressional delegation have signed on to co-sponsor the Fair Elections Now Act.
Congressman Larson introduced Congressman Murphy and Congressman Courtney as examples of what grassroots networking is all about. Congressman Murphy talked about the importance of spending time talking to constituents instead of spending time dialing for dollars.
Will the Federal Congress learn from the experiments of publicly funded elections here in Connecticut, as well as in Maine and Arizona? Congressman Larson hopes to see congress act on this bill this year.
Selecting a Polling Place to Audit
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 10:54
Hartford – Friday, at 10 AM, the Secretary of State’s office selected two polling precincts whose results will be audited as required by Public Act 07-194. There were thirteen possible precincts to be selected, eight in Naugatuck, and one each in Andover, Bethany, Bolton, Union and Woodbridge. However, since Bethany, Bolton and Union were already scheduled to have recounts as a result of the closeness of the elections, the only towns that could in the drawing were Andover, Naugatuck and Woodbridge. Given that Naugatuck had four times as many polling places as the two other towns combined, it is not surprising that both polling places turned out to be in Naugatuck.
This is about the sixth time that the Secretary of State’s office has had such a drawing and since it was for a very small number of towns, it drew little media attention. Other attendees include Luther Weeks, Executive Director of CTVotersCount.org and Denise Weeks, Co-Founder.
