Following a separate forum at the Meriden Senior Center Wednesday morning, Esty stood firmly by her decision to hold closed meetings with limitations on news media.
"We're looking to get good ideas and really listen to what people around our district have to say," said Esty, a Democrat. "They might not want to be in a public meeting and they might not want to be standing at a public meeting where they might feel as they are part of a press conference ... This is to brainstorm in a safe place where everyone can be respected, everyone can be listened to and nobody was obliged to talk on the record if they didn't feel comfortable with that because they are still working out their ideas and I think we are in a little different place in this district than most districts."
I don't know what's more laughable, Esty's arrogance or the fact that the media is allowing her to get away with this nonsense...is it 2014 yet?
The number of organized Connecticut workers as a percentage of the total work force in 2012 hit its lowest level in more than two decades, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Fourteen percent of all Connecticut workers were union members, down from 16.8 percent in 2011 and from 17.3 percent as recently the as 2009. In 1995, the figure was 20.2 percent.
Nationally, the percentage of organized workers continued its 23-year decline in 2012, hitting 11.3 percent. It was 11.8 percent in 2011.
Darnell Crosland, the attorney representing Ernie Newton, told OIB this morning he'll be filing a federal civil rights complaint against the Connecticut Elections Enforcement Commission including its ex-chairman Stephen Cashman for harassment and selective prosecution following state charges accusing Newton of falsifying $500 in campaign donations to receive roughly $80,000 in public funds for his 2012 State Senate primary campaign won by Andres Ayala.
Crosland says from the start the state selectively targeted Newton for prosecution after Cashman had cast a surprise vote against authorizing public funds for Newton while other commissioners voted in support. Nothing in state law, Crosland says, allowed Cashman to cast a no vote after EEC staff recommended approval. Crosland says Cashman's action triggered a bias against Newton to nitpick all aspects of Newton's campaign finance reports"down to the dollar" in an effort to qualify for the state's Citizen Election Program of publicly financed races. Cashman had announced at the meeting authorizing public funds for Newton that he could not see how he could vote yes in light of Newton's prior conviction on federal corruption charges.
Nicole Hockley said she held the hand of her 6-year-old son, Dylan, as he lay in the casket at his funeral.
"No parent should hold this memory of their child. Neither should any parent [have] to watch their living child try to understand why his little brother is no longer with them," she told state legislators at a public hearing Wednesday night in the Newtown High School auditorium.
A crowd of several hundred, the vast majority from Newtown and in favor of stronger gun restrictions, fell silent as Hockley sat at a microphone and told of the grief of her older son Jake, 8, a third-grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 first-graders and six women staff members were killed by 20-year-old Adam Lanza using a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
"The memory of [Jake] wailing when Dylan died will stay with me for a lifetime. He describes Dec. 14 as 'the day hell came to my school,'" Hockley said as her husband, Ian, sat beside her. Jake has had to "wrestle with fear" that such an attack may happen again, Hockley said.
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