70 years after opening its doors, the Annex Building at the Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center in Montville is closing for good. Governor Dannel Malloy says it’s all because the state’s prison population is dropping substantially. Malloy says shutting down the Radgowski Annex will save the state over three-million dollars a year. The facility had 254 inmates, all of whom have been relocated. 21 correction employees have also been transferred. The state’s declining prison population has led to the closure of several correctional facilities, including the Gates Correctional Institution in East Lyme in June of 2011 and the Niantic Annex last year.
ANOTHER DERBYGATE HEARING
Three Norwich Public Utilities officials will again go before the city’s ethics commission this Monday, after complaints were filed against them. The probable cause hearing will determine whether NPU General manager John Bilda, Division Manager Steve Sinko, and Public Utilities Commission Vice-Chairman Robert Groner violated the city’s ethics codes by attending an October 2015 trip to the Greenbriar Resort in Virginia, all on the dime of the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative. The three have already been found to have violated ethics regulations by attending an all-expense paid trip by CMEEC last May to the Kentucky Derby. Monday night’s hearing, open to the public, begins at 6 PM at City Hall.
SPEEDBOWL OWNER’S ASSETS COULD BE FROZEN
As much as 10-million dollars of the assets belonging to the owner of the New London-Waterford Speedbowl could be frozen, under legal action filed Wednesday. Attorney Joel Faxon is representing two victims of an alleged Danbury-based prostitution ring that had wealthy clients pay for sex with drugged mentally-challenged young men. Speedbowl owner Bruce Bemer is one of two men charged with patronizing the males. The alleged leader of the human-trafficking operation has also been arrested. Faxon says the hearing on his motion is set for April 24th, but could be expedited. Faxon filed the legal action in Bridgeport Superior Court.
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR DIES IN CAR CRASH
A Holocaust survivor doesn’t survive a car crash in Colchester yesterday afternoon. Police say 91-year-old Henny Simon died in a one-car accident on Route 354 around 3. She survived Nazi concentration camps in Latvia and Poland. Simon lived in Colchester since the 1940’s. Her funeral will be Friday afternoon in Colchester.
AUTOPSY ON PANCAKE EATER
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – A medical examiner has ruled that a Connecticut college student who choked on pancakes during an eating contest on campus died of accidental asphyxia. The New York City chief medical examiner’s office released autopsy results Wednesday for Caitlin Nelson, a 20-year-old from Clark, New Jersey, who attended Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. The official cause of death was “asphyxia due to obstruction of airway by bolus of food.” Nelson died at a hospital in New York on Sunday, three days after collapsing during a pancake-eating contest. Nursing students and first-responders performed lifesaving measures at the scene, and she was transported to a hospital in critical condition. Her father, James, was a Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police officer who died on 9/11 when Caitlin was 5.
EAST WINDSOR CASINO 50/50
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz says legislation allowing a new tribal casino in East Windsor has a “50-50 chance” of coming up for a vote in this year’s legislative session. The Democrat said Wednesday that Attorney General George Jepsen’s recent letter to Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy outlining his concerns with the proposal put the bill “in a more difficult spot.” Jepsen wrote that the risks associated with authorizing Connecticut’s first casino on nontribal reservation land, including to the state’s current revenue-sharing agreement with the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes, “are not insubstantial.” and there was no guarantee those risks could be reduced. The two tribes, which own Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino, want to build a satellite casino to compete with a $950 million casino being built in Springfield, Massachusetts.
HOSPITAL TAX DEBATE
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – The Democratic leader of the Connecticut House of Representatives says a contentious proposal by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to allow municipalities to tax hospitals “is not a dead issue,” but an alternative might be in the works. Malloy, also a Democrat, has called for ending the local property tax exemption that hospitals have enjoyed for years. In return, Malloy’s $20 billion budget proposal boosts total funding to the hospital industry by $28 million, a figure that includes anticipated new federal Medicaid reimbursement funds. House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz says he’s “trying to explore other possibilities to do the same thing,” including new investments in cities and encouraging hospitals to take advantage of all available federal reimbursement opportunities. The Connecticut Hospital Association is urging lawmakers to scrap Malloy’s proposal.
