Steady Habits: A CT Mirror Podcast

In the fledgling cannabis industry, large companies have quickly risen to dominate the market in states where pot is now legal.  But as regulators begin awarding licenses to select adult-use operators and businesses scramble to build out capacity, cannabis entrepreneurs, customers and communities are increasingly concerned about equity — whether there really is room for everyone. Massachusetts is...

Connecticut lawmakers have agreed to provide a legal “safe harbor” to women from states with restrictive abortion laws who get abortions in Connecticut, as well as the clinicians who provide them. The law was passed earlier this year, before the Supreme Court voted to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. CT Mirror's Mark Pazniokas spoke with host Ebong Udoma about the reaction to the Roe deci...

If state officials order tax cuts, campaign on them, then repeal them after Election Day but before taxpayers ever benefit, is that a tax hike? Is it merely annoying but not harmful? That's the debate underway in this year’s state elections. CT Mirror budget guru Keith Phaneuf joins host Ebong Udoma to explain what's at stake in the Connecticut governor's race. You can read his story here, See omn...

Public records show that at least five municipalities in Connecticut have allocated millions of dollars provided through the American Rescue Plan Act to equip local police departments with a variety of surveillance technology, which has raised concerns about privacy and civil liberties in the past. Investigative reporter Dave Altimari tells host Ebong Udoma what supporters and detractors are sayin...

During the pandemic, mid-career and older nurses have experienced burnout, left emergency departments and intensive care units for less stressful positions or retired early. Many younger nurses opted for lucrative traveling assignments. Nurses periodically fell ill with COVID and had to stay home, placing further stress on health care facilities. The approximately 2,000 nurses graduating from Conn...

In Killingworth, environmentalists and public officials are trying to stop the Boy Scouts of America from selling its wooded 252-acre Deer Lake Scout Reservation to a developer. The situation, including a lawsuit, is another example of the whack-a-mole approach conservationists are often forced to take to save some of the state’s dwindling supply of open land.  CT Mirror's Tom Condon ex...

CT Mirror has a new podcast! If you're a fan of Steady Habits, we'd love for you to check out John's new project which he's co-hosting with Mercy Quaye, CT Mirror's Sightlines op ed columnist. So as a bonus for our Steady Habits subscribers, here's the first episode of Untold. Like what you hear? You can subscribe to get all four episodes of the first season of Untold here . Or find it on Apple Po...

CT Mirror Capitol Bureau Chief Mark Pazniokas joins host John Dankosky to recap a busy, election-year legislative session and preview what’s ahead between now and November. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Connecticut, 88% of white parents start off breastfeeding their newborns, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For Black parents, that number is 84%, and for Hispanic parents, it’s 85%. That means those communities face a disparate impact from the recent baby formula shortage. Low-income families have also been harder hit. Parents who rely on the federal...

Getting food waste — more euphemistically, organics — out of the waste stream won’t solve the state’s waste disposal problems, but it’s widely recognized those problems won’t be solved without doing that. In reality, many communities and waste operations have been at this for years — some for decades. But they have faced an absence of state policy and litt...

Is Connecticut really “coming out” of COVID? Is this a “post-pandemic” era? Last week, amid steadily climbing case rates, Connecticut’s seven-day rolling average topped 13% – a substantial upswing from the end of February, when the first omicron wave subsided and the state’s daily positivity rate hovered around 2% to 3%. CT Mirror's Jenna Carlesso speaks w...

Across the country, hospital mergers are changing the ways in which people access health care. Most hospitals are no longer independent but instead part of larger health systems that own multiple facilities.  When hospitals merge, they decrease costs by cutting duplicative services. Connecticut's Office of Health Strategy currently has three pending proposals to cut services, including psychi...

Many small businesses and nonprofits in Connecticut must weigh the solvency of their business against how generous they’d like to be with employee health benefits. Health insurance premiums are going up largely because health care costs are rising. Over the past two decades, the cost of hospital and medical care has risen faster than inflation. Academic researchers have also attributed much...

With Russia waging war in Ukraine, statewide political campaigns heating up, and Congressional mid-term elections soon to follow, there is a lot of news to consume. But who do we trust to tell it the way it is? And how is the news business faring in today's resource-starved journalism landscape?  CT Mirror Executive Editor Elizabeth Hamilton, former Hartford Courant Political Reporter Daniela...

For nearly four decades, Malcolm and Margaret Winkley have run a pair of nonprofits in Connecticut that serve individuals with developmental disabilities. And over the course of those 40 years, the husband and wife used their authority over the two organizations — and the taxpayer money they received — to amass millions of dollars’ worth of real estate. Now, as Margaret Winkley p...

In the first of a series sponsored by CT rides , we look at the impact of COVID-19 on businesses, their employees, and Connecticut's roadways and transit systems. Are Connecticut employees returning to the workplace in person? How can our transportation infrastructure accommodate and facilitate that process? John is joined by Chris DiPentima of the CBIA, Orlena Cowan-Bailey of the Connecticut SHRM...

Konstantinos Diamantis, the former state official under federal investigation, showed a special interest in his daughter’s quest for state employment on a number of occasions in early 2020, according to documents released Friday. The documents, obtained by The Connecticut Mirror through a Freedom of Information Act request, were compiled in response to a federal subpoena issued in October. I...

Activists trying to open Connecticut’s municipal beaches to non-residents have been caught for years in a game of rock-paper-scissors. Every time they employ a new strategy, the opposition counters. And while the latest effort — tied to a study of parking rates and local beach budgets — appears to have bogged down, reformers are adjusting again, preparing to make fair beach acces...

Connecticut’s labor force — the portion of the adult population employed or looking for work — contracted sharply at the beginning of the pandemic and has failed to recover to its pre-COVID scale. Economists have attributed much of the persistent workforce deficit to a child care shortage. The need for investment has only grown more acute over the last two years. About one i...

In September, Gov. Ned Lamont announced that the White House would ask Connecticut to accept “as many as 310 Afghan refugees for resettlement in Connecticut.” The effort has gone better than expected. As of March 18, more than 700 Afghans had come to live in the state, more than double the original target, thanks to a well-coordinated public-private partnership created by Lamont a...

Simply put, is state government too flush with cash? And after two years of a coronavirus pandemic that battered educational and health care systems, businesses and households, should the state be spending more to help? CT Mirror's fiscal expert Keith Phaneuf joins host Ebong Udoma to find out where the extra money may go this election year. Read Keith's story here See omnystudio.com/listener for...

After walking a budget tightrope with no safety net for most of the past two decades, Connecticut state government has socked away almost $4.8 billion since 2018 and could nearly double that by mid-2023. But while that’s three-and-half times what Connecticut saved in the prior 25 years combined, the state’s debt has somehow gotten worse — by a lot. CT Mirror budget guru Keit...

Last fall Margaret Miner was skimming a New York Times article about how the University of Wisconsin had changed the names of two university theaters, in Madison and Oshkosh, because they had been named for an alumnus associated with the Ku Klux Klan. The name that had been removed from the theaters brought her up short: the renowned actor Fredric March . Reporter Tom Condon tells WSHU's Ebon...

Two companies named in a federal grand jury subpoena investigating former state official Konstantinos Diamantis were the primary beneficiaries of millions of dollars’ worth of hazardous waste abatement work on state buildings since 2017, records show.  An analysis by the CT Mirror shows that the two, AAIS and Bestech, got all but 15 of the 284 purchase orders issued by the state for haz...

For as long as Connecticut's subsidized solar programs have been in place, caps on the number of applicants have frustrated not only businesses and towns that want solar power, but also the state’s solar industry, environmental advocates and many lawmakers. As this legislative session gets underway, a serious effort to raise or even eliminate the caps is emerging. But there is already d...