The Chris Powell Column

Maybe the state should applaud the plan announced recently by state Comptroller Sean Scanlon and leaders in the General Assembly to restore the solvency of the Connecticut Municipal Employees Retirement System. The system is run by state government and 107 of the state’s 169 towns participate in it to some extent.

With a state constitutional amendment last November, Connecticut voters approved early voting in principle, but practice will be complicated and the details have been left to the General Assembly. Fortunately the new secretary of the state, Stephanie Thomas, has proposed sensible answers to the major questions.

During his travels around the state distributing goodies in pursuit of re-election in November, Governor Lamont might perform a valuable service by pausing for a moment here and there to examine the performance of ordinary management in state government.

People praying over football may not appreciate their luck

As he lies dying in Tennyson’s epic poem, “The Idylls of the King,” Arthur offers encouragement to his knights: “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”

Government cannot use union contracts with its employees to nullify its basic obligations to the public, a federal appeals court ruled last week in a case about the Connecticut state police union contract.

As was demonstrated by the crude and disgraceful disruption of last week’s back-to-school forum in Cheshire, many people in Connecticut are sick and tired of the coronavirus pandemic and government’s steps against it, however necessary they may have seemed.

Without taking much notice, Connecticut lost a hero of journalism and justice recently: Donald S. Connery, 94, who lived in Kent for almost 60 years even as he traveled and reported from around the world for United Press International and Time magazine and its related publications.

Employees of Connecticut’s largest newspaper, the Hartford Courant, cleaned out their desks recently as the newspaper left the building at 285 Broad St. where it had operated for 70 years.