In This Issue:

CT Agency Corner

Municipal Roundup

Inside Scoop

This Day in CT History

This Week's News:

CT Medicaid managed care study gets continued pushback from advocates

BermudAir to launch nonstop flights from Bradley Intl. Airport

Joe DeLong, Executive Director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM), criticized the fiscal guardrails praised by the Yankee Institute in their report. He acknowledged that these guidelines, implemented in 2017, had helped manage state debt and spending but argued they came at a significant cost to local taxpayers. DeLong recalled CCM’s successful effort to prevent a shift in teachers’ retirement costs from the state to local governments, which would have placed a heavier burden on local property taxes. However, he contended that the guardrails ultimately shifted the state’s financial responsibilities, especially in education, onto municipalities, effectively raising property taxes indirectly.

DeLong pointed out that property taxes, Connecticut’s most regressive tax, were driving the state’s poor ranking in tax burden studies. He attributed this to the state’s declining share in public education funding, which dropped from 44% nationally to 36% in Connecticut after the guardrails were implemented. This shift, he argued, forced municipalities to cover $407 million more in education costs, resulting in an average property tax increase of 2.4% per year between 2017 and 2022. While he acknowledged that the guardrails provided fiscal stability, DeLong called for an honest debate on balancing fiscal restraint with the need to prevent hidden regressive tax increases, which disproportionately impacted lower- and middle-income residents.

In Newington, the town is actively filling vacant commercial spaces along the Berlin Turnpike, including a former Bob’s Stores location at 172 Kitts Lane. This space will temporarily host a Stickley Factory Outlet, which reopens in town after sixteen years with a preview sale before fully opening to the public on Friday. The outlet will feature significant markdowns on furniture and rugs from top brands like Hancock & Moore and Stressless. Once Stickley’s tenure ends, Pickle Ball City, a new pickleball facility, is set to take over the space, having filed a permit application for occupancy in early November. Town Planner Paul Dickson expressed enthusiasm for the swift turnaround in occupancy, noting the high demand along the Berlin Turnpike, which sees heavy daily traffic.

Additional businesses are expected soon on the Berlin Turnpike. Blaze Pickle LLC, another pickleball club, recently gained approval to occupy the former Local Market location at 175 Lowrey Place and is expected to open this month. Restaurants are also in development, including Hungry Bowl, Mongolian Grill, and Sushi Ramen AYCE in the former TGI Friday’s building, and Casadoro, an Italian restaurant owned by Doro Restaurant Group which will open later this year in the old Bertucci’s building. With 37,100 cars passing the Berlin Turnpike and Kitts Lane intersection daily, Dickson noted the benefits of swift occupancy to avoid building disrepair and to meet ongoing retail demand in Newington.

Nominations and Leadership

If you find yourself in the category of a political junkie, these next few weeks will be particularly exciting. Both the state and federal elected officials are in the selection process. While it’s not necessarily March Madness for basketball, for those who subscribe to the jockeying of caucuses and political ramifications of certain leaders being pushed forward, this is a riveting time of year. Not only did the Connecticut Legislature elevate the leaders of both chambers, but the incoming administration in Washington will be selecting those leaders, including cabinet positions. These selections will have significant trickle down impacts to states like Connecticut.

In the state government, the House leadership and the Senate leadership have selected those in power. Representative Matt Ritter (D-Hartford) and Representative Jason Rojas (D-East Hartford) will be returning to leadership roles in the House. In the Senate, Senator Martin Looney (D-New Haven) and Senator Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) return to their roles. In the Senate, the supermajority has their leadership and equally important will be the House, especially as we begin to get into serious conversations around the finances of our state, housing policy, childcare, healthcare, and all the other big issues we are about to jump into for 2025.

For Washington, leadership begins their meetings around “who is next.” Senator John Thune of North Dakota will lead a Senate that is ready to take on the work of the farm bill, budgets, prescription drug legislation, and most importantly, confirmation of President Trump’s nominees (Thune has signaled he is ready to appoint during the lame duck session which is a rare occurrence). In the House, look for Mike Johnson (not our Mike Johnson) to return to his leadership role. For cabinet Secretaries, the President has signaled his intention to nominate several high profile figures. I hope you are still reading this to learn about the potential importance of these roles. In a year that has been defined by the President-elect’s position on “cutting the fat of government,” these secretaries will be tasked with making these agencies more efficient. There is a route where the President can remove positions from agencies, cutting roles for important government bureaucracy that has defined much of Washington. For Connecticut, if this occurs, look for various grant opportunities to be drawn out further, budgets to get cut, and casework response time to be extended. Other impacts could include tax regulatory structure updates (SALT), appropriations and congressionally directed spending to be impacted, and housing financing to be altered, among other issues. I could spend all day talking about the impacts of cabinet secretaries and leadership.

Connecticut’s delegation will have an interesting role as well in the new administration. We will get into that a bit more next week. When leadership changes (and sometimes doesn’t, like in Connecticut this coming session) policies and directions shift as well. We are here to track any and all policies that may impact our clients.

November 15: Paul Sperry (and His Dog) Invent the Boat Shoe

Today in 1939, New Haven-born sailor-turned-shoemaker Paul Sperry received a patent for one of the most famous and enduring pieces of American footwear: the Sperry Top-Sider, or “boat shoe.”

Born in 1895, Sperry’s life revolved around the sea; growing up along the Connecticut coast, he developed a lifelong love for sailing at an early age. He served in the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War I, and briefly went into business designing handcrafted duck decoys at the war’s end. In the 1930s, after slipping on the freshly refinished deck of his yacht and falling overboard into Long Island Sound, Sperry experimented with making a shoe that would better grip the smooth, lacquered, and often wet surface of boat decks.

Inspiration struck after Sperry observed his beloved cocker spaniel Prince run over a patch of ice without losing his footing. Intrigued, Sperry studied the bottom of Prince’s paw, and concluded the canine’s natural grip resulted from a series of intricate, fine grooves covering his footpad. Sperry converted Prince’s naturally-occurring paw patterns into a tight series of herringbone grooves, carved into natural white rubber, and placed the sole underneath a stylish, low-profile canvas shoe, and called his creation the Top-Sider — a reference to the shoe’s ability to grip the surface of slippery boat decks.

On November 14, 1939, Sperry received a U.S. Patent for his novel shoe sole design; by that time, he had already set up shop in New Haven and his Top-Siders were well on their way to becoming an American fashion icon. During World War II, he scored a lucrative contract with the U.S. Navy, providing thousands of slip-resistant boat shoes for American sailors and ensuring that his brand would be more popular than ever upon their return home. Further popularized by trend-setters like the Kennedy family, Top-Siders were firmly established as an East Coast fashion icon by mid-century, and are still regarded as a hallmark of “preppy” fashion around the world today.

To view the full story on the CT Historian's website, click the button below.