Latest news with #CTMirror
American Military News
29-06-2025
- Politics
- American Military News
Pic: Democrat lawmaker arrested for shoplifting
A Democrat lawmaker was arrested on Monday after being caught shoplifting at a Target store in Bethel, Connecticut. The Democrat lawmaker, who publicly admitted to the incident, blamed the shoplifting episode on being in a 'rush' to bring items to his grandmother in the hospital. According to Bethel Police Department records obtained by the CT Mirror, 33-year-old Connecticut State Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan was arrested at a Target store in Bethel on Monday and was later issued a misdemeanor summons for 6th-degree larceny. The CT Mirror reported that a Bethel Police Department summary of Allie-Brennan's arrest showed that the 33-year-old Democrat lawmaker was detained by loss prevention personnel at Target. The outlet noted that the Target personnel informed the police that they recognized Allie-Brennan from 'previous unreported larcenies.' According to the police summary, law enforcement officials reviewed security footage that showed the Democrat lawmaker trying to leave the Target location with $26.69 in unpaid items. The CT Mirror reported that Allie-Brennan was arrested following a review of the security footage. READ MORE: Pic: Fmr. Democrat staffer charged with sexual assault, abduction On Tuesday, Allie-Brennan released a statement on Facebook, saying, 'During a recent visit to the Bethel Target, two items in my armload of others were not scanned. I was in a rush to bring items to my grandmother in the hospital, the store didn't have bags, and I was juggling multiple purchases. While I do not have a record, I take full responsibility for the error and am working through the legal processes to resolve the matter quickly and respectfully.' The 33-year-old lawmaker added, 'I respect the law and Target's right to enforce their loss prevention policy, and I remain committed to serving my community with transparency and integrity.' In a statement obtained by the CT Mirror, Connecticut House Speaker Matt Ritter, a Democrat, claimed that Allie-Brennan 'recognizes the high standard to which I hold our members and is taking responsibility for inadvertently leaving the Target self-checkout without scanning several items.' A picture of Allie-Brennan was shared Thursday on X, formerly Twitter. 🚨 ANOTHER CRIMINAL DEMOCRAT: Connecticut Democrat Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan just got busted shoplifting at Target, AGAIN, claiming he was in a hurry to visit his grandmother. — Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) June 26, 2025
New York Post
25-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Democrat lawmaker busted for shoplifting at Target self-checkout line, then uses ailing granny as an excuse
A Democratic state representative from Connecticut busted for shoplifting after failing to scan items at a Target self-checkout offered a litany of excuses, including that he was 'in a rush to bring items to my grandmother in the hospital.' State Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan was arrested Monday night at a Target store in Bethel, about 60 miles southwest of Hartford, after authorities reviewed security footage allegedly showing he neglected to scan two of his items, totaling $26.69 in value. State Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan, a four-term lawmaker from Connecticut, was arrested Monday for allegedly failing to scan two items at a Target store in Bethel. Raghib Allie-Brennan / Facebook He was detained by loss prevention personnel, who later told cops they recognized the four-term lawmaker from 'previous unreported larcenies,' CT Mirror reported, citing a Bethel Police arrest summary. Advertisement Allie-Brennan, 33, who was first elected in 2018, acknowledged the incident on his Facebook page Tuesday in an excuse-laden post. The rep. later took to Facebook and offered a laundry list of excuses, including blaming the store for running out of bags. MelissaMN – 'During a recent visit to the Bethel Target, two items in my armload of others were not scanned. I was in a rush to bring items to my grandmother in the hospital, the store didn't have bags, and I was juggling multiple purchases,' he wrote. Advertisement 'While I do not have a record, I take full responsibility for the error and am working through the legal processes to resolve the matter quickly and respectfully.' He added, 'I respect the law and Target's right to enforce their loss prevention policy, and I remain committed to serving my community with transparency and integrity.' In a statement, Connecticut House Speaker Matt Ritter addressed the kerfuffle involving his fellow Dem. Advertisement 'He recognizes the high standard to which I hold our members and is taking responsibility for inadvertently leaving the Target self-checkout without scanning several items.' Allie-Brennan did not respond to an email from The Post seeking comment.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Conn. Gov. Ned Lamont ‘more inclined' to seek 3rd term in 2026
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont describes his current thinking on seeking a third term. (Photo by Mark Pazniokas/CT Mirror) Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday that the challenges of navigating the economic uncertainties and political chaos generated by President Donald J. Trump only increase the chances he will seek a third term as governor of Connecticut in 2026. 'If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said, 'No, I think the state's on a good trajectory. We've stabilized things. We're growing again. Time to pass the mantle,'' Lamont said. He said he no longer is so eager to step aside. 'It's also an incredibly complicated time right now, starting with all the uncertainty of Washington, the increased possibility of a recession,' Lamont said. 'So, maybe a time where experience makes a difference. That's a way of saying I'm thinking about it seriously.' Lamont, 71, a self-described centrist Democrat, stopped well short of declaring his candidacy, but he gave his strongest indication to date of an inclination to seek another four-year term with Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz. 'I love the job,' he said. 'I think we've had extraordinary progress compared to where we were, say, 10 years ago. I think Susan and I are a pretty good team.' Lamont met with reporters in his Capitol office at midday, just 12 hours after the General Assembly reached its constitutional adjournment deadline of midnight Wednesday. 'We got some extraordinary folks and Democrats, and I work very closely with each and every one of them,' he said. But sees himself with an edge. 'I think it's executive experience, having sat in this chair for the last six and a half years, having been through the Trump administration, having been through COVID, having worked closely with the leadership on both sides of the aisle,' Lamont said. He defended the granular details of the recently adopted budget and the broad strokes of his record as a governor overseeing a remarkable series of budget surpluses that have filled the state's budget reserves and allowed the state to pay down unfunded pension debt. With those surpluses has come pressure from the political left to address unmet needs, including low Medicaid reimbursement rates for medical providers. Lamont, they say, is too concerned with keeping spending within the state's fiscal guardrails. The criticism is not discouraging him as he finalizes a decision whether to run, he said. 'I'm a lot more inclined and interested in keeping going, keep this positive momentum going, than I was, say, six months or a year ago. That said, I still have some conversations to make. I put everything on hold during this last four or five months. We had a pretty tricky budget session to get through.' The 'tricky' part was finding ways to satisfy Democrats lawmakers within the constraints of spending caps. 'I think it's an honestly balanced budget,' Lamont said, adding it's based upon 'a pretty conservative set of assumptions.' The budget assumes that household income will grow about 4% annually over the next two years. But it also stretches Connecticut's budget controls without breaking them legally. The largest initiative, a new $220 million endowment to grow early education and child care services dramatically over the next decade, will be established outside of the formal budget and spending cap. In doing so, the leaders of the Republican legislative minorities say Lamont is losing his credibility as a fiscal centrist, a theme the GOP will try to develop if Lamont runs. 'Fiscal moderation has officially left the state Capitol,' Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, proclaimed recently. House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, said, 'This budget eviscerates all of our fiscal guardrails.' House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, smiled Wednesday when asked about the GOP efforts to define Lamont as a born-again, tax-and-spend liberal. 'The governor is being attacked by the left and the right, and so he's probably here,' Ritter said, pointing to the center of the table. 'And the answer is, always here.' On Thursday, Lamont concurred: the political center is his comfort zone. He noted that Republicans regularly have claimed his two-year budgets were built on shaky foundations. ''You're going to be in deficit within two years. You're going to be raising taxes.' Well, at six years later, stop crying wolf,' Lamont said. Despite the off-budget spending on early childhood education, the governor estimated that at least $1.2 billion of this fiscal year's $2.4 billion projected surplus still would be used to cover more unfunded pension liabilities He reiterated his intention to veto a bill that would give jobless benefits to strikers, a source of tension with the Connecticut AFL-CIO. He also announced an intention to veto a bill sought by Republicans — and opposed both by the building trades unions and the Connecticut Business and Industry Association. The measure, House Bill 7004, is intended to give Plainfield, a small town in eastern Connecticut, the ability to hold a referendum over a proposed trash-to-energy plant and possibly influence the state Siting Council to block the project. He briefly deferred a question about the bill to a senior staff, who confirmed it indeed would be vetoed. 'I'm vetoing that,' Lamont said, laughing. 'I just made that strong decision by myself.' Lamont said he welcomed passage of a bill encouraging housing construction, though he had yet to finish reviewing it. 'We're never going to get economic growth [and] keep it going if we don't have a place for people to live, young people to live, workforce housing, getting our cities growing again,' he said. Opponents in Fairfield County have urged him to veto the bill. 'I think there's some red flags in it, and I know why it makes people nervous,' he said. 'But it's basically gross misrepresentation from the anti-growth people down there that are stirring people up. They're saying it's a big mandate. You're gonna forcing me to build housing, you know, in my backyard, which is not what the strategy is at all. It's trying to tell towns, you take the lead, you show us where you want that housing to go. It's important for your community.' CT Mirror reporter Keith M. Phaneuf contributed to this story. This article first appeared on CT Mirror and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Boston Globe
01-06-2025
- Automotive
- Boston Globe
Connecticut reforms towing laws to protect drivers from predatory practices
The bill, which Advertisement 'It's reform that ensures transparency, it ensures fairness and accountability, but does all of this without undercutting the essential work that ethical and professional tow operators do each and every day for us, keeping our roads safe and our properties accessible,' said Transportation Committee Co-chair Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford. 'We've learned over the years, and particularly over the last year due to some investigative reporting, of some particularly egregious circumstances.' A spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont said the governor plans to sign the bill into law. Republican Sen. Tony Hwang, ranking member of the Transportation Committee, also spoke in favor of the bill. The bill got about a half hour of debate ahead of passage, and there were no comments in opposition. Hwang, who represents Fairfield, said the bill strikes the right balance between the interests of towers and consumers. Advertisement 'I want to acknowledge that our press had an important part to bring out transparency and some of the bad actions, and I think in this bill we address some of those issues,' Hwang said. 'We took measures to ensure that there is due process, and what has been discovered to have occurred in a criminal action, I believe, should never, ever happen again, to undermine the trust that we have to have in this process.' Connecticut's law allows tow companies to begin the process to sell vehicles after just 15 days. CT Mirror and ProPublica found that it is one of the shortest windows in the nation, and that the law has particularly impacted people with low incomes. Reporters spoke with people who said towing companies required them to pay in cash or wouldn't allow them to get personal belongings out of their vehicles. Many couldn't afford to get their towed vehicles back and lost transportation or jobs because of it. After weeks of negotiations, lawmakers said they came to a compromise with the towing industry. Two bills were merged to include massive reforms to towing procedures from private property and rate increases for highway tows that typically follow car accidents. The bill that passed and would take effect Oct. 1 requires tow companies to accept credit cards and doesn't allow them to tow vehicles immediately just because of an expired parking permit or registration. Vehicles can't be towed from private property without notice unless they're blocking traffic, fire hydrants or parked in an accessible spot. Under the bill, towing companies can still start the sales process for vehicles worth $1,500 or less after 15 days, but they would now have to take more steps to give the owner a chance to claim the vehicle. The Department of Motor Vehicles would be required to check whether the driver filed any complaints about the tow before approving the sale, and the tower would have to send a notice ahead of the sale to the registered owner and lienholders via certified mail, with receipts of delivery. Advertisement The actual sale couldn't go through until 30 days after the tow. The bill also requires that towers take at least two photos before they tow a vehicle — one of the violation that resulted in a tow and another of any damage to the vehicle. Cohen said this would help determine if vehicles had any missing parts before the tow, a seeming nod to the news organizations' story about a DMV employee who the agency's investigators found schemed with a towing company to The bill also establishes a working group to study how to handle proceeds from the sales of towed vehicles. State law requires that towing companies hold profits in escrow for a year in case the vehicle owner claims them, then remit that money to the state. But CT Mirror and ProPublica found Additionally, it calls for the DMV to work with the state's attorney general to develop a consumer bill of rights on towing. Advertisement Tow companies have to be available after hours and on weekends to allow people to get their vehicles or personal property. In a story published this month, CT Mirror and ProPublica reported that Under the new law, drivers will be allowed to retrieve their belongings from their vehicles, even if they haven't paid the towing fees. State regulations currently allow vehicle owners to retrieve only 'personal property which is essential to the health or welfare of any person.' Cohen listed many of the issues outlined in the news outlets' reporting as 'some of the worst abuses of predatory towing practices.' Timothy Vibert, president of Towing and Recovery Professionals of Connecticut, said the industry initially opposed the bill because towers believed it would impede their ability to tow cars and clear traffic. He also said towers weren't involved enough in the original draft. But they worked with lawmakers on the bill over several weeks, and he issued a statement in support this week. 'The people of Connecticut deserve safety, accountability and transparency when their cars are towed, and so do the people who work for Connecticut's towing companies who risk our lives every day to make our roads safe,' Vibert said. 'We all need clear, easy-to-follow rules.' DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera commended the House and Senate. 'The DMV fully supports this initiative, as it not only enhances the framework for fair and equitable enforcement of towing laws but also provides a clear path forward for our agency to advance these efforts,' Guerrera said in a statement. Cohen said that the bill aims to 'fix a broken process,' and that lawmakers had worked on some aspects of it for years before the bill passed. Advertisement News of the bill's passage brought relief to Melissa Anderson, who was featured in a CT Mirror and ProPublica story after her car was towed and sold from her Hamden apartment because of an expired parking permit. The bill requires a 72-hour grace period before a car can be towed for an expired parking sticker to allow people time to get a new one. 'I'm glad we made a difference,' Anderson said. 'This is going to help a lot of people.' The bill next heads to Lamont's desk. 'The Governor appreciates all the work that went into this legislation, which provides greater protections for the public and their vehicles,' Lamont's spokesperson, Rob Blanchard, said in a text message. 'He plans on signing the legislation once it reaches his desk.'
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Conn. State Police contract: House approves raises for troopers
The Connecticut State Capitol on Jan. 7, 2025. (Photo by Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror) HARTFORD, Conn. — The House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a proposal that would grant Connecticut State Police troopers a 2.5% general wage hike and a step increase next fiscal year. The proposal, which is also expected to win approval in the Senate, passed 134-12 in the Democratic-controlled House, enjoying bipartisan support despite objections from GOP leaders. Legislators from both parties have lamented a state police force that's now about 25% smaller than the 1,200-plus troopers who served Connecticut prior to 2010. Democrats said the raises, which would affect an estimated 885 troopers, are essential to recruitment efforts. But both House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, and Rep. Tammy Nuccio, R-Tolland, argued against the raises. 'We're facing a collision course with a rather ugly truth' — that state employee compensation is becoming unsustainable, said Nuccio, who is the ranking House Republican on the Appropriations Committee. Nearly all unionized workers have received a 2.5% general wage hike and a step, which typically adds another 2 percentage points to the raise, each fiscal year since 2021-22. Gov. Ned Lamont's administration, which negotiated the wage deal with the troopers, also is bargaining new contracts with all other major state employee unions. And it would be difficult for state officials to convince labor arbiters that Connecticut could not afford effective 4.5% annual increases for other state employees if the legislature approves one for troopers. The House GOP proposed a $54.4 billion biennial budget earlier this month that counts on more than $300 million in savings over the next two fiscal years by freezing pay for all workers. Candelora said troopers earn an average of $116,000 per year in base pay, but compensation rises to $175,000 per year once overtime is considered. 'There's no amount of pay that's going to be able to recruit more officers,' he said. The solution, Candelora added, involves criminal justice reforms that give officers greater legal protection when performing searches or pulling over motorists on the highway. 'What they really need is our support,' he said. 'They need real criminal justice reform.' Despite Nuccio and Candelora's arguments, 35 of the 47 Republicans who cast ballots in Tuesday's joined 99 Democrats in supporting the raises. Andrew Matthews, executive director of the state police union and a former president, noted before a legislative panel earlier this month that union concessions packages have weakened retirement benefits for troopers. Before 2011, a trooper was eligible for a hazardous duty pension based on the three highest annual salaries of a minimum 20 years of service. Now Connecticut requires 25 years of service that offers a hybrid pension/401(k) benefit calculated on average wages over the entire 25-year span. But Matthews also said workers deserve the raises in the deal and more. 'It's a dangerous job,' he said at the time, adding that 26 troopers have died in the line of duty and that post-traumatic stress injuries are 'a real thing' many troopers face. The legislature's nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis estimated the agreement would cost state government nearly $4.1 million next fiscal year. Municipalities that participate in the resident state trooper program would collectively incur an added cost of $301,675 next fiscal year, nonpartisan analysts estimated. This article first appeared on CT Mirror and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
