Politics & Government

Connecticut Keno, Millions For Schools and Judges, Passed Last-Minute

There were several closed-door deals approved by the General Assembly last month.

By Eileen McNamara

While critics in recent weeks have questioned the secret deal in Hartford that saw Keno gambling approved by the General Assembly, that bill was just one of several that apparently slipped through the legislature in the last hours of the 2013 spring session. 

Many have criticized Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the Democrat-controlled legislature for passing Keno without a public hearing. 

But also buried amid hundreds of pages in new legislation in the session that ended last month was $5.5 million over the next two years to provide pay raises for Connecticut's judges and $334,750 in raises for court magistrates, according to a report in the Hartford Courant. 

The legislature also passed a bill, hammered out in secret, that bars the release of pictures and videos from some violent crime scenes. That measure was intended to protect the families of the Newtown shooting victims but will now cover many other violent crimes. 

Additionally passed in near secrecy by the General Assembly, the Courant reports, was $2.74 million in extra state education aid for Norwalk and $100,000 for the state to hire a consultant to test groundwater near a University of Connecticut research facility. 

State Sen. Joseph Markley, R-Southington, told the newspaper he thinks the last-minute legislative deals are improper. 

"I think it's important that we recognize that the way we're handling that is bad public policy." 


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