Since Labriola was elected as chairman by the members of the Republican State Central Committee this summer, records show he has raised $91,634 in individual political donations through Dec. 31, with $18,693 coming during the final month of the year alone.

The piece goes on to note the similarly thin wallet of the Connecticut Democratic Party which enters the year with $72,500 on hand. But really, it isn’t time to panic just yet for anyone.

While fundraising is an important measure of electoral competitiveness and can be a key indicator of future strength or weakness, the year-end numbers (XLSX) can be quite deceiving. The 2011 figure for CTGOP combines the account totals for the party’s federal and state accounts to reach the $13,000 amount – $13,108.18 to be exact.

The Republican state party has had less money going into previous election cycles. Heading into 2005, for example, the state party had $5,788.21 on hand as well as $85,988.36 in debt. In 2009, CTGOP had $41,124.42 but debts of $34,043.26. In the 2010 report, CTGOP’s cash-on-hand was $38,147.63, but it owed $84,938.08 in outstanding debts.

None of these facts makes one Chairman good or another one bad. Nor do they reflect on how effective one CTGOP team was in contrast to others. What they describe is the situation each iteration of the party found itself in at the time.

One other note: campaign finance law is byzantine at best and a tragicomedy at worst. If offered a blank page and a pen, no sane person would ever construct the regulatory landscape that currently exists. The law has evolved over time as the influence of political parties was diminished and the strength of candidates and now SuperPACs has increased.

This makes easy comparisons between different years both more difficult and less relevant. The centers of political power have shifted and the roles of the organizations change over time. Whereas CTGOP would once have been the central organizing point for Republican campaigns in the state, the party now acts mostly as a service bureau for Town Committees and local activists. Again, its neither good nor bad – just the way it is until the law changes again.

One proposal for closer examination should be the “Rethinking Redistricting” plan proposed by former Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita in September 2010. The plan was based on five principles: keeping communities of interest together, creating more compact and geographically uniform districts, reduce voters’ confusion about who represents them by following existing political boundaries, not use political data, including incumbent addresses, for partisan reasons, and “nesting” house districts into senate districts.

In sum, the concepts represent an entirely practical approach to the redistricting process. Rather than protecting incumbents or catering to other narrow political interests, like candidates for higher office sitting on the commission that redraws the districts, this approach would depoliticize the process and make it much more accessible for citizens.

One particularly intriguing principle is the concept of nesting, in which State House Districts would be drawn as subsections of a State Senate district, and if one were so inclined, State Senate districts would be drawn as subsections of Congressional districts.Twelve other states require nesting in some form and Connecticut should carefully consider whether it would produce more sensible maps in our state as well.

Read the entire piece at CT News Junkie.com

The current education architecture, though, too often churns out people ill prepared for this brave new economic world. Though reforming this system is at the top of Governor Dan Malloy’s 2012 legislative agenda, the opening gambit from the Connecticut Education Association this week suggests that the path to real reform could be much more challenging than anyone imagines.

. . .

There are fundamental traits to be recognized in an economy that constantly replaces labor with capital. The only stable employment is self-employment. The new nimble is the new normal. The path to prosperity starts by engaging technology, then troubleshooting it followed by creating and designing it, and ultimately investing in it. Most importantly, all of it is dependent on a population that has smarts, speed, and a willingness to embrace change – the byproducts of a high quality education. Reform can’t come soon enough.

Read the whole piece at CT News Junkie.

The University of Connecticut’s recent tuition hikes, though, will make it more difficult for thousands of students to rise to meet this challenge.

Read the full story at CT News Junkie

As I noted previously, pilots and passengers inside the marooned aircraft described a scene of barely restrained chaos. At one point, a pilot advised Bradley officials not to send police to the airplane for fear of provoking an altercation. He later requested officers board the plane to pacify passengers. It took more than seven hours to get all of the passengers off the airplanes.

The federal Department of Transportation hosted a forum on flight diversions last week to analyze the events that transpired and discuss new procedures to prevent such delays in the future. The look back added even more of that day’s sorry story to the public record:

“The storm knocked out power to the airport several times during the day. Luggage belts quit working. Tugs that move planes out of the way couldn’t get traction on the ice. Planes had trouble refueling and de-icing because of the power outages, preventing departures.”

It reads like a Keystone Kops routine.

Read the full article at CT News Junkie.

Read the entire opinion-editorial at CT News Junkie.

But CEP is fundamentally flawed. It does harm to the people it was designed to help the most. The story of Dr. Prasad Srinivasan of Glastonbury highlights this reality. My article about it was published by the Hartford Courant on Sunday.

A political newcomer who wanted to give back to his community, Dr. S decided that State Representative would be the best fit for his skills and interests. His opponent in the race, Rep. Thomas Kehoe, started the race with the significant advantages enjoyed by incumbents. Kehoe was already known in the community from serving as state representative for four years. He benefited from having a legislative staff to support him, the taxpayer-funded legislative mailers that are sent to every resident in the district, and regular media attention while performing his duties.

Were Srinivasan to take the public funds granted by CEP, he would have had the same amount of money as Kehoe but far more work to do to build his name recognition, communicate his policy views, and convince voters that he would be a better state representative than the incumbent. Dr. S opted out of CEP and raised his funds from friends and family so that he could make his case to the voters. They listened and he won.

Not only did he win his election but he also beat the odds. He was the only opt-out challenger to defeat an opt-in incumbent in 2010. Public financing makes it more challenging for challengers like Dr. Srinivasan because incumbents begin with a head start. Ending CEP and returning to the same system used by 47 other states will be a step in the right direction.

CL&P will soon be subjected to investigations, legal proceedings, and legislative inquiries over their staffing levels and preparation for catastrophic events like Winter Storm Alfred. There will be plenty of time and much attention paid to the possible policy changes. But with their brand irreparably tarnished, a more practical question to consider is this: how long will it be before CL&P gets a new name?

Read the full piece at CT News Junkie.

There are fewer lovers today

The whole episode is largely overshadowed by the storm recovery efforts, but it shouldn’t be – it should provoke enough public outcry to force changes at the airport.

A read of the transcript makes one wonder how any flights are allowed to take off or land at Bradley – ever. The airport’s Instrument Landing System (ILS) wasn’t working, the tug that moves the planes broke, and at one point, ground operations people even went to the wrong stranded plane. The whole thing reads like a comically bad movie script.

Blame will rightly be shared between the airport and the carrier, JetBlue. For their part, JetBlue is in full media management crisis mode with statements, an apology video from the Chief Operating Officer, and fee waivers for thousands of customers.

But for the people in charge at Bradley, the situation is different. We’ve seen the movie already – and not that long ago – with a different airline. In June, a Virgin Atlantic Airways flight from London to Newark got diverted to Bradley and spent four lousy hours on the tarmac. This is plenty of evidence: the airport administrators aren’t getting the job done. If the people in charge can’t get their act together, it’s time to put new people in charge.

The inevitable story from those administrators will be to blame the rules and regulations that govern many aspects of their work. Everyone has books filled with things that the airport has to do: federal red tape, safety guidelines from the government and aircraft manufacturers, carrier requirements, and more. The majority of what they do every day is likely driven by compliance. That’s all understandable, but it doesn’t matter in a crisis. Someone has to show some leadership and fix problems when they arise. In this case, it is apparent that no one did.

Change will have to start at the top, but Governor Dan Malloy’s response isn’t encouraging. He offered this comment to the Courant:

“[L]et’s concentrate on the big issue…we were not loading planes and moving them out on the runway and having people sit for 7 hours. We were accepting flights as we were required to do make sure those people didn’t crash.”

Summary: You didn’t die. Suck it up.

If Governor Tom Foley had given that statement to the newspaper, the Courant editorial board would have gone crazy; not a little crazy, but run down Broad Street naked and destroy a snowman with a stick crazy. But that’s another matter.

In the year that Malloy has been Governor, the takeaway lesson seems to be this: in-person he’s a perfectly nice guy but when he is doing his job, Dan Malloy is an arrogant jerk – and it’s a useful quality most of the time. It doesn’t matter whether its a budget crisis, the rejected state employees’ concession agreement, or the weather – Dan Malloy is in charge now, no more grandmotherly coddling, and he’s going to get things done.

But in this instance, he flopped. He’s inside passing out cots when we want him in the airport’s command center kicking people in the ass to make things happen. Do whatever it takes – fire people on the spot, grant pardons, order people around. Lead. Get the people off the planes.

Sources of 2010 state campaign spending. Click to enlarge

Such funds made up nearly half of all spending by candidates for state offices ($26.1 million of the $53.5 million spent) and were it not for two largely self-financed gubernatorial efforts by Ned Lamont and Tom Foley, the state would have been responsible for 79% of the expenditures. It puts into context the outsized role that the state plays in campaigns with the publicly-financed system.

In a world where 56 state troopers were laid off, albeit temporarily, to save something like $2 million, spending thirteen times that amount on political campaigns seems like a comically bad idea but we do it anyway.

The $53.5 million spent by candidates for state offices is important but it tells only part of the story. In total, Connecticut’s candidates for public office spent a staggering $139.3 million during the 2010 election cycle. A total of 461 men and women stood for federal and state offices last year representing thirteen different political parties and ten unique posts.

Most people already know that the campaign of US Senate candidate Linda McMahon was the top spender of 2010, with a record-breaking $50.1 million spent in her contest against now-Senator Dick Blumenthal. It’s a big number on its own, but to really appreciate its size, it has to be measured in context.

Top spenders of 2010. Click to enlarge

Mrs. McMahon’s total made up 36% of all candidate spending in 2010; put another way, one out of every three dollars spent on politics in 2010 came from the McMahon campaign. Her spending was just slightly lower than that spent by all candidates for state offices, $50.1 million to $53.5 million, excluding surplus funds, and comparable with that spent by the other nine candidates on the top ten list – $55.7 million.

McMahon actually outspent the State of Connecticut by a nearly 2:1 ratio, in the form of the $26.1 million from the Citizens’ Election Program noted above. By comparison, it seems almost like a footnote that she dwarfed Blumenthal’s spending by a ratio just shy of 6:1.

Gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley was at the top of the list among state candidates and second overall behind McMahon. He spent $12.8 million to win the Republican primary and narrowly lose the general election to Gov. Malloy.

The ten highest spending campaigns spent a combined total of $105.9 million –  76% of all the money spent in 2010 came from just ten of those 461 candidates. Every other candidate’s spending together amounted to $33.4 million.

While these figures are remarkable in many ways, they shouldn’t be construed as an indictment of the system. There are 3.5 million people in Connecticut and more than 2 million of them are registered to vote. The information age gives our society unprecedented ways to communicate with people and attempt to persuade them – television commercials, radio ads, web ads, direct mail, lawn signs, bumper stickers, and much, much more – but it also gives people an unprecedented ability to filter out things that they don’t like even if its really important and they should pay attention.

Campaign spending is the real cost of too many people tuning out politics. Yes, the process is beset by pettiness, nastiness, and greed. Yes, it gives equal weight to every person in the form of their one vote even if that person hasn’t spent a single minute of their life thoughtfully considering the issues or the stakes. And yes, it even seems pointless a good bit of the time.

But its still better than the alternative.