Since it's beeen a while I've pulled out the camcorder and conducted an interview, a few weeks ago when Chris Murphy paid a visit to a youth program in Danbury, I couldn't pass an oppurtunity to chat with our new Senator.

I had a chance to talk to Senator Murphy about his new role in Congress as well as his thoughts on the push for gun control reform.

The Pope John Paul II Care and Rehabilitation Center of Danbury was fined $1,090 after a resident developed a pressure ulcer on the thumb, as a result of the use of a hand splint. The resident, who also was identified as at risk for falls, sustained injuries from falling when he or she was not properly assisted or supervised.

"You would think Newtown is the last place they would want to start their lobbying effort against changes to the current gun laws," Llodra said. "It's a bad time for us. We are still struggling to heal."

While Llodra said the calls are inappropriate, she added that it's a typical response from the gun lobbying group.

"It seems to be their typical response to this issue," she said. "Insensitive and inappropriate."

Mr. Wayne LaPierre

Executive Vice President

National Rifle Association of America

11250 Waples Mill Road

Fairfax, VA 22030



Dear Mr. LaPierre:

We write to you today on behalf of our constituents in Newtown, Connecticut who are outraged by your inappropriate automated phone calls pushing the National Rifle Association’s extreme agenda being received by members of the Newtown community. With these robocalls, the NRA has stooped to a new low in the debate over how to best protect our kids and our communities. We call on you to immediately stop calling the families and friends of the victims in Newtown.

Like all Americans, we were horrified by the shooting on December 14th at Sandy Hook Elementary School. We were with the parents that day and the days that followed and can confidently tell you that the parents of the victims, and the community as a whole, are still struggling to comprehend the horror of that day. Your robocalls pushing our constituents to contact their members of Congress to urge opposition to common sense gun safety legislation are incredibly insensitive.

In a community that’s still very much in crisis, to be making these calls opens a wound that these families are still trying hard to heal. Put yourself in the shoes of a victim’s family member who gets a call at dinnertime asking them to support more assault weapons in our schools and on our streets.

Unfortunately, this latest act is just another example in a long line of offensive steps your organization has taken in the wake of this tragic shooting. Your press conference one week after the tragedy articulated your surreal vision that the only way to solve the epidemic of gun violence in America is through the use of more guns. One month later you released “NRA: Practice Range,” an Apple app that allows individuals to shoot targets in a variety of settings and with a number of different weapons, including handguns, an AK-47 and an M-16. More recently, one of the NRA’s Wisconsin lobbyists remarked that your extreme agenda may be delayed by the so-called “Connecticut effect.”

Robocalling members of the Newtown community to promote your agenda less than 100 days after the horrific shooting is absolutely beyond the pale. Again, we call on you to show some basic decency and cease and desist these calls.



Sincerely,



Christopher S. Murphy

Richard Blumenthal

NRA leadership demonstrated yet again last week just how low they are willing to go in their unconscionable effort to block any and all common sense, life saving gun violence legislation. Their most recent repugnant tactic—repeated robo calls to Newtown families—mocks and betrays the courage and compassion demonstrated by the Newtown community just barely three months after one of the world’s most horrific acts of gun violence seized 26 beautiful and heroic young lives.

Less than two months ago at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence, I asked NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre if he would join the tens of thousands of people around the world in taking the Sandy Hook Promise. The Promise is a very simple message. It asks its followers to honor the 26 lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School by promising to do everything possible to encourage and support common sense solutions to make our communities and country safer from similar acts of violence. “I promise this time there will be change,” the Promise concludes. Wayne LaPierre agreed to the Promise that day, yet every minute of everyday since then, he and his organization have poured countless amounts of time, money and effort into making that simple promise harder and harder to achieve.

In its relentless effort to defeat the Sandy Hook Promise and block common sense, life saving gun violence legislation, NRA leadership has shown no boundary it will not cross—including injecting its fear-based messages into the homes, the sanctuaries, of a grieving community.

What NRA leadership simply refuses to acknowledge is that, despite their hopes and efforts, the Connecticut effect is not going to fade. In fact, it is growing, and it will not go away until we get the weapons of war off our streets, provide law enforcement the tools they need to enforce the laws on the books, improve the safety of our schools (and I don’t mean vigilante dads and teachers with guns), and strengthen our mental health system. With or without the NRA, we will act.

My message to NRA leadership: Stop these invasive, unconscionable calls. Join the vast majority of Americans and Newtown residents in supporting common sense measures to stem and stop gun violence.

If you agree, join me in urging NRA leadership to cease and desist these inhumane calls by calling them at 1-800-672-3888.

The Board of Education sent the mayor a $122.7 million budget for 2013-14 to run the 18 city schools that serve about 10,400 student

The proposed budget represents a $6 million, or 5.98 percent, increase over the current budget.

[...]

The city charter requires the board to submit a plan to the mayor by Feb. 15, but Boughton gave them an extension.

Section 7-2 DEPARTMENT ESTIMATES.

The Mayor shall compile preliminary estimates for the annual budget. The head of each department, office or agency of the City as described in Section 7-1 of this Chapter, including the Board of Education, shall, not later than February 15th or the next business day thereafter if February 15th shall not be a business day, file with the Mayor on forms prescribed and provided by him, a detailed estimate of the expenditures to be made by the department, office or agency and the revenue other than tax revenues, to be collected thereby in the ensuing fiscal year and such other information as may be required by the Mayor or the City Council.

Section 7-3 DUTIES OF THE MAYOR ON THE BUDGET
Not later than April 7th or the next business day thereafter if April 7th shall not be a business day, the Mayor shall present to the City Council a budget consisting of:

a. A budget message outlining the financial policy of the City government and describing in connection therewith the important features of the budget plan indicating any major changes from the current year in financial policies, expenditures and revenues together with the reasons for such changes, and containing a clear general summary of its contents.

b. Estimates of revenue, presenting in parallel columns the itemized revenue collected in the last completed fiscal year, the receipts collected during the current fiscal year prior to the time of preparing the estimates, total revenue estimated to be collected during the current fiscal year, estimates of revenue, other than from the property tax, to be collected in the ensuing fiscal year, and a statement of an estimate of available surplus.

c. Itemized estimates of expenditures, presenting in parallel columns the actual expenditures for each department, office, agency or activity for the last completed fiscal year and for the current fiscal year prior to the time of preparing the estimates, total expenditures and estimated for the current fiscal year, and the Mayor’s recommendations of the amounts to be appropriated for the ensuing fiscal year for all items, and such other information as may be required by the City Council. The Mayor shall present reasons for his recommendations.

d. The Board of Education shall have the same duties and follow the same form and procedure with respect to the budget of the Board of Education as required of the Mayor in Section 7-2 of this Chapter for other departmental estimates.

e. As part of the budget, the Mayor shall present a program to the City Council for adoption, additions or deletions no later than February 15th that has been previously considered and acted upon by the City Planning Commission in accordance with Section 8-24 of the General Statutes, as amended, concerning municipal improvements, of proposed capital projects for the ensuing fiscal year and for the five fiscal years thereafter.

Estimates of the costs of such projects shall be submitted by each department, office or agency annually in the form and manner prescribed by the Mayor. The Mayor shall recommend to the City Council those projects to be undertaken during the ensuing fiscal year and the method of financing the same.

f. As part of the budget, the Mayor shall present to the Council the data required to be presented to the Mayor by Section 7-1.

Connecticut’s Freedom of Information law was once the pride of the nation. It has withstood numerous assaults by judges, legislators and other officials with plenty to hide.

Mandated by the will of Gov. Ella Grasso in 1975, the FOI law even has a beautiful preamble:

“The legislature finds and declares that secrecy in government is inherently inconsistent with a true democracy, that the people have a right to be fully informed of the action taken by public agencies in order that they may retain control over the instruments they have created; that the people do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them; that the people in delegating authority do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for them to know . . .”

We, the people, do not yield sovereignty to the agencies that supposedly serve us. We do not give public servants the right to decide what is good for us to know. How often do you think this principle of self government is violated on a daily basis when citizens request a viewing or copies of the public records they rightfully own?

It depends on factors including what municipal or state office you enter, the demeanor of the public servants and the leadership. Some people actually believe in public service. They tend to be hospitable, even pleasant and helpful. Others act as if you have three heads or are a scout for Martians who are about to vaporize the building. They are backed up by lawyers well-practiced in the delay, deny, delay game.

“Who are you?”

“Why do you want those records?”

“Why are you investigating that?”

These words were uttered to my colleague Jack Coraggio of the Litchfield County Times and me during a recent visit to Danbury City Hall.

In what seemed to be a practice and perhaps a policy of intimidation, we were told that even the most rudimentary requests must be presented in writing and reviewed by a lawyer. This gave me new appreciation for lawyers as creators of fiction. They love to dance around the requirement of the law that documents must be produced promptly. As a practical matter, this means documents must be produced immediately, unless the agency can prove that this would interfere with the normal course of business.
We were also told that “a public agency may have to review certain files prior to disclosure to ensure that no documents are being disclosed that could be considered exempt under the FOI statute, or that are privileged.”

Hmm. Why would privileged or exempt material be held in a public file? If that’s the case, then the small army of lawyers ensconced therein is providing ineffective assistance of counsel.

For most of the life of Connecticut’s FOI law, citizens could confidently state they were not required to give their name and that verbal requests for documents were sufficient.

Then came a faulty ruling in 2011 by the state’s Appellate Court that is being applied over broadly. The Appellate Court, in defiance of the FOI law’s plain meaning, upheld the denial by a zoning commission to produce public records following a verbal request at a meeting. So much for legislative intent: Some judges will shaft the public’s right to know whenever they get a chance.

The Appellate Court also failed to give customary and appropriate deference to the FOI Commission’s application of the law in this narrow and horrendous ruling. As a remedy, the FOI Commission has proposed a bill that would affirm the right of sovereign citizens to receive documents promptly via verbal requests. This is among many corrective measures that the Legislature should adopt forthwith.

If the governor and the legislature are truly serious about the public’s right to know, they could also beef up the fines. The current maximum fine is $1,000. That should be doubled, tripled or maybe even given another zero. Public servants who knowingly violate the public’s right to know should be personally accountable. Why does a hungry person who steals a loaf of bread get in more trouble than a public official who steals, hides or destroys public records?

The FOI law and its application have been under intense siege in the last decade. The public’s right to know will continue to deteriorate unless citizens and journalists demand adherence to the intent of the FOI law as stated in the preamble.

It seems like the former Danbury mayoral candidate, local anti-immigration hate group co-founder, and local TV talk show host John McGowan is probably getting all the anal sex he’d want, just not the way he’d like it.

Sources state that the local xenophobe and pseudolaw scholar turned himself into authorities on the 15th to begin serving his four year prison sentence for first degree sexual assault

Here's a summary of the conviction against McGowan...

In the 13-page affidavit, the woman describes a variety of sexual encounters to which she consented, but she claimed that on Oct. 20, 2008, after attending a meeting at McGowan's church, he assaulted her anally at a house he was building on Juniper Road in New Milford.The woman told police she said, "What are you doing?" and "Stop," but McGowan instead "put his right arm around her neck and put her in a headlock," according to the affidavit.

Former Danbury mayoral candidate and television talk show host John McGowan began serving his four-year sentence last week after the state Appellate Court turned down an appeal of his first-degree sexual assault conviction.

The 47-year-old Bethel resident surrendered to authorities on Feb. 15 at the state Superior Court in Litchfield, where a six-member jury found him guilty in August 2011 of forcibly sodomizing a woman he was dating nearly three years earlier.

McGowan was in a wheelchair when he made his latest court appearance, and the attorney with him said his client had suffered medical problems since Judge James Ginocchio imposed the sentence in October 2011.

McGowan is being held at the Bridgeport Correctional Center, pending a probable assignment to another facility, a correction department spokesman said Thursday.

McGowan was arrested by New Milford police after the victim, a woman who worked on the crew of his public-access cable television program, "John McGowan Presents," claimed he assaulted her at a home he was building in New Milford in 2008.

[...]

The Appellate Court affirmed the conviction last month.

• McGowan harass marchers, desecrates Mexican flag at 2006 immigration rally



• McGowan joins racist local access personality Tom "Big T" Bennett in inciting people to harm members of the immigrant community.



• Fairfield Weekly mocks McGowan's campaign for mayor.



• Elise Marciano anti-immigrant group members applaud while speaker advocates placing immigrants in WW-II style concentration camps.



• Court trial day seven: Jury trial



• Court trial day six: Motions denied



• Court trial day five: Endless Endless subpoenas and bizarre motions to dismiss



• LITCHFIELD REGISTER-CITIZEN: Local man accused of rape is competent for trial
  
  
• NEWS-TIMES: McGowan found competent to stand trial in New Milford rape case



• Court trial day two: Excuses, excuses



• Court trial day one: Strange behavior, disturbing arrest warrant affidavit



• McGowan arrested, charged with first-degree sexual assault