Gov. Ned Lamont’s pick to lead Connecticut’s prison oversight effort failed to secure a favorable vote out of the legislature’s Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee on Tuesday, effectively putting the nomination in jeopardy until lawmakers and the governor decide how to proceed.
Earlier in the day, it appeared that Hilary Carpenter, a veteran public defender who Lamont recently appointed to be the state’s correctional ombudsperson, had a chance to make it out of the committee on the condition that she make immediate progress in alleviating concerns from the prison advocacy community about her appointment.
But an unusual 8-8 vote finalized Tuesday afternoon ended with a decision not to push Carpenter’s nomination forward. Three lawmakers were absent and/or did not vote, while one legislator, Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, D-New Haven, abstained.
“Right now, the nomination doesn’t look like it will move forward,” Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, a co-chair of the committee, said in an interview, adding that conversations about how the legislature will proceed have yet to occur. The law governing the position does not outline steps for when lawmakers vote unfavorably on a nominee, effectively leaving the process in limbo.
Lamont’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an interview, Carpenter said she was disappointed that people in prison may have to wait longer for clarity on who will serve in the long-anticipated independent oversight role.
“I don’t know how long they’re going to have to wait before they fill the position, but it’s unfortunate that it won’t be filled soon,” Carpenter said.
If approved by the full legislature, Carpenter would have, among a bevy of responsibilities, the power to independently conduct site visits, communicate with incarcerated people, review agency records and draft a yearly report on confinement conditions in the Department of Correction.
But during the public hearing portion of the meeting, advocates relayed their concerns to legislators about Lamont bypassing Connecticut’s prison oversight committee’s recommendation to select Carpenter, whom the panel ranked last among the three finalists considered for the position.
[Lamont appoints Hilary Carpenter to DOC ombudsperson role]
“I don’t feel it’s fair given the advocacy of all the other individuals that have been nominated,” testified Cody Richard, a member of the public who was formerly incarcerated, echoing the sentiments of the handful of people who spoke, including Barbara Fair, one of the finalists.
After the rare showing of displeasure, lawmakers informed Carpenter that they wanted to see immediate progress in easing the concerns of the community, suggesting that her success in doing so would determine whether the full legislative body would approve her appointment.
“I think that hearing how those conversations go, how those fears have been allayed, how those relationships are being built will go a long ways towards bringing a majority in the House and the Senate,” said Duff, D-Norwalk.
“I felt uncomfortable throughout this entire process and will continue to do so until more conversations are had with, especially, the individuals in this room who are more experienced in this than I am,” added Rep. Julio Concepcion, D-Hartford, the House chair of the committee.
Both chairs voted in favor of her nomination, but with those caveats.
Carpenter said during her testimony and in a subsequent conversation with The Connecticut Mirror that listening to the thoughts and concerns of the public was a top priority of hers, adding that “what they say will help guide me and what I do.”
After the hearing, she spoke at length with advocates in the hallway of the Legislative Office Building, collecting their phone numbers and reassuring them that she was there to work with them and advocate for the rights of people in prison.
“They are dedicated and passionate about this,” Carpenter told lawmakers about the advocates. “So I look forward to working with them from the get-go in this position.”
Public opposition to Carpenter’s appointment was expected given the dissatisfaction of advocates and legislators over Lamont’s decision to appoint the former death penalty adversary last month, but Tuesday’s tense affair was rare for a committee that doesn’t often hear adversarial testimony from the public.
Lamont’s choice to select Carpenter, who has worked for nearly two decades in the Division of Public Defender Services, went against the guidance of the Correction Advisory Committee, which interviewed and selected finalists for the role.
After months of delays and setbacks, the committee recommended the appointment of civil rights attorney Kenneth J. Krayeske. From the three contenders, which included Fair, a longtime prison reform advocate, the group ranked Carpenter last.
Carpenter’s testimony on Tuesday was her first time speaking in front of the members of the legislature since her appointment.
In her opening remarks, she talked about her experience advocating for incarcerated and indigent clients and fostering relationships with correctional staff “to address my clients’ needs effectively and establish positive connections for future cases and clients.”
Her previous experience as president of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, she said, provided her with an understanding of state politics and enabled her to collaborate with diverse stakeholders.
She said her work approach emphasizes empowering people to advocate for themselves, facilitating their access to resources and intervening directly as needed.
“My lifetime commitment to advocating for marginalized communities equips me to contribute meaningfully to Connecticut’s criminal justice reform efforts,” Carpenter said. “I am humbled by this nomination to this pivotal role, and I’m eager to begin this important work.”
But her optimism wasn’t shared by advocates like Fair, whom the governor did not appoint despite her years of advocacy work, including the creation of the legislation that reestablished the ombudsperson role after it was previously defunded.
“I don’t even know why I’ve been sitting here testifying for this position as opposed to being appointed to it,” Fair said during the public hearing, in front of a room of people vocalizing their backing of her, such as “We want you, Barbara,” and their dissatisfaction with Carpenter.
Fair also relayed disappointment with Carpenter having not yet reached out to her, despite saying she planned to prioritize outreach.
“Nothing personal against Ms. Hilary, but those people incarcerated, to me, are the most marginalized, unheard, unseen people in Connecticut,” said Fair, whom Carpenter spoke with after the hearing. “I haven’t heard of Ms. Carpenter in all these decades of doing this work, come in and step in, and working with me, and stand with me.”
Rep. Dave Yaccarino, R-North Haven, a ranking Republican on the committee, was one of the legislators who voted against advancing Carpenter’s nomination, saying he did so as a “red flag.”
“I have concerns for all of the reasons we’ve heard from the public, and I was a little concerned about not having enough staff and not hearing enough input from our inmates,” said Yaccarino, referencing points made by Carpenter about needing adequate resources to successfully launch the office. “I would like to have a bipartisan effort to move this forward eventually. But I need to have more information. I apologize. I just feel strongly about this.”
Rep. Anabel Figueroa, D-Stamford, also said she needed more information before supporting Carpenter’s appointment.
“I think we, as elected officials, do have a duty to our constituents, to our taxpayers,” Figueroa said. “I think I have to side with them and say no to this position for now.”
Jaden Edison is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (https://ctmirror.org/ ). Copyright 2024 © The Connecticut Mirror.
It’s a scheme made famous by a nearly 30-year-old episode of the sitcom Seinfeld.
Hoping to earn a quick buck, two characters load a mail truck full of soda bottles and beer cans purchased with a redeemable 5-cent deposit in New York, before traveling to Michigan, where they can be recycled for 10 cents apiece. With few thousand cans, they calculate, the trip will earn a decent profit. In the end, the plan fell apart.
But after Connecticut raised the value of its own bottle deposits to 10 cents in 2024, officials say, they were caught off guard by a flood of such fraudulent returns coming in from out of state. Redemption rates have reached 97%, and some beverage distributors have reported millions of dollars in losses as a result of having to pay out for excess returns of their products.
On Thursday, state lawmakers passed an emergency bill to crack down on illegal returns by increasing fines, requiring redemption centers to keep track of bulk drop-offs and allowing local police to go after out-of-state violators.
“I’m heartbroken,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, who supported the effort to increase deposits to 10 cents and expand the number of items eligible for redemption. “I spent a lot of political capital to get the bottle bill passed in 2021, and never in a million years did I think that New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island residents would return so many bottles.”
The legislation, Senate Bill 299, would increase fines for violating the bottle bill law from $50 to $500 on a first offense. For third and subsequent offenses, the penalty would increase from $250 to $2,000 and misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison.
In addition, it requires redemption centers to be licensed by the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (previously, those businesses were only required to register with DEEP). As a condition of their license, redemption centers must keep records of anyone seeking to redeem more than 1,000 bottles and cans in a single day.
Anyone not affiliated with a qualified nonprofit would be prohibited from redeeming more than 4,000 bottles a day, down from the previous limit of 5,000.
The bill also seeks to pressure some larger redemption centers into adopting automated scanning technologies, such as reverse vending machines, by temporarily lowering the handling fee that is paid on each beverage container processed by those centers.
The bill easily passed the Senate on Wednesday and the House on Thursday on its way to Gov. Ned Lamont.
While the bill drew bipartisan support, Republicans described it as a temporary fix to a growing problem.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, called the switch to 10-cent deposits an “unmitigated disaster” and said he believed out-of-state redemption centers were offloading much of their inventory within Connecticut.
“The sheer quantity that is being redeemed in the state of Connecticut, this isn’t two people putting cans into a post office truck,” Candelora said. “This is far more organized than that.”
The impact of those excess returns is felt mostly by the state’s wholesale beverage distributors, who initiate the redemption process by collecting an additional 10 cents on every eligible bottle and can they sell to supermarkets, liquor stores and other retailers within Connecticut. The distributors are required to pay that money back — plus a handling fee — once the containers are returned to the store or a redemption center.
According to the state’s Department of Revenue Services, nearly 12% of wholesalers reported having to pay out more redemptions than they collected in deposits in 2025. Those losses totaled $11.3 million.
Peter Gallo, the vice president of Star Distributors in West Haven, said his company’s losses alone have totaled more than $2 million since the increase on deposits went into effect two years ago. As time goes on, he said, the deficit has only grown.
“We’re hoping we can get something fixed here, because it’s a tough pill to be holding on to debt that we should get paid for,” Gallo said.
Still, officials say they have no way of tracking precisely how many of the roughly 2 billion containers that were redeemed in the state last year were illegally brought in from other states. That’s because most products lack any kind of identifiable marking indicating where they were sold.
“There’s no way to tell right now. That’s one of the core issues here,” said state Rep. John-Michael Parker, D-Madison, who co-chairs the legislature’s Environment Committee.
Parker said the issue could be solved if product labels were printed with a specific barcode or other feature that would be unique to Connecticut. Such a solution, for now, has faced technological challenges and pushback from the beverage industry, he said.
Not everyone involved in the handling, sorting and redemption of bottles is happy about the upcoming changes — or the process by which they were approved.
Francis Bartolomeo, the owner of a Fran’s Cans and Bart’s Bottles in Watertown, said he was only made aware of the legislation on Monday from a fellow redemption center owner. Since then, he said, he’s been contacting his legislators to oppose the bill and was frustrated by the lack of a public hearing.
“I know other people are as flabbergasted as I am because they don’t know where it comes out of,” Bartolomeo said “It’s a one sided affair, really.”
Bartolomeo said one of his biggest concerns with the bill is the $2,500 annual licensing fee that it would place on redemption centers. While he agreed that out-of-state redemptions are a problem, he said it should be up to the state to improve enforcement.
“We’re cleaning up the mess, and we’re going to end up being penalized,” Bartolomeo said. “Get rid of it and go back to 5 cents if it’s that big of a hindrance, but don’t penalize the redemption centers for what you imposed.”
Lynn Little of New Milford Redemption Center supports the increased penalties but believes the solution ultimately lies with better labeling by the distributors. She is also frustrated by the volume caps after the state initially gave grants to residents looking to open their own bottle redemption businesses.
“They’re taking a volume business, because any business where you make 3 cents per unit (the average handling fee) is a volume business, and limiting the volume we can take in, you’re crushing small businesses,” Little said.
Ritter said that he opposed a move back to the 5-cent deposit, which he noted was increased to encourage recycling. However, he said the current situation has become politically untenable and puts the state at risk of a lawsuit from distributors.
“We’re getting to a point where we’re going to lose the bottle bill,” Ritter said. “If we got sued in court, I think we’d lose.”
NEW BRITAIN, CT — Stanley Black & Decker on Thursday said it has decided to close its manufacturing facility in New Britain.
Debora Raymond, vice president of external communications for the manufacturer, said the decision is a result of a “structural decline in demand for single-sided tape measures.”
The New Britain facility predominantly makes these products, according to Raymond.
“These products are quickly becoming obsolete in the markets we serve,” Raymond said, via an emailed statement Thursday.
The decision is expected to impact approximately 300 employees, according to Raymond.
“We are focused on supporting impacted employees through this transition, including providing options for employment at other facilities, severance, and job placement support services for both salaried and hourly employees,” Raymond said.
As of Thursday at 4:30 p.m., no Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice had been filed with the state Department of Labor.
The company’s corporate headquarters remains at 1000 Stanley Dr., New Britain.
Gov. Ned Lamont released the following statement on the decision:
“Although Stanley has made the decision to discontinue operations for manufacturing outdated products, a change in workforce opportunities is difficult for employees, their families, and any community.,” Lamont said. “However, I am hopeful that these skilled workers will be repurposed with the help of Stanley Black & Decker, a company that will still proudly be headquartered here in Connecticut. My administration is working closely with local and state leaders to support affected workers and to reimagine the factory site so it can continue to create opportunity and strengthen New Britain’s economic future.”
New Britain Mayor Bobby Sanchez said he is “deeply disappointed” the company will be closing its Myrtle Street operations.
“For generations, Stanley Works has been part of the fabric of our city, providing good-paying jobs, supporting families, and helping build New Britain’s proud reputation as the ‘Hardware City,’” Sanchez said.
According to the mayor, his office’s immediate focus is on helping affected workers and their families. The mayor has been in contact with Lamont’s office, and they will be working closely to make sure employees have access to job placement services, retraining opportunities and support, Sanchez said.
“We will continue aggressively pursuing economic development opportunities and attracting businesses that are looking for a true community partner, a city ready to collaborate, innovate and grow alongside them,” Sanchez said. “New Britain has reinvented itself before, and we will do so again.”
Stanley Black & Decker, founded in 1843, operates manufacturing facilities worldwide, according to its website. It reports having 43,500 employees globally, and makes an array of products, such as power tools and equipment, hand tools, and fasteners.
Newly released police video shows former WWE executive Vince McMahon ram his luxury sports car into the rear end of another vehicle on a Connecticut highway last summer as he was being followed by a state trooper.
McMahon, now 80, was driving his 2024 Bentley Continental GT at more than 100 mph on the Merritt Parkway when he crashed in the town of Westport, according to state police.
A trooper’s dashcam video shows McMahon accelerating away, then braking too late to avoid crashing into the back of a BMW. The Bentley then swerves into a guardrail and careens back across the highway, creating a cloud of dirt and car parts.
“Why were you driving all over 100 mph?” state police Detective Maxwell Robins asked McMahon after catching up to the wrecked Bentley, which can cost over $300,000.
“I got my granddaughter’s birthday” McMahon replied, explaining he was on his way to see her. The encounter was recorded on police bodycam video.
No one was seriously injured in the July 24 crash, which happened the same day that WWE legend Hulk Hogan died of a heart attack in Florida.
Besides damage to the rear of the BMW, another vehicle driving on the opposite side of the parkway was struck by flying debris. The driver of that third car happened to be wearing a WWE shirt, according to the police video.
McMahon was cited for reckless driving and following too closely. A state judge in October allowed McMahon to enter a pretrial probation program that will result in the charges being erased from his record next October if he successfully completes the program. He was also ordered to make a $1,000 charitable contribution.
McMahon’s lawyer, Mark Sherman, said the crash was just an accident.
“Not every car accident is a crime,” Sherman said. “Vince’s primary concern during this case was for the other drivers and is appreciative that the court saw this more of an accident than a crime that needed to be prosecuted.”
State police said Robins was trying to catch up to McMahon on the parkway and clock his speed before pulling him over. They said the incident was not a pursuit, which happens when police chase someone trying to flee officers. They also said it did not appear McMahon was trying to escape — though in the video the detective suggests otherwise.
“I’m trying to catch up to you and you keep taking off,” Robins says.
“No, no no. I’m not trying to outrun you,” McMahon says.
An accident information summary provided to the media shortly after the crash did not mention that a trooper was following McMahon.
The Associated Press obtained the videos Wednesday through a public records request. They were first obtained by The Sun newspaper.
The trooper’s bodycam video also shows him asking McMahon whether he was looking at his phone when the crash happened. McMahon said he was not and adds that he hadn’t driven his car in a long time.
After Robins tells McMahon that his car is fast, McMahon replies, “Yeah, too (expletive) fast.”
The videos also show McMahon talking to the driver he rear-ended. Barbara Doran, of New York City, told the AP last summer that McMahon expressed his concern for her and was glad she was OK. She said she was heading to a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard at the time of the crash.
After McMahon was given the traffic summons, he shook hands with Robins and another trooper and they wished him well.
McMahon stepped down as WWE’s CEO in 2022 amid a company investigation into sexual misconduct allegations. He also resigned as executive chairman of the board of directors of TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of WWE, in 2024, a day after a former WWE employee filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against him. McMahon has denied the allegations. The lawsuit remains pending.
McMahon bought what was then the World Wrestling Federation in 1982 and transformed it from a regional wrestling company into a worldwide phenomenon. Besides running the company with his wife, Linda, who is now the U.S. education secretary, he also performed at WWE events as himself.
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