HARTFORD — Since it was first put on display in December 2009, the modern bronze copy of “The Genius of Connecticut,” with its steely face, prominent wings and flowing robes, has been a major attraction on the daily tours of the State Capitol.
Connecticut
Opinion: CT should provide undocumented immigrants access to healthcare insurance
The state of Connecticut is not a private company – it is a government, whose job it is to invest in and to protect its people.
Access Health CT recently announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients will be eligible to enroll in health insurance coverage through state-based marketplaces beginning Nov. 1, after the Biden Administration reversed a decision earlier this year to unfairly exclude DACA recipients from the ACA.
While this is wonderful news, this change will only help a very small number of people, leaving most immigrants in our state still without healthcare. The fact is, we can afford to provide HUSKY for all who need it, documented as well as undocumented – and in fact we can’t afford not to.
After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, I knew I wanted to get involved in supporting my immigrant neighbors. Before then I had always voted, but was otherwise busy with my job and family and not involved in politics. After years of working 50 to 60-plus hours each week as an engineer with UTC and bringing up my kids as a single mom, I was ready to relax when I retired in 2017.
But things had now changed, and I started working with Hartford Deportation Defense (HDD) accompanying our neighbors to their immigration hearings to bear witness and offer support. It was often heartbreaking: One young man had all of his possessions in a backpack, fearing he may have to leave after the hearing.
During the Biden administration this work slowed down a bit, and I became more involved in HUSKY for Immigrants. I care a lot about health care – because without it, I would not be walking. I have rheumatoid arthritis and couldn’t afford the medication without insurance. If untreated it would be causing me much more damage.
I am continually frustrated at the resistance to providing health care to all of our Connecticut residents, regardless of immigration status.
Three of my four grandparents were not born here. My Mom’s parents came from Italy, and my Dad’s dad was from Russia, which later became the Soviet Union. My fourth grandparent was first generation. My mother’s family was separated by World War I during their immigration process, and my grandmother never did learn English.
I see some relatives and others being anti-immigrant and that infuriates me. Our family was welcomed and we made a home here. Today’s immigrants want the same. America is stronger when we welcome immigrants and we have a history of doing so.
People from other countries often come here because it is not safe for them in their own countries. They need and deserve healthcare. When people don’t have it, they don’t treat health issues until they become more serious or it’s too late. It is a terrifying thing, to be undocumented and not have healthcare.
It infuriates me when people say we can’t afford to provide healthcare to undocumented people, or they don’t “deserve” it. the fact is that undocumented immigrants pay more in taxes than they get out of the system.
To me, it’s all about fairness, and why we think we deserve something when other people don’t. People say they don’t want the government in healthcare. Well, I don’t want for-profit companies in my healthcare — insurance or drug companies just trying to make money!
Why do companies need to increase profits every year? Why is our government more accountable to corporations and Wall Street investors than our communities in Connecticut? As long as you are doing well, isn’t that enough?
Connecticut currently has a record surplus. How much of a surplus is enough surplus? Where does that end?
Preventative health care leads to better health for individuals – and for children in school, and adults in the workplace and in the community. Preventative health care saves the government money. I am grateful to be working with the HUSKY 4 Immigrants coalition, and I look forward to a day when everyone in Connecticut has the health care they need and deserve.
Donna Grossman of Windsor is an active member of the HUSKY 4 Immigrants Coalition and Hartford Deportation Defense.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Housing advocates and experts are weighing in on a recent report on Connecticut’s housing crisis, after the state received a failing score for a second year in a row.
Titled “Grading the States: Affordability & Homebuilding Report Cards,” the Nutmeg State ranks at number 46 compared to all 50 states. Each grade is weighed on a 100-point scale across two factors: affordability and homebuilding.
The median household income sits at $95,392 per year in Connecticut, yet the median listing price for a home lands a little over $500,000.
While some believe there is some truth to the score, people like Connecticut Realtor Michael Barbaro say it’s a bit of an oversimplification.
“The fact is, we’re a small state. We have high density, we have older housing stock,” Barbaro said. “So all these factors coming together, giving us that score is probably not fair. It’s probably penalizing us for characteristics that we just can’t change here.”
While Connecticut has seen a rise in building permits, factors like a high cost of living, rising construction costs and restrictive regulations aren’t helping in the eyes of some.
To address the state’s housing needs, at least 120,000 units need to be built, according to a 2025 commissioned study by the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management.
“We’re digging out of like a really deep hole on under production,” Chelsea Ross, executive director of the Partnership for Strong Communities, said. “So it’s going to take us a while to have that part of our grade increase.”
State lawmakers passed legislation last year, formally known as House Bill 5002, with the goal to incentivize new builds and alter zoning regulations.
While advocates of the bill praised the step, some say it’s just a start.
“What we have is kind of a framework for that work, but no real enforcement on how suburbs are going to handle that and ensure that they’re building more affordable housing,” Representative Antonio Felipe, chair of the legislative housing committee said.
Connecticut
‘The Genius of Connecticut,’ an allegorical statue, may never ‘return’ to the top of State Capitol
Brian Pencz, facilities administrator for the state Office of Legislative Management, which runs the 14-acre State Capitol complex, in a file photo in 2024. A statue called ‘The Genius of Connecticut’ has no skeletal body inside, ‘so it’s not stable enough to go up on top of the Capitol,’ said Pencz.
While thousands have seen the 18-foot-tall sculpture up close and personal, the goal of Capitol historians and preservationists has been to put the replica atop the gold dome. The original ruled over the building’s Gothic architecture from 1878 until damage to its base was found after the Hurricane of 1938, when the statue was dismantled and removed piece-by-piece.
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Now, though, the discovery of a lack of interior framing inside the 5,500-pound daemon, the allegorical protector of Connecticut, is making the administrators who run the 14-acre State Capitol complex worry whether it would be safe to put the sculpture atop the 274-foot-tall gold dome after a $50 million rehabilitation of the building begins late this year.
“There’s no skeletal body inside, so it’s not stable enough to go up on top of the Capitol,” said Brian Pencz, facilities administrator for the Office of Legislative Management in Hartford. “That is what the X-rays that we had done show.”
‘The Genius of Connecticut’ statue in the central atrium on the State Capitol, in Hartford, Conn., on Sept. 28, 2023. A plan to move it to the top of the dome may not move forward because of structural concerns about the statute.
The half-million dollars budgeted to hoist “The Genius” atop the dome — with its crown of oak leaves representing the state tree, a wreath of dried flowers in her right hand and mountain laurel, the state flower, in the left — could increase dramatically if the 20 pieces have to be taken apart, an armature inserted and the pieces welded back together, he said.
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That’s the issue before the State Capitol Preservation and Restoration Commission. The advisory panel, along with the Office of Legislative Management, considers a remounted “Genius” the culmination of the $50 million cleaning and repair program at the Capitol that includes applying a 3/1000ths-inch of gold leaf on the dome and rehabilitating 522 windows.
That cost doesn’t include necessary repairs to the original base of the “Genius,” above the dome in the area called the “lantern” of the Capitol, itself a tribute to the nation’s role in the American Civil War.
Complicating the work on the “Genius” is that the Polich Tallix Foundry of Rock Tavern, N.Y. — where it was cast, based on the 2007 advanced laser imaging of the plaster copy of the original that resides in the Capitol’s north lobby — has been sold to another company.
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Pencz recently told the Capitol Preservation Commission that it will have to wait a year or more to see whether adding a new skeleton or armature is even possible.
“I reached out to that company and a competitor of theirs to have them come in and look at it so we can at least get the process started, and I have only heard back from one and they’re out until mid-summer next year,” he said.
‘The Genius of Connecticut,’ a copy of an identical statue that was atop the State Capitol between 1878 and 1938, is a regular stop for tours under the Capitol’s 257-foot-tall rotunda. Plans to move it to the dome are threatened by a structural assessment of the sculpture.
State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, co-chair of the legislative Appropriations Committee who leads the Preservation Commission, said she would like to know the cost of a skeletal component for the “Genius.”
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“I think it’s important for us to kind of get there. Personally, I’d like to see the ‘Genius’ get back where it belongs,” she said. “That’s where I’ve been along and I’d like to see that happen.”
Before the 1938 hurricane, the original statue had previously been hauled down in 1903, for about a year, when officials were concerned about damage from high winds, according to a 2021 article by Central Connecticut State University Professor Matthew Warshauer.
Warshauer, in a phone interview Monday, said he would also like to see the new version of the “Genius” atop the dome. But Warshauer also said he’d prefer that a statewide, grassroots citizen-fundraising effort pay for it, rather than state funds. He cited the importance of civic engagement, particularly in this semiquincentennial year of celebrating — and discussing — the 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
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“I wholeheartedly support raising the ‘Genius’ to the center of the Capitol and its towering heights,” Warshauer said. “But what will such an action mean if it’s done only by the General Assembly and not the public? Today we have to decide what our symbols are and what they can mean. It’s up to the people to decide, with the help of civic leaders and historians. It’s more meaningful if done with intention by the people and different groups of people.”
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