Part of Route 72 was closed in New Britain following a serious crash on Thursday night.

Route 72 West was closed near exit 3 after a car rollover. State police said serious injuries are being reported.

A few lanes of traffic on the eastbound side of the highway were also closed.

The crash happened around 7:50 p.m. Anyone driving in the area is asked to take alternate routes.

No additional information was immediately available.

Connecticut officials joined advocates and researchers at the Federal Reserve on Thursday to talk about the state’s trailblazing ‘baby bonds’ program, and how it might ultimately serve as a proving ground for efforts around the country.

The program, which launched in July 2024, invests $3,200 on behalf of babies enrolled in Connecticut’s Medicaid program, HUSKY. More than half the babies born in Connecticut are to mothers on Medicaid, and around 15,600 babies are expected by be enrolled in the program annually. Eligible participants live in every one of the state’s cities and towns.

Connecticut is so far unique in passing sustained, state-level support for the concept, but small experiments are popping up around the country, including one through private philanthropy in Georgia and a temporary program for children in foster care in California who were impacted by COVID. Several other states, including New Jersey and Massachusetts, are considering baby bonds-type programs.

The conference Thursday kicked off with a conversation between Connecticut State Treasurer Erick Russell and Darrick Hamilton, a professor at The New School and an economist who is credited with helping to create the concept. They discussed Connecticut’s first in the nation program, and how it may be planting the seeds of a national movement.

“We’re building political momentum, we start local,” said Hamilton, who is the founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. “But at the end of the day, to make this come into fruition, we’ve really got to get the federal government involved to ensure that all children of the United States will be able to get into that vehicle of wealth building.”

Russell spoke about his childhood growing up in New Haven, sweeping the floor and working the register after school at his parents’ store. No one he knew as a kid owned their own home and working paycheck to paycheck was a way of life.

Russell said he is trying to end poverty in Connecticut, and baby bonds are but one of many strategies required to achieve that goal.

“We understand that baby bonds, by itself, is not the solution to that problem,” Russell said. “This is a piece to the puzzle as we continue to make key investments in things like education and early child care and bringing down the cost of housing.”

Baby bonds can provide funds for a down payment on a home, money to open a business or pay for school. But officials said the existence of the funds may also help in less obvious ways: baby bonds can encourage a family to imagine a child’s future and plan for it. The funds could stave off gentrification by creating a cohort of people who are able to cash in at around the same time and even pool resources to support their neighborhood. And they help link parents to state supports through a positive vehicle.

“There’s a huge lack of trust between members of the community and government,” Russell said. “Now we actually have this positive way of connecting with people, right? Connecting with parents who are saying, ‘My child is going to have access to this resource and this opportunity that I could have never imagined.’”

A recipient must be between 18 and 30 years old to use the funds, pass a financial literacy test, and be a Connecticut resident. That money is expected to eventually be worth at least $11,000 and as much as $24,000, depending when the recipient chooses to cash in the bond.

Though the initiative received strong support from many political leaders, Gov. Ned Lamont nearly killed the program in 2023. The decision to draw from a surplus in Connecticut’s special reserve fund instead of borrowing money, as was originally planned, allowed Lamont and Russell to reach a compromise and the program was finally launched in July 2023. In fact, as Russell mentioned during the conference, the so-called baby bonds ended up not being bonds at all.

At Thursday’s event, the history of political infighting wasn’t discussed. Rather, advocates and researchers focused on the promise of the program and the synergy with another initiative: ‘guaranteed income.’

Stanford University researchers Max Rong and David Grusky explained why, based on their research modeling, simultaneously offering families guaranteed income and baby bonds may be a superior approach to offering a more generous version of only one of these programs.

The researchers said that guaranteed income can prove meaningful to help families from falling into poverty, relieving the stress of financial pressure from caregivers so they can form healthy attachments with their children and afford day to day expenses that keep them healthy and safe. However, just providing that cash is unlikely to allow a family to save the kind of money they need to ultimately open a business, buy a home, afford higher education and ultimately build generational wealth. On the other hand, a single infusion of money — a cashed-in baby bond— cannot undo years of underinvestment.

“You might think it doesn’t matter if you just do one or the other,” Grusky said. “What this suggests is that, given data about how the world works, you actually need both.”

Laura Clancy, the executive director of The Bridge Project, a guaranteed income program for new moms which recently launched in Connecticut, asked the room to simply trust mothers, who tend to have good judgment about what their kids need. She ended her panel by encouraging the audience to consider the power of imagination in initiatives like baby bonds and guaranteed income, and how thinking outside the box might help us upend the inequities we take for granted.

“What have we come to accept that is unacceptable?” she asked.

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings of private equity-funded Prospect Medical Holdings (PMH), the parent company of three Connecticut community hospitals, kicked off Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Deborah Weymouth, president and CEO of Manchester Memorial Hospital, Rockville General Hospital, and Waterbury Hospital, is expected to tap into the hospitals’ own funds to finance their functioning during the bankruptcy process.

Until now, local management did not have direct access to those funds.

“We do generate a significant amount of cash that historically we have not had direct access to utilize in our local market,” Weymouth said. “First and foremost, I believe we’ll be dedicating that cash and that revenue to our operating expenses.”

A different picture was painted at the national level.

During the bankruptcy hearing in Texas Tuesday, a lawyer for Prospect said the California-headquartered company got “dangerously close” to running out of money last week.

The lawyer also said Prospect is in ongoing talks with Yale New Haven Health over the stalled $435 million sale of its Connecticut hospitals to Yale, and the talks now were at a different price point.

Prospect’s lawyers plan to transfer the lawsuit Yale filed to back out of the deal, from state court to the bankruptcy court.

In legal speak, the Texas court is what’s known as a court of equity, where the presiding judge Stacey Jernigan — who incidentally writes mystery novels involving bankruptcy judges — has the leeway when it comes to the order of distribution.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said his office would fight for equitable distribution.

“Our hope is that the court will focus not on creditors and all the stuff, right, but focus on the patients and focus on what’s best for the patients and these institutions to keep them open, and the employees,” Tong said.

In its declaration filed Monday, Prospect said the pandemic drove the California company into bankruptcy. But a recent U.S. Senate committee report blasted Prospect for draining local hospitals of money and saddling them with debt.

Meanwhile, Waterbury Hospital, Manchester Memorial, and Rockville General continue to see patients.

“We are open, and as always, our top priority remains to provide safe, high quality care to every patient who comes in,” Weymouth said.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health will continue to inspect the hospitals, and “those relationships continue,” Weymouth said. “Waterbury [Hospital] actually is working with an independent expert who is there on a regular basis.”

Weymouth said she expected the hospitals to remain open in the long term, in part because they would be hard to replace.

“These hospitals have significant value for far more than just their bed count,” Weymouth said. “We have a team of dedicated nurses, hospitalists, other physicians and staff who are ready and able to provide care. That adds value to our organization.”

The cost of closing or replacing the hospitals would amount to $1 million per bed, according to Weymouth.

Prospect currently owns and operates 16 hospitals in California, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, and plans to shift its focus entirely to its 7 hospitals in California post bankruptcy.

This story was first published Jan. 14, 2025 by Connecticut Public.