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Column of the Day

Governor has been a big ally of towns; except on coronavirus relief funding

CT Has $1.38 Billion in Federal CARES Act Aid, But Shared Zero with CT Towns; MA Has Allocated 25% to Its Municipalities

By Joe DeLong, Exec Director of CCM, CT Mirror, May 21, 2020 - Posted on May 29, 2020

Connecticut towns and cities still have no idea if or how the state plans to share CARES Act funds with communities. Specifically, the federal stimulus package contained a Coronavirus Relief Fund, which is for state and local government expenditures regarding the pandemic. Connecticut received $1.38 billion from the fund. The law left it up to states to decide if and how much financial aid to provide to municipalities with populations under 500,000.

Many states are entering into agreements to share funds with their towns and cities. So far, not Connecticut, a state containing three of the hardest hit areas in the country (Fairfield, New Haven and Hartford counties).

Just look to our neighbor, Massachusetts. Aside from large local governments — Boston and Plymouth County, where funds have been sent directly — Massachusetts is setting aside 25% of its Coronavirus funds for its towns and cities.

● Read in CT Mirror
● Read and comment here on The Red Line

The Real Scorecard on Gov. Lamont’s C-19 Performance

Public health: 3rd highest state fatality rate, 71% in senior homes (vs. 50% national average). Economy: Last to reopen.

By Robert E. Patricelli, Hartford Courant, May 26,2020 - Posted on May 26, 2020

Gov. Ned Lamont is winning solid approval ratings from a large majority of the state’s citizens for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. You have to like the no-nonsense, non-sensational way he has been handling this awful situation. What could be harder than having to balance human lives saved against jobs lost and economic security for hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens?

But what does the data say about how Connecticut is doing compared to other states? Isn’t that a very real scorecard on performance we should be looking at to judge the effectiveness of our political leaders and our collective citizen responses?

The data are not so flattering — they are decidedly grim.

According to Kaiser Family Foundation data as of May 22, our state ranks third in COVID deaths per million of population (1,031), behind only New York at 1,492 and New Jersey at 1,248. The national average is “only” 296 COVID deaths per million; our neighbor Rhode Island is at 564.

How could we be so far off the national mark? Are our death rates somehow an inevitable consequence of having New York as a neighbor?

A big part of the puzzle could be that we have not focused on the heart of the problem in Connecticut. The state’s own data reports that about 71 percent of our COVID-related deaths have been from residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. By contrast, 51 to 53 percent of COVID deaths are from nursing home residents nationwide. If you add in the COVID deaths in Connecticut’s prisons, the percent of our death toll from “confined populations” is over 76 percent.

It’s hard to argue that our high death rates in these vulnerable but confined populations is somehow the result of proximity or contagion from New York.

● Read in Hartford Courant
● Read and comment here on The Red Line