July 10, 2012
From Susan Kniep President
The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations, Inc.
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032
BREAKING: United
Technologies is on the Move to North Carolina Today, it was reported by Steve Harrison of
the Charlotte Observer in his article captioned Chamber: United Technologies
moved to Charlotte for 'political diversification'
that “United Technologies will bring its newly created aerospace division
headquarters to Charlotte, along with 325 jobs with an average pay of
$200,000…. the company’s 10-year total payroll in Charlotte would be $650
million.” The company received $2.5
million in city and county incentives and $2.5 million from the State. For more information read Mr. Harrison's
complete article and check out the United Technologies website
The Hill recently reported that Repealing health law would mean more benefits for members of
... Congress noting that “Congress
Repealing President Obama’s healthcare law would let
members of Congress keep their government-subsidized insurance coverage after
they retire — a benefit they lost under the health law. “The Affordable Care Act — specifically, a
Republican amendment to the Affordable Care Act — kicked members of Congress
and their aides out of the healthcare program for federal employees. “Instead, lawmakers and staff have to get
coverage through the insurance exchanges created by the healthcare law. Sen.
Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who championed that provision, said it ensures that
lawmakers live under the same rules as their constituents. “Now, as the House
prepares to vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, some Democrats
are arguing that repeal would reinstate a two-tiered system that gives
lawmakers a leg up.”
To date, Connecticut has received $192 Million in federal funds to
implement the law, as noted within Health Care Law Stands: What It Means For CT And You. Check out more on
healthcare issues at http://c-hit.newhavenindependent.org/health.
State Employee Pensions of $100,000 and
More
http://www.ctact.org\upload\home\PensionNew.xls
Recently,
the Hartford
Courant reported Jon Lender: State Faces 5-Year Backlog Of 12,800 Pension
Audits. Therein, Lender notes: “Upon leaving state
service, state retirees receive an ‘estimated monthly benefit’ – a calculation
based on several factors, including years of service. “The comptroller's office
then conducts an audit on each retiree's benefits to ‘confirm that all factors
have been accurately calculated,’ Lembo said. ‘If any
benefit change is necessary, the state will either reduce any payment that was
over-estimated, and deduct any money owed back to the state, or increase any
benefit that was underestimated, including back pay and interest,’ Lembo said. ‘The error rate – the difference between
estimated and post-audited – for state pensions is about 1 percent, with most
of those cases having been initially underestimated.’ “When those underpayments are finally
corrected, interest is paid on the money the retirees should have been
receiving from the beginning. “That interest totaled $449,139, $860,204, and
$602,083 for the past three fiscal years – a total of $1,911,426, according to
the comptroller's office. “The backlog was ‘particularly exacerbated,’ Lembo said, by the 2009 early retirement incentive and a
‘retirement surge’ that followed the 2011 concessions agreement between state
employee unions and the newly arrived administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. “From July
to October of 2011, the retirement division of Lembo's
office handled 1,680 retirements.”
You can check the pensions of State employees at http://transparency.ct.gov/html/searchPensions.asp
And Salaries, Wages and Benefits at http://transparency.ct.gov/html/searchPayroll.asp
And there could soon be another pension to calculate as “Ray
Soucy, the former state union official who has been
identified as a central co-conspirator in a scheme to funnel thousands of
dollars into House Speaker Christopher Donovan's congressional campaign from
hidden donors, has applied for a disability retirement as he faces possible
disciplinary proceedings” as noted within the following article by Jon Lender
on July 5 Figure
Identified In Campaign Scheme Seeks Disability Retirement From State Job
.
Lender goes on to note that “Soucy of Naugatuck, applied effective July 1 to retire from his job as a
correctional industries supervisor at the Cheshire state prison
complex, according to officials from the Department of Correction and the
office of State Comptroller Kevin Lembo. “Soucy has been on
leave from the job since April 29, three days after a federal law-enforcement
affidavit says that a person it called Co-Conspirator 1 — abbreviated as CC-1, whom
sources later identified as Soucy — was persuaded to
cooperate with investigators looking into the alleged campaign financing scheme
by means including allowing them to record his conversations with others.
“Correction officers generally can retire after 20 years on the job at a
lifetime pension amounting to half of their salaries — based on an average of
their highest three years' pay. Soucy's average
salary in the past three years was $63,914, according to the retirement
application he filed June 22 with Lembo's office.”
So what would Ray Soucy, the Third Alleged Co-Conspirator Identified In
Donovan ... - Advocacy, have said to
Twardy if he had been interviewed prior to the
release of Twardy’s report. We will never know as it was reported by Christopher
Keating of the Hartford Courant in his article captioned Twardy Report: Donovan Had No Knowledge Of Illegal Contributions; Could Not
Interview Braddock, Nassi, Jordan, Soucy, Waterfall that Twardy lacked
subpoena power.
And one primary question remains outstanding….. What did Christopher Donovan and/or his
campaign committee pay for Twardy’s
report?
In June, the Day of New London newspaper criticized Christopher Donovan for invoking the
“Know-Nothing Defense” strategy as they suggested in their article Donovan needs to provide answers, following the
arrest of Donovan’s Campaign Committee Finance Director Robert Braddock, Jr.
It now appears that both Donovan and Attorney Stan Twardy, are both
invoking the Know Nothing Defense as they refuse to disclose the cost of the
report as Jon Lender of the Courant notes
Questions Remaining In Donovan FBI Probe; Still No Price For
...Twardy Report. Lender reports
that “John Droney,
a longtime partner in the firm of Levy & Droney
in Farmington, said the final cost could be “easily more’’ than $250,000
because of the amount of work completed…….“I can’t speak for Twardy and Day Pitney,’’ said Droney.
‘If it was my office and I had 10 people working on the file, I would know to
the penny how much it is to date.’ ……“Droney said that Twardy must
charge the full price for the legal work because anything below the full price
would be considered an illegal campaign contribution.”
But here is what we do know as just reported by
CTNewsJunkie.com following the filing of reports with the State Elections
Enforcement Commission which reveal that GOP Donors Identified As Two Naugatuck Residents. “The three $1,000
checks that were returned came from Anne Soucy and
Walter Dambowsky of Naugatuck. “Two were made out to the House
Republican Campaign Committee and one was made New Horizons PAC.
“Soucy lives at the same address as Ray Soucy, the former correction officer and union official,
who has been identified by news reports as co-conspirator one in the Braddock
arrest complaint. Mrs. Soucy declined comment Monday
by hanging up the phone.”Dambowsky, also of
Naugatuck, is a state investigator and volunteers as an auxiliary state
trooper, according to the state police. Calls to Dambowsky’s
phone number went unanswered.”
Affordable
Housing Could Soon be Built In The Affluent Suburbs of Connecticut - Those living
in Connecticut’s affluent suburbs may not have paid much attention in February
to Governor Malloy Pledges More Than Half Billion Dollars for Housing;
Advocates . But now they are as developers are focusing on
State Statutue 8-30G. This 1990 law spurs affordable housing
development, and anxiety because
local zoning laws are overridden if a town has less than 10 percent of its
housing stock designated as affordable.
Such is the case in Ridgefield
where 39 new units are to be built with a portion dedicated to affordable
housing.
Robert Reich, in his article captioned Scandal of scandals: Barclays corruption
probe digs up new dirt asks the
following ……. “What’s the most basic
service banks provide? “Borrow money and lend it out.” Reich offers the following ……. “Suppose the
bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the
money you lend or repay them – bets that will pay off big for them because they
have inside information on what the market is really predicting, which they’re
not sharing with you.
“That would be a mammoth violation of public
trust. “And it would amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportion –
trillions of dollars that you and I and other average people would otherwise
have received or saved on our lending and borrowing that have been going
instead to the bankers. “It would make the other abuses of trust we’ve
witnessed look like child’s play by comparison. “Sad to say, there’s reason to
believe this has been going on, or something very much like it. This is what
the emerging scandal over “Libor” (short for “London interbank
offered rate”) is all about. Libor is the benchmark for trillions of dollars of
loans worldwide – mortgage loans, small-business loans, personal loans. “It’s
compiled by averaging the rates at which the major banks say they borrow. “So
far, the scandal has been limited to Barclay’s, a big London-based bank that
just paid $453 million to U.S. and British bank regulators, whose top
executives have been forced to resign, and whose traders’ emails give a
chilling picture of how easily they got their colleagues to rig interest rates
in order to make big bucks. (Robert Diamond, Jr., the former Barclay CEO who
was forced to resign, said the emails made him “physically ill” – perhaps
because they so patently reveal the corruption.) “But Wall Street has almost
surely been involved in the same practice, including the usual suspects — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America – because
every major bank participates in setting the Libor rate, and Barclay’s couldn’t
have rigged it without their witting involvement.”
Visit the Federation’s Website for Previous Publications
http://ctact.org/