Good morning! The UConn men’s basketball team will play in Monday night’s NCAA Championship game against San Diego State. The Huskies defeated Miami on Saturday 72-59 to move on to the national title game — for the fifth time in the UConn men's basketball program's history.
Get your popcorn ready to watch the game, which is streaming online at 9:20 p.m. on the NCAA website.
Here’s a bite-sized look at what else we are hearing:
New York’s budget would need to be passed by the end of business Monday to make payroll for 57,000 state employees. Lawmakers and Governor Kathy Hochul missed the state budget deadline on April 1. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said lawmakers could approve an extender, but if the budget is still outstanding by April 10, payroll for 83,000 state workers would be affected. DiNapoli warns lawmakers that their paychecks due April 12 will be withheld, if the budget isn’t in place.
Retired Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Richard N. Palmer will lead the commission that oversees the state’s public defenders. Governor Ned Lamont appointed Palmer to steady the commission after the sudden resignation of nearly all its members in March. The newly appointed Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis, the first Black woman in the role, is under fire over allegations that she pressured hiring and other decisions based on race. The commission approves spending, hiring and policy decisions for the Division of Public Defender Services.
Nassau County Police rolled out the Overwatch program over the weekend. Twenty officers will patrol high-profile locations, such as schools and houses of worship, in an effort to deter criminal activity. Police say they will spend an equal amount of time in all areas of the county, regardless of crime statistics. It’s modeled after the NYPD’s heavily armed and visible Hercules counterterrorism team.
Connecticut is among a dozen states that makes public funding available to private schools for security upgrades. State emergency officials reviewed the protections in place for religious and other private schools after last week’s shooting at a Christian elementary school in Tennessee that killed three adults and three students. Since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, nearly $7 million in state funds have been spent on at least 110 projects at private schools in Connecticut.
A Long Island business can no longer run a program that allows people to encounter sloths. A Suffolk County Supreme Court judge ruled on Friday that Sloth Encounters in Hauppauge must “immediately cease” operations, including in-home sloth visits. In September, the judge ordered a temporary restraining order closing the business for violating Islip Town code. The federally licensed animal exhibitor is licensed as a pet store, and argues town code nor New York state considers sloths to be wild animals.
A bill in Connecticut would dissolve the Norwalk Transit District. Instead, CT Transit would take over its 10 bus routes, like the state system does for New Haven, Stamford and other cities in the state. Norwalk Transit would still operate its services for seniors and riders with disabilities.
Wall Street bonuses paid to securities employees dropped by an average of 26% in 2022. New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said that means income tax revenue for the state will also be down, projecting a decrease of $457 million compared to last year. DiNapoli also said New York’s economic recovery isn’t necessarily tied to Wall Street and that state budget writers anticipated the decline.
Cookies are in town! Much like the rest of the country experiencing a Girl Scout cookie shortage, a caravan of trucks containing 187,000 boxes of cookies arrived in Connecticut over the weekend. According to the Girl Scouts of Connecticut, these cookies will go to local troops’ booth sales through May 7.
