A British podcast released on the last day of 2025 provided glimpses of threats in the new year to life as we know it. Democratizing technology has made it easier for rogue actors to obtain nuclear weapons technology. Food production methods have made bird flu more of a risk. There is no sign of an asteroid heading to earth anything like the one that exploded over Siberia on June 30, 1908, flattening 500,00 acres.
That last reassuring prediction lowered my dread meter enough to consider the Connecticut homegrown disruptive events that will require attention but do not threaten annihilation.
The first is likely to be the release of the Department of Economic and Community Development’s audit of the Blue Hills Civic Association‘s suddenly calamitous finances. The venerable Hartford nonprofit organization came to grief in late 2024 when a wire transfer payment of a grant it was administering fell victim to fraudulent wire instructions.
Blue Hills reported the crime to federal law enforcement authorities. DECD took back what remained of the grant fund and the century old civic organization ran out of money and closed. At the end of July, The Courant reported a federal grand jury was investing how millions of dollars in public funds had been spent by Hartford social services organizations. The subpoenas served by federal authorities included requests for information about state Sen. Douglas McCrory, who represents the Blue Hills neighborhood, and Sonserae Cicero Hamlin, McCrory’s friend, whose organizations received millions in grants and contracts.
DECD’s release of the audit was delayed last summer and again in the fall. I have not seen any portion of the audit, but I am familiar with some of the documents the auditors will have reviewed. Some of the amounts paid for the work that was to be performed are eye-popping. They will be difficult to explain, and the work product may have been difficult to locate.
Expect vigorous rounds of finger pointing. The legislators will blame the agencies that administer the grants. Agency officials will remind them that legislators give them little discretion other than to get the money into the hands of the recipients. The nonprofit organizations that received the money will say nothing. Federal investigators work at their own pace.
The audit will be embarrassing. It will represent a small but troubling part of the state’s annual budget, which this year will spend $27 billion.
The weather outside can shape the political weather. Connecticut is vulnerable to rising energy costs and, more ominously, to tight supplies in harsh winter conditions. If polar temperatures follow a storm that piles snow on solar panels we may not have enough electricity for a few days. Homes are the system’s top priority. Businesses are not. If we endure a shortage of electricity this winter, Gov. Ned Lamont, more of a target than usual as he seeks a third term, will struggle to find a satisfying explanation. He successfully opposed building a natural gas power plant in Killingly and probably regrets it. That plant would have provided enough electricity to power several hundred thousand homes.
Lamont placed a lot of chips on the transition to sustainable energy, especially offshore wind projects. This has been fraught with trouble. The costs were higher than expected and President Donald Trump remains an implacable foe of any source of power that does not release carbon into the air. His administration halted five east coast offshore projects a few days before Christmas, citing unspecified national security objections. Investors for future offshore wind projects will be thin on the ground.
The state is preparing to add three hospitals with rickety finances to the University of Connecticut’s healthcare portfolio. UConn Health has no experience expanding through acquiring new hospitals. Looking at the books of the three hospitals, one, Waterbury Hospital, was the bankrupt property of investors who were revealed as financially challenged during its bankruptcy proceedings. The hospitals’ books will likely include some nasty surprises for the new owners: the people of Connecticut.
UConn Health’s John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington. (File photo)
As of Christmas, no one in government was able to tell me if the two hospitals that are not bankrupt, Bristol and Day Kimball, had change of control agreements— payouts when new owners take over — with their executives. The agreements, sometimes known as “golden parachutes,” can be extravagant because they are paid when the board members who negotiate them are at the end of their tenure. Someone else has to produce the dough.
Last Sunday, The Courant published an opinion piece by Ruth Fortune, the first of several Democrat to announce she would challenge U.S. Rep. John Larson for the 2026 Democratic nomination in the first congressional district. Two others, former Hartford mayor Luke Bronin and state Representative Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, remain in the contest with Larson and Fortune.
Fortune, who came to the United States from Haiti as a child, wrote of her determination to strike down “systemic barriers” in education, housing and healthcare as a member of Congress. The campaign will allow the Hartford Democrat and the others to test their ideas before Democratic activists and, maybe, party members in an August primary. I included that maybe because Connecticut continues to be home to some of the most restrictive ballot access laws in the nation.
To get on the primary ballot, Fortune will need the votes of 15% of the delegates on one ballot at the May party nominating convention. If she does not reach that magic mark, Fortune will need to collect thousands of signatures from registered Democrats in the 27-town district, an expensive and time-consuming task.
The state has been holding primaries since 1970. In more than 50 years, no incumbent member of the House has faced one. In most states, a primary challenge to an incumbent is a routine part of democracy. Legislators could reduce the barriers to ballot access in its session that begins in February. They could lower the delegate support threshold to 5% and the number of signatures to 500.
Those two changes would broaden political competition to levels that are ordinary in most states, strengthening our democracy, even if many in power would see it as disruptive.
Kevin F. Rennie can be reached at [email protected]