Good morning and welcome back to the Tip Sheet, a weekly newsletter from Tom Dudchik’s Capitol Report written by Mike Cerulli.

In this week’s Tip Sheet, we’re breaking down high drama in the State Senate and how a Trump funding freeze is threatening a GOP priority.

Plus, a high-profile Democratic pol went on a popular morning radio show for an interview that went off the rails. This story has everything: firefighters, a drunken teenage fist fight in Montreal, and a well-known comms staffer’s tattoos.

Let’s dive in…

A high voltage day in the State Senate

When State Sen. John Fonfara stepped up to the podium last Wednesday to unveil a multibillion dollar plan that he says will usher in drastic, immediate reductions of electricity costs, the stage was set for high drama.

The top-line promise of Fonfara’s proposal was enough to grab headlines. The former chair of the Energy and Technology Committee pledged that he could reduce ratepayer bills by swiping the state’s credit card to cover the costs of programs currently funded by the widely-despised public benefits charge. That one move, Fonfara said, would lower bills by 20% immediately. And if that wasn’t enough to catch the attention of the legions of outraged Connecticut ratepayers, Fonfara also claimed his sweeping energy bill could deliver an additional 20% savings through a public takeover of energy purchasing and a host of other reforms.

Despite the magnitude of Fonfara’s promises, it didn’t take long for partisan politics and internecine infighting to steal some of the spotlight away from the substantive policy debate over how to lower electric rates.

With a wry smile, State Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney fired the day’s first salvo.

Looney was asked where, exactly, were his Republican colleagues in the State Senate and why weren’t any of them at the press conference? The question was underscored by the presence of House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, deputy Republican leader Dave Rutigliano, and a cadre of ranking committee members in the House Republican caucus.

“I can’t speak for them,” Looney said of the Senate Republicans. “Senator Fonfara, of course, organized this. But I believe he did reach out to one Senate Republican who declined to attend.”

There wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t have a quick guess as to who that Republican might have been.

Then, Looney twisted the knife.

“I think Senate Republicans seem to be adopting the Trump strategy from the campaign which is to sort of preserve an issue for campaign purposes rather than work to solve the problem,” Looney said. “Maybe they think it will benefit the Stewart gubernatorial campaign, who knows.”

A smattering of laughs rippled across the room before Candelora stepped to the microphone. He made no mention of the Senate president’s swipe at Mayor Erin Stewart and her influential allies in the Senate’s Republican caucus.

“I certainly understand the Senate Republicans’ position and where they are,” Candelora said. “The bottom line is we are unified in the fact that we believe Connecticut has lower rates.”

As for where the Senate Republicans were on that Wednesday morning, many of the caucus’s foot soldiers weren’t in the Capitol at all. A sizable contingent of Senate Republican staffers were knocking doors in Shelton in support of Amy Romano, the GOP candidate in the special election to fill State Sen. Jason Perillo’s vacant House seat.

Senate Minority Leader Steve Harding and State Sen. Ryan Fazio weighed in on the Fonfara bill after the press conference. The two issued a joint statement saying they “welcome” the proposal but added that they see “several concerning aspects of his bill that Republicans cannot vote for as is.” Fazio also fielded questions from a gaggle of reporters. He questioned aspects of the bill, particularly the mechanism by which the public benefits charge would be removed from bills and the notion that reforms to the energy procurement process could deliver the type of savings Fonfara purports.

During the public hearing on the bill, the disagreements between Republicans and Democrats were overshadowed by a fiery intraparty squabble between Fonfara and his fellow Democrat and Senate chair of the Energy and Technology Committee, State Sen. Norm Needleman.

As we’ve previously reported in the Tip Sheet, the tensions between Fonfara and Needleman are something of an open secret around the Capitol. Earlier this year, when Fonfara was first floated as a possible nominee to the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), Needleman wasn’t shy about offering his assessment of the longtime Hartford senator in private conversations with colleagues. In recent weeks, as word of Fonfara’s bill shot around the Capitol, Needleman has questioned why a bill focused on energy would be introduced in a committee primarily known for its tax-writing authorities rather than the committee he co-chairs. Last Wednesday, the simmering feud between the two men spilled into the public’s view.

As Needleman questioned representatives of Eversource who had offered favorable testimony of Fonfara’s bill, the powerful chair of the Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee moved to end the exchange.

“We’re gonna terminate this discussion at this point,” Fonfara said.

“Excuse me?” Needleman shot back.

Fonfara turned to his left.

“Well, there’s a five minute rule in this committee and it’s been exhausted,” the longtime lawmaker from Hartford said to the enigmatic entrepreneur from Essex.

“All I will say is, I hope this bill comes to our committee where it belongs,” Needleman said. “This is not the way to solve anything, nor is it procedurally right, and the senator to my right knows that.”

Needleman rose from his seat and exited the hearing room as soon as the exchange ended. He’ll be back in that hearing room this week as the Finance Committee wraps up its business.

A showdown is brewing…

Trump’s funding freezes derail a GOP-led initiative

As the Trump administration goes about fulfilling the president’s campaign promise to slash federal spending, the funding freezes and grant clawbacks have come at a pace that can often be hard to keep up with. Amidst the whirlwind of news, a research program intended to study the impact of cell phones and social media on students appears to have become a casualty of those cost-cutting efforts. That research project was originally championed by a pair of prominent Republican state senators.

Back in 2022, State Senators Heather Somers and Ryan Fazio successfully advocated for an amendment to a broader mental health bill that directed a study to explore how the mental health of students is impacted by cell phone and social media use. Four middle schools across the state were chosen for the study, with students being subjected to a variety of interventions ranging from outright bans on phone use to the introduction of regular lessons on digital literacy. The study is intended to offer insights to policy makers as they work to craft new rules governing the use of phones in schools.

“With clearer answers about what is happening in schools, and potential solutions, we have a shot at improving mental health and academic outcomes,” Fazio and Somers wrote back in 2022.

Since then, the effort to get cellphones out of schools has become a point of fervent bipartisan agreement. In two successive State of the State addresses, Gov. Lamont garnered sustained ovations from both sides of the aisle when he called for removing cell phones from classrooms.

But last month, the U.S. Department of Education informed Connecticut that they would be freezing about $14 million of funds derived from a pandemic-era program called Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER). The Trump administration has broadly defended their clawback of Covid-era grants by arguing that the pandemic is over and unspent portions of the trillions of federal dollars disbursed during the emergency should be returned.

The Trump administration and its supporters argue that states across the country utilized some of that emergency pandemic funding on programs that went beyond real-time response to the myriad of challenges posed by Covid-19. And it’s not just Republicans who’ve criticized expansive interpretations of what pandemic-era funding can be used for. Gov. Lamont has cautioned against spending those federal funds to cover the regular operating costs of state and local governments. But the line between pandemic-related spending and spending that falls outside a strict definition of emergency response and recovery can be a blurry one. The continued use and subsequent clawback of ESSER funds are a flashpoint in that ongoing debate.

ESSER funds were disbursed in three rounds. The first round was included in the initial package of emergency stimulus passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in March of 2020. The second and third ESSER rounds were funded by a supplemental spending package passed in December of 2020 and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Both of those bills were designed with pandemic recovery, not just immediate response, in mind. Guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education under the Biden administration specifically lists “mental health services and supports” as an acceptable use of ESSER funds.

As the federal response to the pandemic shifted from response to recovery, the state’s Department of Education established the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration (CCERC) using ESSER funds. It was through that new entity that part of the cell phone study championed by Somers and Fazio was funded. When the Trump administration told Connecticut that ESSER funds would be frozen, Professor Adam McCready of the UConn Neag School of Education said he was informed that the study he was leading would have its funding put on hold.

McCready told News 8 and NBC Connecticut he felt profound “shock and dismay” when he received the news. And more than just shock, McCready also expressed a sense of urgency to try and recover funding for his research. While the federal government did tell states that they could appeal to have their ESSER funding unfrozen, McCready said he is operating on a tight timeframe.

“The challenge of my study is, by the time we get that funding back, the school year will be over and even if we get it back it will be too late to collect the data that we need for the study,” McCready told reporters last week. Lamont has already sent a letter requesting that the ESSER funds be unfrozen.

Speaking with News 8 on the same day McCready addressed a crowd of anti-Trump protesters at UConn, Fazio said he wasn’t aware of the fact that the freezing of ESSER funds could essentially tank the research he helped direct in the first place. He said he’d fight to have the state step in to fill the hole.

“I would be very supportive and I think my colleagues would be supportive of continuing this work to support and try to improve their educational and emotional outcomes,” Fazio said.

Radio dispatch: What happens when a staffer steps up to the mic?

Staffers stay in the background, right? That’s a pretty hard and fast rule in the niche world of politicians and the staffers who accompany them to press conferences, media interviews, and photo ops. But when an elected official steps into the radio studio where “Chaz & AJ in the Morning” is broadcast from, the conventional rules of politics go out the window. Such was the case when Comptroller Sean Scanlon went on the show last week.

Scanlon went on the show to discuss a state program providing free cancer screenings for Connecticut firefighters. As is with many “Chaz & AJ” interviews, the conversation with Scanlon probed more than just the original topic of discussion. The interview quickly went off the rails when Chaz asked the comptroller to partake in a call-in segment about regrettable tattoos. Scanlon regaled the hosts with a tale from his youth of a drunken night in Montreal that included a game of “never have I ever” with a group of German tourists and ultimately culminated in bro-on-bro fisticuffs that led the then-teenage Scanlon to abandon plans to get a tattoo.

As Scanlon’s story unfolded, Chaz teased his communications director, Madi Csejka.

“She’s loving this story,” Chaz said. “Madi’s like, ‘Oh my God, I gotta write up multiple press releases now.’”

Chaz then brought Csejka into the conversation, asking her if she had any tattoo stories to share with the audience.

Csejka stepped up to the microphone. She said she had two tattoos.

“I can’t believe I’m saying one of these on the radio,” Csejka said.

Click here to hear what she said.

We’ll be back next week with another edition of the Tip Sheet!