J Brendan Sharkey

The Dec. 14 Newtown school shootings dominated opening day at the state Capitol Wednesday, as lawmakers arrived to face a projected budget deficit of $1 billion in the next fiscal year and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy exhorted them to take action to prevent...

In the fall of 1979, an ambitious young athlete named John McKinney was chosen as one of only three sophomores on the varsity soccer team at Fairfield Prep. The young McKinney looked up in those days to the team's seniors — one of whom was J....

HARTFORD — Less than a week after the Newtown school massacre, state lawmakers are calling for sweeping new restrictions on guns and ammunition — while a key legislative leader says that the Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle used in last Friday's...

Connecticut lawmakers on Wednesday approved a measure that nearly eliminates the state's $365 million deficit by cutting funding for hospitals and education, among a myriad of other programs. The proposal reduced state spending in the current fiscal...

Salary increases for state judges might well be among the casualties of the state's deepening budget crisis if comments by top state legislative leaders are any indication. "Any expenditure of this kind will be difficult, if not impossible, given the...

A high-ranking state Insurance Department official, who once served as the acting commissioner of the agency, has been paid not to show up at work since Aug. 10 — at the rate of $2,300 a week — during an investigation of alleged "harassment,...

Tim Coffey, a Stamford photographer, takes political animals and puts them in their natural habitats. Coffee has a new exhibit of his photographs, opening on Wednesday, Aug. 1, at the Concourse Gallery of the State Capitol Building in Hartford. It's...

The Connecticut House of Representatives late Wednesday gave final legislative approval to a measure repealing the state's seldom-used death penalty after more than 9 1/2 hours of often gut-wrenching debate. Senate Bill 280 cleared the House 86-62, a...

East Haven’s racial-profiling scandal produced an abundance of outrage during a Connecticut Civil Rights Coalition news conference Wednesday, but maybe not enough of it was directed at the people who ultimately made the scandal possible. Oh,...

The head of the Connecticut NAACP calls it “astonishing and heart breaking” that the legislative committee deciding on how this state’s political boundaries should be redrawn doesn’t have a single minority member. The absence of...

Two veteran Democratic legislators are both retiring from the General Assembly after 20 years. Deputy Speaker Marie Kirkley-Bey will announce her retirement Wednesday at a star-studded press conference at the state Capitol that will include former House...