HOUSE DEMOCRATS • MELISSA OLSON • NEWSROOM - 2008
Newsroom - 2008
December 15, 2008
State Representative Melissa Olson (D-Norwich) was appointed Monday by incoming House Majority Leader Denise Merrill (D-Storrs, Mansfield) to serve in the position of Deputy Majority Leader for the Connecticut General Assembly’s House Democrats.
The Deputy Majority Leader is responsible for aiding the Majority Leader with the review and development of policy, the analysis of critical legislation, and with the agenda of the majority party.
“I am very pleased that Melissa is joining our leadership team and will serve as a Deputy Majority Leader,” Rep. Merrill said. “She brings experience and a work ethic to the table that will serve us well.”
Rep. Olson said, “I want to thank Rep. Merrill for this opportunity. In these difficult economic times, we have a real opportunity to make positive changes that will benefit our state. We have a team that is ready to address the issues facing Connecticut families, seniors and businesses and work on real solutions.”
The entire membership of the General Assembly will be sworn into office on January 7 at the State Capitol in Hartford during the opening day ceremony of the 2009 Session.
Melissa was first elected as the State Representative from the 46th District—Norwich in 2002.
Rep. Mellissa Olson and Rep. Denise Merrill
at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.
May 5, 2008
By MELISSA OLSON
For the Norwich Bulletin
Last month, I was invited to participate in the third annual Ella Grasso Youth Action Conference, which was hosted by the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is an educational outreach organization dedicated to providing programs that explore women’s history and culture.
Though women continue to be underrepresented in positions of political and governmental leadership, Connecticut is bucking the national trend and is a fitting place to encourage civic engagement in young people regardless of gender. Today, our state has its second female governor, four of six of our constitutional officers are women, and the percentage of women serving in our General Assembly is higher than most other states across the country.
This wonderful event brought more than 150 high school students from across Connecticut to the state Capitol to learn about civic involvement, community service and the inner workings of government at all levels. A number of other public officials participated in the event by sharing their personal stories with the students, including Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Comptroller Nancy Wyman and Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.
In speaking to this group of very engaging students, I explained public service is more than running for or serving in elected office. Every one of us has the opportunity to make our city, town or community a better place to live and work through community service — whether it is reaching out to an elderly person in need, helping a neighbor work in their yard, volunteering with a local not-for-profit organization or mentoring a child. Anyone can make a difference.
I was very impressed with this group of students. They were not shy about sharing their insights into, and preferences in, this year’s presidential election. It also became very clear that today’s high school students get their news and information far more frequently from the Internet than from any other source.
When they read newspapers, teens are far, far more likely to read them on personal computers or cell phones.
My experience with a cross-section of Connecticut teenagers was both enlightening and encouraging. Teens do have a sense of what is going on and are ready and eager to commit themselves to public service — either as volunteers or as professionals. In a time of challenging and disheartening news across the country — with the state of our economy, the ongoing war, soaring gas prices and so much crime — the Youth Action Conference was a breath of fresh air and gave me sense of better days ahead for all of us.
State Rep. Melissa Olson, D-Norwich, can be reached at Melissa.Olson@cga.ct.gov
April 24, 2008
Rep. Melissa Olson (D-Norwich) hailed House passage of legislation that would achieve taxpayer savings through the Connecticut Healthcare Partnership (HB 5536). The bill passed late Wednesday by a vote of 102-43.
The legislation would allow municipalities, small businesses and non-profits to voluntarily join the state employee health insurance plan, creating a large pool of insured lives leading to increased bargaining power and lower costs.
“We have legislation that provides quality healthcare and will save taxpayer dollars,” Rep. Olson said. “We are providing municipalities, small business and non-profits with an opportunity to provide affordable healthcare to their workers. It is their choice and it is completely voluntary.”
The Connecticut Healthcare Partnership would provide significant savings to municipalities due to the bulk purchasing power of the 200,000 lives already insured in the state employee insurance pool.
More information on the Connecticut Healthcare Partnership can be found online at www.housedems.ct.gov/CHP.
The bill now heads to the State Senate for consideration.
April 9, 2008
Rep. Melissa Olson (D-Norwich) and Rep. Jack Malone (D-Norwich) announced $6 million in funding for summer youth employment in the budget approved by the Appropriations Committee, an increase of $1 million over current funding.
The funding is distributed by Workforce Boards in Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, Waterbury, and the Norwich area.
“The Appropriations Committee budget understands the importance of providing young people with a summer job,” Rep. Olson said. “This is an investment in our youth that will pay dividends.”
Rep. Malone, a member of the budget-writing committee, echoed the sentiments of Rep. Olsen. “Certain programs are absolutely necessary in communities like Norwich. The Appropriations Committee wisely understands this and at the urging of Rep. Olsen, made certain these funds were included in the budget.”
More than 3,700 youths were employed statewide in the summer jobs program last year.
Melissa Olson is serving her third term as State Representative in the 46th District.
February 29, 2008
State Representative Melissa Olson (D-Norwich), State Representative Jack Malone (D-Norwich) and State Senator Edith G. Prague (D-Columbia) announced that the Joint Committee on Veterans' Affairs will hear testimony during a public hearing Tuesday on legislation to provide funding for the design, siting and construction of a state memorial to veterans who served in Vietnam.
“The brave men and women of Connecticut who died for our country in Vietnam should be remembered and honored by their home state.” Rep. Olson said. “I urge the public to come to Hartford and support this legislation.”
Norwich resident and Vietnam veteran, U.S. Army Major (retired) Dominick Cortese will join the legislators in support of the legislation at the public hearing.
“The anguish of the Vietnam War remains a painful memory for many Americans and the military veterans of that era have long endured the brunt of what became a very costly and unpopular strategy,” Sen. Prague said. “As a co-sponsor of this legislation it is my conviction that a state memorial dedicated to the service of those veterans is not only fitting and proper, but long overdue.”
Rep. Malone said, “The effort to recognize those who served in Vietnam is certainly worthy of the backing of the state of Connecticut and I am honored to be one of the proponents of this bill. Its passage is necessary in this session of the General Assembly.”
AN ACT CONCERNING A STATE MEMORIAL TO VIETNAM ERA VETERANS (HB 5313) will be the subject of a public hearing Tuesday, March 4th at 9:00 am in room 1B of the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.
February 16, 2008
By MICHAEL GANNON
Norwich Bulletin
Hartford -
Thousands of municipal, nonprofit and small-business employees could soon pool with state employees in an effort to reduce health insurance costs.
The legislature Friday formally introduced the Connecticut Health Care Partnership working group, made up of representatives of the state, municipalities, business and labor unions.
House Majority Leader Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, said the existing draft proposal would allow municipalities, nonprofits and specifically defined small businesses to voluntarily enroll their employees in the existing medical plan.
“We’re basing this on things we’ve heard all around the state,” Donovan said. “It could potentially save $1,000 to $2,000 per employee. It could save Meriden $2 million, Danbury $3 million, smaller towns hundreds of thousands.”
State Rep. Melissa Olson, D-Norwich, will serve as co-chairman of the group. She said projected savings will help strapped local governments — and by extension their taxpayers — save money on their annual tax bills.
“We really need health care reform and property-tax reform,” Olson said. “If we find a way to do this, it can pass savings on to municipalities.”
Olson still is waiting for numbers for projected savings for towns in Eastern Connecticut.
Donovan said the state would be careful to avoid any municipality that tries to shift only its high-risk workers, such as police and firefighters.
Sal Luciano of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is on the panel. He said there might be an issue of unions whose existing contracts appear better at first than the state plan.
“But if they get a 3 percent pay raise but have to kick in more for (premiums) and prescriptions, that can eliminate your raise,” he said. “This plan buys pills by the millions. It’s economy of scale. And do you know what the renewal fee was on the state plan this year? Zero.”
Olson said the group expects to have a bill ready for the Labor Committee by early March.
Reach Michael Gannon at mgannon@norwichbulletin.com.
February 15, 2008
By Amanda Falcone
Record-Journal staff
HARTFORD — A working draft of a health care bill is circulating, and a new Connecticut Healthcare Partnership Working Group is ready to review it.
The group hopes to help House Majority Leader Christopher G. Donovan ’s health care-pooling proposal become a reality.
Donovan , D-Meriden, has traveled throughout the state to talk about a health care partnership between the state and municipalities, small businesses and nonprofit organizations. Donovan ’s plan calls for employees working in those sectors to join the state insurance plan. With more people under the state plan, employers would have more bargaining power and the cost of health insurance would be lower.
“It’s an option for towns, small businesses and nonprof-its,” Donovan said, noting that he does not want to require the groups to join the state’s plan.
A draft of the legislation has been created, but Donovan said it needs input fromthe newly established working group, which is made up of legislators and stakeholders. Unions for municipal workers, boards of education, nonprofits and small businesses are represented on the committee. The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities will be the voice for cities and towns.
“Certainly, in this short session, we are going to be working pretty quick and pretty fast,” said Rep. Melissa M. Olson, D-Norwich, the group’s cochairwoman.
Olson said this is the group’s opportunity to talk about health care, adding that it also is an opportunity to educate people on the topic.
“Everyone’s concerns should be heard,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to working on this particular issue.”
While the group has words with which to work, Donovan said his plan has no official fiscal analysis. But in talking with several communities, Donovan said, the idea of pooling for health care could save cities and towns money.
For Meriden, Donovan ’s office estimates a savings of more than $1,500 per person on an individual plan. An individual health care plan in Meriden costs $7,550, while the same individual plan for state employees costs $6,000.
Members of the working group plan to do similar cost comparisons for small businesses and nonprofits.
Donovan said reaction to his health care proposal has been positive. People want good health care, and they want to participate, he said, adding that this is a concrete proposal that people can understand.
The majority leader also said his legislative colleagues —Democrats and Republicans — are supporting his initiative.
Donovan has said his plan is a step toward attaining universal health care in Connecticut and that the idea of health care pooling is not uncommon. Twentysix states, including Massachusetts and New York, have local government employees covered by state plans.
afalcone@record-journal.com
February 8, 2008
By Ted Mann
Hartford — Gov. M. Jodi Rell's proposed 2009 budget would balance her spending increases in part by cutting more than $4.2 million in social service funds that the legislature and governor agreed on just months ago — including a host of small-bore grants to nonprofit agencies ministering to the elderly, the homeless and the poor.
The governor's plan would boost other social services programs and grants, but it would cut crucial funding for nonprofits even as the economy veers toward a recession, some lawmakers and service agencies said this week, just when their programs are most sorely needed.
And it would do so, they said, by counting as savings some of the money that has simply not been released by the Department of Social Services since the legislature included it in the budget last spring.
Rell's proposed reductions include nearly $1 million for various homeless outreach efforts, $500,000 for a fall-prevention program for the elderly, and a $265,000 grant to help low-income people grow their assets, according to a summary of the proposed cuts obtained by The Day.
Among those was a $100,000 grant, approved in the 2008 budget in June, that was intended to help a coalition of volunteer and religious groups establish a long-awaited homeless “hospitality center” at St. James Church in New London.
The budget would also eliminate $391,000 for school readiness programs, $55,000 to fight epilepsy and $1 million for Community Action Agencies in cities statewide.
Rell and her staff have explained the cuts as the elimination of certain “earmarks” from the budget, a term the governor repeated in a brief interview Thursday afternoon.
“Some of these things simply could not be bid in time, done in time, but there's no withholding of any of the funds there, and everything is on track as far as we know,” Rell said in a visit to the Capitol press room.
But the grants in question were agreed upon in the budget Rell signed last spring, according to state lawmakers who said they have lobbied for months to get the monies released by the Department of Social Services, to no avail.
A spokesman for the department could not be reached Thursday evening.
Complaints about the slow release of funds by the department have been growing for months, according to nonprofit advocates and legislators.
Local aid organizations have been clamoring for months, said Rep. Melissa Olson, D-Norwich, after listening to Rell's budget address. Their question is the same one Olson posed: “Where is that money?”
In the meantime, service agencies have been forced to borrow to cover their operating costs, and others are worried about the effect of losing funds altogether.
“It's disturbing, at a time when it's very obvious that we have so many families in serious economic difficulty, that we should be cutting,” said Beverly Goulet, the human services director in Norwich. “I understand the (budget) challenges in Connecticut, but at least maintain what we have. To cut back at a time when people are hurting is just something that I don't understand.”
Rell's staff and spokesmen for the department conceded that many grant payments have been held up, in part by the current workload on the agency and in part by an initial requirement from the governor's budget office that all projects funded by the budget be put out to bid.
But even after Rell's budget chief, Robert L. Genuario, and legislators agreed that the department should simply direct funding to some of the affected agencies, the money for some projects has not arrived. Some of those projects are among the budget cuts Rell proposed Wednesday.
The dispute now seems likely to come to a head, as Sen. Toni Harp, D-New Haven, the co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, told Genuario in a public briefing on Thursday.
The committee intends to examine “what went wrong that we couldn't get these dollars, that I think are vitally important, to the people who come and testify before us,” Harp told Genuario, the secretary of the Office of Policy and Management. “We don't make these things up. People come and testify. ... Why couldn't we get the money out (of the agency) for the people who said it was vitally important to them?”
The agency, Genuario responded, “is not sitting on that money,” and he held out hope that some of the funds could be released in the current fiscal year, which ends in June.
Rell seemed to contradict that, however, saying state agencies were informed of her planned budget reductions in advance.
The cuts “would either be part of their recommendations in cuts to us, or they were OK with it because they couldn't handle it or didn't need to do it now,” Rell said. “If there's something, I'd certainly be willing to look at it, but as far as I know everyone was contacted if there were any cuts (to their budgets) that were, quote, earmarks.”
Meanwhile, DSS has also lagged in releasing Medicaid reimbursement payments to the state's nursing homes, said Toni M. Fatone, the executive vice president of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, which represents both nonprofit and for-profit nursing homes.
Fatone said her organization had collected reports from 54 separate facilities, about 25 percent of the nursing homes in the state, that showed a combined backlog in Medicaid payments from the department of roughly $15.3 million — all while the nursing homes continue to pay a “provider tax” to the states intended to help Connecticut generate more federal financial aid.
Her member organizations, Fatone said, are “screaming.”
Local representatives are increasingly frustrated, said Rep. Betsy Ritter, D-Waterford, who was watching Genuario's budget briefing Thursday.
And Sen. Andrea Stillman, D-Waterford, said they were determined to fight the governor's proposed budget cuts.
“It was just authorized,” Stillman said of the New London homeless grant. “If these are the kinds of areas that the governor's looking at to find savings in the budget, that's very disappointing, and I'm very, very surprised that they would even make that suggestion.”
Like her colleagues, Stillman said she was skeptical of the department's delays in releasing funds, and said the hold-up gave the appearance that the executive branch was creating “false savings” by simply slow-playing the release of budgeted funds.
“There's something going on there, and either nobody knows what's going on, which is pretty sad, or somebody's not sharing,” Stillman said. “And we'll just have to get to the bottom of it.”
t.mann@theday.com
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