Celebrate Earth Day 40 with Us at the Capitol!

This Week at the Capitol, with Susan Merrow

For our second entry of “This Week at the Capitol” we talked with Susan Merrow. She’s on the board of directors of CTLCV and 1000 Friends of Connecticut. Sue also has a long history with the Sierra Club, serving as the president at the national level in the 1990s.

We talked with Sue Merrow at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford recently about what’s going on at this point in the legislative session.

We talked about the state’s budget deficit, some promising bills addressing toxic chemicals, green jobs bills, and some misguided bills that would undermine environmental protection.

Click the image to listen to Sue’s update on what’s going on at Connecticut’s legislature now.

CTLCV Backs Call for Focus on Transit

As a member of the Transportation for America coalition, it was easy to back the call of Connecticut’s transit advocates at the March 31 transit press event outside the LOB. CTLCV joined Transit for Connecticut, the Tri-State Transportation Coalition, the Regional Plan Association, Connecticut Fund for the Environment, legislative leaders, and others at the press conference to support clean, efficient, 21st century public transportation.

Reducing our reliance on cars cuts greenhouse gases and petroleum use. That’s good for the environment. Developing real estate around transportation centers is smart growth. If we commit to building cleaner vehicles, we promote good green jobs.

Connecticut–based UTC Power’s fuel cell-powered bus

And if that’s not enough, transit is good economic development: business site selectors are increasingly looking for easy access to good, fast, reliable transit when companies look to relocate. We want to make ourselves attractive to businesses looking to relocate.

Yes, the financial climate is very tight. But to paraphrase David Bingham in his recent op-ed, times of crisis present opportunities – opportunities to make things better, or make things worse.

Ignoring transit now will just make things worse.