New law gives CT Comptroller authority to halt payments to state contractors over wage violations
The state Comptroller will soon have the authority to
withhold payments to contractors or subcontractors accused of violating
Connecticut’s prevailing wage laws on public works projects.
The authority was granted by Public Act 26-17,
formerly Senate Bill 268, which overwhelmingly passed this year in
both legislative chambers and was signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont on May 14.
The law goes into effect on Oct. 1. It is intended to
strengthen enforcement against wage theft and prevailing wage violations
involving state-funded construction projects, according to state officials.
It authorizes the state comptroller to withhold payments
owed to a contractor or subcontractor if the state labor commissioner issues a
stop-work order related to violations of Connecticut’s prevailing wage statute.
The law gives the comptroller additional leverage to ensure
workers on state projects are properly paid before contractors receive
additional public funding.
The prevailing wage is the hourly rate and benefits paid to
most workers on public works projects for similar work in a specific area.
During a public hearing held on the bill by the Labor and
Public Employees Committee in February, state Comptroller Sean Scanlon spoke in
favor of the bill, which he had proposed last year but ultimately died in the
House.
Scanlon noted that the state Department of Labor can
investigate cases when contractors are accused of cheating employees and place
stop-work orders on public projects until workers have been repaid, but that
his office lacked similar authority.
“There is currently no ability for my office to withhold
state payments to such contractors, allowing them to still be paid by taxpayer
funds even when they are being actively investigated for a prevailing wage
violation,” he said. “That’s wrong, and we shouldn’t reward employers who fail
to follow the law with taxpayer dollars.”
Christopher Fryxell, president of the Associated Builders
and Contractors of Connecticut (CTABC), testified against the bill, saying his
organization believes “innocent contractors will be harmed in the process.”
Because the state contracts with just the prime contractor,
Fryxell said, it is not clear how the comptroller would withhold payments from
a contractor or subcontractor accused of violating prevailing wage laws without
unfairly “harming innocent contractors in the process.”
The bill was subsequently approved by a 31-5 vote in the
Senate on April 15, and was approved in the House on May 4 by a 107-40 vote
with four legislators absent.
Hartford Hospital’s $1B campus overhaul targets emergency department overcrowding
In 2025, the average wait time to be treated in Hartford
Hospital’s emergency department was nearly nine hours.
That’s according to an online database maintained by the
Connecticut College of Emergency Physicians (CCEP), which tracks so-called
“boarding” statistics for the state’s 26 acute-care hospitals.
The 8.9-hour average wait was the worst of any state ED last
year. Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington and William Backus in Norwich
— each also owned by Hartford HealthCare (HHC) — tied for the second-worst,
with average wait times at 8.4 hours.
The state’s busiest emergency department at Yale New Haven
Hospital had an average wait time of 5.4 hours. That was despite treating
228,586 patients last year vs. the 109,166 treated at Hartford Hospital,
according to CCEP.
As overcrowding pressures mount, Hartford
HealthCare is making expansion and modernization of the ED a major focus
of a more than $1 billion plan to remake 15 buildings on and around its
Hartford campus.
The plan, details of which were recently unveiled, also
includes renovating the former Girl Scouts headquarters at 340 Washington St.
into a GoHealth Urgent Care center. Hartford HealthCare acquired the
building last year.
The project’s centerpiece is a new $950 million, 14-story inpatient tower featuring 216 additional private patient beds and three floors of procedural space for electrophysiology, cardiac catheterization, gastroenterology and ambulatory surgery.
The initiative also includes a new patient arrival center
with a two-story atrium, a 1,650-car parking garage and 500-seat conference
center.
Hartford HealthCare plans to finance the overhaul in
part through approximately $850 million in bond financing, along with endowment
funds and private fundraising.
But Jeffrey Flaks, president and CEO of Hartford
HealthCare, said the investment is ultimately about more than construction. He
described it as a once-in-a-generation effort to modernize the hospital and
improve the areas of care that matter most to patients.
Industry observers say the initiative also reflects a
broader strategic shift across healthcare, as major systems nationally invest
heavily in access, patient flow and campus modernization to strengthen their
competitive positions in the post-pandemic marketplace.
“What Hartford HealthCare is endeavoring to do is what many of the largest health systems around the country are doing now, which is to provide easy access to definitive care,” said Jeff Hogan, president of Upside Health Advisors, a Farmington-based industry consultancy.
“The big health systems are building out their
infrastructure, for better or worse, so that they will get more brand loyalty,”
Hogan added.
‘Completely overwhelmed’
There is little debate that many hospital emergency
departments — particularly Level I trauma centers like Hartford Hospital’s
— are under intense strain.
“EDs are completely overwhelmed,” Hogan said.
According to Karen Goyette, executive vice president
and chief strategy and transformation officer for HHC, Hartford Hospital’s
emergency department sees about 300 patients daily.
“It’s probably one of the busiest in the United States,” she
said.
A February report published by Becker’s Hospital Review
ranked Hartford Hospital’s ED as the 44th busiest in the nation last year.
Yale New Haven Hospital ranked third.
Hartford Hospital also refers pediatric emergency cases
to nearby Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, which treated roughly
58,000 patients last year, according to the CCEP database. Combined, the two
facilities would rank among the busiest emergency care hubs in the country.
Goyette said overcrowding is driven in part by patients
using emergency rooms because they lack access to primary care and other
healthcare resources.
“Unfortunately, the reality is that many people today lack
primary care, lack resources, and they’re … utilizing our emergency department
as their first line of defense,” she said.
The planned 2,500-square-foot urgent care center on
Washington Street is intended to divert lower-acuity cases away from the ED and
free emergency staff to focus on patients requiring more intensive treatment,
she said.
Hartford HealthCare operates 50 urgent care centers
statewide, which Goyette said each handle “upwards of 75 patients a day.”
Hartford HealthCare is also reserving about 1,500
square feet in the former Girl Scouts building for four additional patient
rooms to accommodate future demand.
Expanding the ED will also include renovating the first
floor of the adjacent Conklin Building into 30 observation beds for behavioral
health and mental health patients who are often “warehoused” in the emergency
department while awaiting placement elsewhere, Goyette said.
The new beds are expected to open within six months and
should help reduce wait times, she said.
Understaffing can also contribute to emergency department
overcrowding, but Flaks said Hartford HealthCare plans to hire
additional clinical and administrative workers to support the expansion.
Financial strength
The project’s scale comes with significant financial
commitments beyond construction costs alone.
According to Flaks, thousands of patients who currently seek
care in Hartford Hospital’s emergency department each year are expected to
be redirected to the urgent care facility.
An average emergency department visit can generate roughly
$1,300 in revenue or more, he said, while an urgent care visit may generate
closer to $120 — or, in some cases, no reimbursement at all.
That’s a significant tradeoff given that many hospitals
operate on thin margins. Hartford HealthCare generated an operating
margin of about 2.8% in fiscal 2025, according to audited financial statements.
“The bottom line is, this is about making healthcare more
affordable,” Flaks said. “It’s about making it more accessible, and it’s about
making it better.”
Flaks said Hartford HealthCare is positioned to
absorb the project’s long-term debt costs because of years of financial
discipline and strong operating performance.
Hartford HealthCare currently maintains an A+ bond
rating with a stable outlook from Fitch Ratings, which cited the organization’s
strong market position and improving operating performance.
Hartford HealthCare reported positive financial results
in each of the last two fiscal years, posting operating income of $201.4
million on $7.1 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025, compared with operating
income of $133.6 million on $6.5 billion in revenue a year earlier, according
to audited financial statements.
“We have carefully managed our financial strength for many
years, and have put ourselves in this position to make this investment,” Flaks
said.
Capturing care
Hogan, the healthcare consultant, said large health systems
increasingly are investing in infrastructure and patient access as they compete
to keep more care within their own networks.
He cited a 2025 report from healthcare consulting firm
Vizient that found the typical health system captures less than half of a
patient’s total healthcare spending. According to the report, a 1% increase in
loyal patients — those who repeatedly return to the same hospital or health
system for care — can generate “a $40 million revenue lift for a $2 billion
health system.”
Hogan said many of the nation’s largest health systems are
investing in modern facilities, expanded outpatient access and private patient
rooms in an effort to attract and retain aging baby boomers and commercially
insured patients.
He said Hartford HealthCare has also spent decades
improving both quality metrics and patient experience, helping position it
competitively against rival systems.
“Basically, all of their hospitals now are ‘A’ quality” as
measured by Leapfrog safety grades, Hogan said. “They focused on that.”
Flaks said the Hartford campus overhaul is especially
significant because Hartford HealthCare has not undertaken a project
of this scale since construction of the original high-rise hospital tower on
Seymour Street in 1947.
State Sen. Saud Anwar (D-South Windsor), co-chair of
the state legislature’s Public Health Committee and a physician, said he
welcomes Hartford HealthCare’s investment, particularly plans to expand
and improve the emergency department.
“The number and kinds of people in our waiting rooms are
increasing,” he said. “We have to have our physical infrastructure and
intellectual infrastructure ready to take care of people’s needs.”
But Anwar said whether the project will lower healthcare
costs is “a different question,” noting that hospitals face broader financial
pressures, including Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates that often fail
to cover the full cost of care.
“You want to provide the best care at the best time at the
best place,” he said. “That’s the principle.”
House committee agrees to $580B surface transportation legislation
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee leaders on Sunday agreed to a five-year, $580 billion surface transportation bill that directs $65 billion to rail programs and $41 billion to discretionary grant programs.
The bill authorizes a total of $87.6 billion from the mass transit account of the Highway Trust Fund over fiscal years 2027 to 2031, an increase from $69.8 billion allocated in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Amtrak would receive grants of $10.4 billion over five years for operations on the Northeast Corridor and $20.7 billion for its national network. The legislation prohibits any federal grants, awards or financial assistance to the California high-speed rail project for two years while a working group determines whether the project can meet the requirements outlined in the 2008 voter-approved bond measure allocating funds for the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
The proposed legislation, crafted in the House
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, continues a series of multiyear
surface transportation programs dating back to 1978.
Committee Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., and the committee’s
Ranking Member, Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said in a joint release Sunday that
they plan to formally introduce the legislation soon. Their goal is to have
Congress send a final bill to the president before the current surface
transportation authorization expires on Sept. 30, 2026.
“This bill is not simply about honoring our past — it’s
about moving forward and building upon the legacy of our nation’s
infrastructure,” Graves said in a statement. “The bill also makes smart and
targeted reforms to our surface transportation programs, focuses on
strengthening our core infrastructure system, drives innovation, bolsters
safety, ensures states have the flexibility they need, and cuts red tape to get
projects built faster.”
To strengthen the Highway Trust Fund, the bill imposes an
annual registration fee of $35 for hybrid vehicles and $130 for electric
vehicles. Fees would increase by $5 each year starting in 2029, topping out at
$50 for hybrids and $150 for EVs.
“While this bill does not include every priority, I am
committed to building on the last bipartisan infrastructure law by creating
good-paying transportation jobs, growing the economy and safely transporting
people and goods across the country by road and rail,” Larsen said in a
statement.
The committee leaders said they plan to set an upcoming
date for the bill’s markup, which will allow members to suggest changes or
amendments.