After All Things

Flood protection

The federal government has given the Town of Huntington on Long Island a million dollars for sewer upgrades. A judge says affordable housing units should be allowed in downtown Fairfield. New York will crack down on toll evasions with a new law. A former aide to Governor Hochul has been arrested for acting as a Chinese agent. And Connecticut’s safety net for children faces a balancing act.

Duration:: 14m
Broadcast on:: 03 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

I'm Bill Buckner, your host for All Things Considered. The funniest thing I've ever seen on the road in Connecticut is the Wiener mobile. Could you imagine trying to parallel park a Wiener mobile? I'd have my head out the window, "Hey, the bun is in the way, I can't see." Any car can turn into All Things Considered on WSHU. Even if you're driving that Wiener mobile, go to WSHU.org. And thanks. The federal government has given the town of Huntington a million dollars for flood protection and sewer upgrades. The money will fund projects to extend the sewer lines and protect the wastewater treatment plant from flood waters. U.S. Representative Nick Lolota represents Eastern Long Island. We're a nice waterfront, beautiful, vibrant community that we ought to want to ensure that our people get to stay here at. Now, one of the ways we do that is we offset some of the expensive cost of living that we have here on the island. And a million dollars that we brought home here today will help do that. He says the cash infusion means town residents won't have to foot the bill for maintenance at the treatment plant. The Huntington's sewer district could potentially supply energy to the power grid once the upgrades are complete. You're listening to After All Things, WSHU's daily news and culture update from the Long Island Sound region. A judge says affordable housing units should be allowed in downtown Fairfield. New York will crack down on toll of Asians with a new law. A former aide to Governor Holkel has been arrested for acting as a Chinese agent, and Connecticut's Safety Net for Children faces a balancing act. Those stories and more are coming up. I'm Sabrina Garone. [Music] New Haven is relaunching its bike share program. Hundreds of pedal bikes and electric bikes will soon be available for use at 30 stations around the city. WSHU's Molly Ingram reports. New Haven started its initial bike share program in 2018. The company that was running the program pulled out in 2020, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. Steven Winter runs the city's Office of Climate and Sustainability. He says he's excited for residents to have access to the bikes again, this time from a new company. It's going to be an amazing way to have affordable, convenient, healthy and environmentally friendly option for residents and visitors here in the own city. Riders can pay per ride, monthly or yearly to use the bikes through the Ride New Haven app. An annual membership, which gets you an hour of riding per day, is $99. Low income residents can get a membership for half that cost. Molly Ingram, WSHU News. A recent court ruling in Connecticut could pave the way for new construction of affordable housing in Fairfield. WSHU's Shelley Hesseman-Katish reports. A Hartford Superior Court judge has overruled the town planning and zoning commission's rejection of a proposal to build a 63-unit complex in downtown Fairfield. According to Hearst, Connecticut media, the commission unanimously turned down the project for several reasons, including an overwhelmed sewage system, increased risk of flooding and inadequate parking. The judge sided with the developer, ruling that the risk of harm to the public interest doesn't outweigh the need for affordable housing. Shelley Hesseman-Katish, WSHU News. New York will crack down on toll evasions with a new law passed on Sunday. WSHU's Maya de Clay explains. The law bans the use of ghost plates. These are untraceable, made of glass or plastic materials, and used to obstruct the details on the plates and registration. Ghost plates have contributed to nearly $50 million in annual losses in highway and bridge tolls. Violators can be fined anywhere from $100 to $500. Repeat offenders will have their registration suspended for a minimum of 90 days. It will also be illegal to sell license plate covers. Maya de Clay, WSHU News. ♪♪♪ Connecticut is struggling to balance the need for inpatient youth psychiatric beds with the need for facility oversight. A conversation on that is coming up. ♪♪♪ Local support comes from Hartford HealthCare. The only health system in the Northeast, with all its hospitals receiving A grades for safety from the LeapFrog group. The nation's leading independent safety watchdog group, HartfordHealthCare.org. ♪♪♪ A former top aide to Governor Holkel was arrested this morning at her home in Manhattan. Linda Sohn has been charged with acting as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese Communist Party. She worked in various state government roles for over a decade and served as Holkel's Deputy Chief of Staff in 2021 and 2022. Prosecutors say Sohn blocked top New York officials from meeting with Taiwan, altered state messaging related to the Chinese government, and more. One person died and two are missing after a boating accident in Old Sabre yesterday. Emergency crews found a motorboat half submerged near Harbor One Marina. Officials with deep say the boat was coming from Block Island. And in an unrelated incident, Bridgeport firefighters saved seven people in a boating accident in Long Island Sound this weekend. No injuries were reported. Tourism spending on Long Island hit a record high of more than $7 billion last year. That's according to a report by the firm Tourism Economics. New York State also saw a record number of visitors generating close to $138 billion. NASA and Suffolk counties made up for 8% of that. ♪♪♪ Connecticut's safety net for children faces a balancing act. Connecticut Mirror reporter Andrew Brown took a closer look at the situation alongside Ginny Munk. He spoke with WSHU's Ebon Udama about the potential domino effect that could impact the entire system. The Children's Center at Hamden is a psychiatric facility that froze admissions during the COVID pandemic when the demand was high, following reports of abuse at the facility. Is that why you and your Connecticut Mirror colleague Ginny Munk decided to do a deep dive into the problems at the facility? Yeah, I mean, Ginny had heard in recent years that there were essentially a string of findings during the pandemic at the Children's Center at Hamden that showed that the facility had a problem with reporting serious occurrences that took place at the facility, and essentially of making sure that their staff weren't abusing the children who were located there, many of them being foster children that are under the state's care. And so we thought it was worthwhile, even though this happened, you know, more than two years ago at this point, many of these problems, to take a look back and explain to our readers what transpired at this facility during what was the height of COVID, and when many people were hyper focused on unemployment and what was happening with their own health of their families and, you know, working from home. So much of this blew under the radar, even though there were public signs of kind of the problems that were created by this facility no longer being able to take in children with inpatient psychiatric needs. And you also found, as you were looking into this, the fact that they stopped taking new patients in Hamden added to the fact that another facility was closed down just prior to COVID by the Lamont administration. Can you just tell us a little bit about that facility and how that aggravated the fact that there were no beds. However, there are two state run inpatient psychiatric facilities known as PRTFs for children in Connecticut, both of them are referred to as soul net so soul net north, and soul net south, the Lamont administration during the first year of the pandemic, or first year and a half in his budget proposal, proposed to essentially cut spending and staffing by closing one wing of soul limit north. And the documents that Ginny and I went through showed that when the Children's Center of Hamden, which is a private PRTF, something that's run by an outside organization not the state government began having problems with these allegations and finding the abuse. The state ran into a problem in which closing down admissions to that facility meant that there were no beds and no place to turn when the number of children during the pandemic having trouble with psychiatric needs increase. And so when word reached the top levels of the Lamont administration that the Children's Center of Hamden was going to have to close down admissions, the former budget director for the Lamont administration asked the simple question of, well, did the, did the governor's budget proposal to close these one wing of the soul net north facility contribute to the lack of capacity. What did what was the conclusion I mean, what what the Lamont administration say about that. The Lamont administration told us for the story that essentially their decision to close a wing of the soul net north psychiatric treatment facility didn't contribute to larger problems at this time while they were dealing with the allegations of abuse at the Children's Center of Hamden. But it's clear from the emails that we reviewed of both the Department of Social Services, and the Department of Children's and families, that the closure of admissions to the Children's Center of Hamden created a domino effect in the state. There were a long list of emails in which state officials were deeply concerned that closing down admissions to the Children's Center of Hamden meant that, or was contributing to a backlog of patients at the Children's Hospital in Hartford. Into the pandemic when children were dealing with isolation, not being in school, you know, they were flooding into the Children's Hospital in Hartford, and patients that may have required inpatient care, you know, we're at a level where they needed to be monitored kind of all the time. The Children's Center of Hamden, being close to admissions meant that the state really had nowhere to turn in some instances. And so there was this, it's very clear from the emails that there was this balancing act by state regulators who wanted to make sure that the patients that the Children's Center of Hamden were being taken care of properly and weren't being abused. And at the same time, they couldn't close down admissions for a long period of time because they needed those beds, and they needed that facility to be running. It was an integral part of this air that the state is responsible for providing. And what what is the situation now, what's the state doing about trying to improve the situation and make it make inpatient beds more available. They've, they've done a lot in the past year and a half, two years to try to make sure that children who are, you know, have psychiatric needs are being caught prior to and treated prior to them needing a level of care where they actually need to be placed in an inpatient setting where they're being monitored 24/7. So they've done a lot to try to enhance that level of care. At the same time, they've, the Department of Social Services has increased the Medicaid reimbursement rate. For facilities like the Children's Center of Hamden, the Children's Center of Hamden itself, state officials say is now reliable. They say that the problems that they were having with a potential culture problem of abuse at the facility is no longer there. But in the meantime, it's still a balancing act. Yes, everything here is, is a balancing act by the state to make sure that they're providing the care that children are safe. And, you know, the other aspect of this is that, that the state can afford it. Well, so more problems for the Lomonta administration to try and figure out how to solve. All of it comes back around. Okay. Thank you so much, Andrew. Thank you. Andrew Brown is the Connecticut Mirrors Investigative Reporter. I'm Ebon Danna. For the latest news from Long Island and Connecticut, you can listen on the radio stream online at WSHU.org or download the WSHU app after all things is supported by Hartford HealthCare. And whether it's news, classical music or podcasts like this one, they're all made possible with support from our listeners. So if you like what you hear, please consider making a donation to WSHU. All the info and how to do that is there for you on our website, including how to donate an old vehicle. I'm Sabrina Garone. I'll talk to you tomorrow. [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]