The Connecticut Mirror’s two community engagement reporters started mid-year, but they took no time in making their presence known in their cities.
They ran text lines and shared information through social media. They met hundreds of people through meetings, listening sessions, events and through interviews for stories about issues the community shared were important to them.
From education and voting in Bridgeport to housing and cultural history in Hartford, Reginald David and Mariana Navarrete Villegas were there to capture it. Here’s a recap of their efforts to engage with two of the state’s largest cities in 2025.
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📷: Associated Press, CT Mirror staff
Erin Stewart suspended her campaign for governor Thursday after an investigative report concluded that her personal use of a city credit card as mayor of New Britain was a “repeated and deliberate circumvention of the city’s purchase order system to benefit herself, members of her family, and her political campaigns.”
Stewart immediately endorsed her chief rival for the Republican nomination, state Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich.
The “great majority” of the $207,076 in purchases charged to Stewart’s city-issued credit card over nearly a decade were unrelated to city business, and they warrant a criminal investigation by state and federal criminal authorities, concluded a law firm hired by her Democratic successor, Mayor Bobby Sanchez.
“The apparent diversion of public funds and municipal assets for improper purposes not only constitutes a serious breach of the public trust, but may also implicate statutes governing Fraud, Larceny, Embezzlement, False Statements, Wire Fraud, and Misuse of Government Property,” the law firm wrote.
Read the full story at the link in our bio. (Photo by Mark Pazniokas)
Republican gubernatorial candidate Erin Stewart promised supporters at a campaign rally Tuesday night she will make a substantive response to reports about her use of a city credit card for personal purchases while mayor of New Britain — but not until after this weekend’s nominating convention.
Stewart intends to make a freedom of information request Wednesday to the administration of her Democratic successor, Bobby Sanchez, for records of the purchases made with her city credit card over the final nine years of her 12 years as mayor, said her senior campaign adviser, John Healey.
About $22,000 of the $207,076 in purchases made with Stewart’s city card were for purchases delivered to her home, including women’s clothing, makeup, a compact ice maker, thank-you notes for a baby shower, diapers and $129.60 for Similac baby formula.
“Until today, the only people who possess the records in question were the Democrats, the media and my Republican opponents,” Stewart said. “So I want you to know that I am in the process of personally engaging a team to obtain and review all of these records myself.”
Read more at the link in our bio.
In collaboration with our partner @ctmirror
Connecticut’s 2026 legislative session ended on Wednesday night with lawmakers passing 218 bills concerning homeschooling, federal immigration actions, absentee voting, AI regulation and more.
But many bills never made it out of their committees — or, if they did, were never voted on by the full legislature. That’s in part because legislative sessions in even-numbered years are shorter and because it can be politically difficult to pass contentious bills in an election year.
Here’s a look at some of the bills that didn’t make it to final passage this year.
Read a longer list at the link in our bio.
📝: CT Mirror
📸 : Getty Images, @trussell.ct
Former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin won the Democratic endorsement for Congress in Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District on the second ballot Monday night, upsetting the 14-term incumbent, John B. Larson, and setting the stage for a primary in August.
Bronin praised the 77-year-old Larson in his acceptance speech then pivoted to an assertion marking the moment: No one in Connecticut ever has forced a primary against an incumbent congressman, much less besting one by winning a party’s endorsement in a contested convention.
Rep. Jillian Gilchrest of West Hartford qualified for the primary by the slimmest of margins, winning 15.04% of the delegate vote on the first ballot with the help of Larson allies who prefer a three-way primary to a one-on-one fight with Bronin. Assured of the primary, she withdrew before the second ballot.
Ruth Fortune, an appointed member of the Hartford Board of Education, ended the first ballot with less than 1% of the vote, too little to go further.
Read the full story at the link in our bio. (Photo by Mark Pazniokas)
At the end of last week, I co-hosted a Mother’s Day photo-printing activity with the Hartford’s Dwight Public Library @hplct as Hartford’s community engagement reporter.
People of all ages stopped by with photos to print and decorate as gifts for a mother figure, photos with their sons, daughters, or grandchildren, and as a way to honor and remember mothers who have passed away.
Where would you like to see an activity like this in Hartford? Share it in the comments or DM me!
#hartford #ct
Bridgeport showed up 🗣️
Thank you to everyone who came out to our latest Bridgeport’s Sit & Speak at the Downtown Library. We had an honest and impactful conversation about education, what’s working in our schools, the challenges families are facing, and what people want to see moving forward.
Appreciate everyone who shared their voices, listened, and helped create such a strong community space. More conversations to come. 💙
📸: @mschick_photography
As lawmakers and advocates have pressed DCF officials for accountability in the deaths of children under the agency’s watch over the past year, the scale of staff turnover has emerged repeatedly as a factor in the agency’s troubles.
DCF officials say they are trying to confront the problem head-on by recruiting new staff and supporting existing workers. But through interviews with former employees, current staff and clients, advocates and elected officials, The Connecticut Mirror has found that the true cost of that turnover is high.
Families and children are often subjected to a revolving door of caseworkers, making it hard to build relationships. New workers are assigned complex cases they may not have the experience to handle and many employees, often the longtime staffers, work excessive overtime. And when workers burn out and resign, the agency sees institutional knowledge walk out the door. Turnover also seeds distrust in the agency among its clients, making it harder for DCF to improve public perception and attract workers.
Ironically, turnover itself — and the high caseloads and stress left in its wake — drives more turnover.
Read the full story at the link in our bio. (Photos by Laura Tillman and Shahrzad Rasekh)
Lawmakers voted to reauthorize Connecticut’s rooftop solar incentives until 2035 on Wednesday, avoiding a potential Republican filibuster that threatened to run out the clock on a key priority for many Democrats, solar developers and climate activists.
The legislation, House Bill 5340, passed the Senate on a mostly party-line vote shortly before 8 p.m., just hours before the midnight deadline marking the end of the legislative session. The bill passed the House earlier in the week, and now heads to Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk for his signature.
In addition to reauthorizing the state’s existing residential, commercial and community solar programs, the bill places those programs under a target budget of $85 million a year, which advocates say represents a nearly 10% savings over the programs’ historic cost. Solar installations that are paired with battery storage would be exempt from the budget.
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Read the full story at the link in our bio. (Photo by John Minchillo/AP Photo)
Dave Altimari and Ginny Monk of @CTMirror and Sophie Chou and Haru Coryne of @propublica have won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Their series “On the Hook” exposed a wide range of abuses committed by Connecticut towing companies.
Within 24 hours of the first story publishing, lawmakers quickly proposed a bill overhauling the state’s century-old towing statutes. Listen to CT Mirror reporters Dave Altimari and Ginny Monk and ProPublica editor Michael Grabell celebrate the win.
Today is Local Journalism Appreciation Day in Connecticut!
To mark the occasion, we asked several state lawmakers why local news matters to them. Here's what they had to say.
