Featured Article

New legislation just passed by the House contains more money to boost submarine production in Connecticut, as well as funding for military construction in the state.  

The $612 billion defense appropriations bill cleared the House after a week of conference meetings with Senate leaders.  It contains some changes from the adminstration’s proposal, including one-point-four billion dollars for advance procurement of submarine parts.  That allows Groton shipyard Electric Boat to potentially accelerate its program to two submarines per year earlier than envisioned.  It’s the second year second district representative Joe Courtney has been successful in adding cash to the budget, and he says it should have a positive effect at EB.

The reduction in production workers will be minimized hopefully to zero, and the increase in engineers and designers, which is taking place now, 400 new hires in the last year, will continue.

But his Republican challenger Sean Sullivan says it’s not enough to achieve the construction of the second submarine.

"We’ve got less than one third of one submarine, and this he says is great news.  No, we need the whole submarine.  We need not only that, we need about seven more.  So he’s not working hard enough to get the submarines this country needs."

The military construction bill, also passed Wednesday by the House includes cash to fund a new pier at the submarine base just upriver from EB, as well as a new indoor firing range on the base, and more money for the National Guard base at Bradley Airport.