‘Only in America’ BY PATRICK GALLAGHER pgallagher@westfairinc.com
U
nlike many members of the ultra-partisan body known as Congress, Joe Lieberman never had a problem with putting the people, and his beliefs, before the party line. On Aug. 16, 2000, then-Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman took the stage in Los Angeles to accept the party’s nomination for vice president. Eight years later, Lieberman, at that point an Independent, strode to a different podium in St. Paul, Minn., to endorse Republican candidate Sen. John McCain for president. All the while, the issues trumped the politics, Lieberman said. And he wouldn’t have had it any other way. “Ultimately,” Lieberman told the Business Journal, for Congress to break out of the partisan slump it’s been mired in for years, “it’s going to take leadership by the members of both parties to say, ‘I’ve worked so hard to get to Congress … because I wanted to make things better.’ Walking in lockstep to a political party or an ideology is not the way to make things better.” Lieberman retired from the Senate last week after a career in public service that spanned a decade in the Connecticut State Senate, six years as Connecticut Attorney General, and 24
CL&P — From page 1
The proposed Stamford Reliability Cable Project would extend approximately 1.5 miles from the Glenbrook substation on Lincoln Avenue and the South End substation on Manhattan Street. Courtesy of CL&P.
years as U.S. senator. Now, for the first time since 1971, Joseph Isadore Lieberman finds himself without any constituents – officially, at least. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Lieberman’s retirement “marks the end of an era.” “Whether fighting for civil rights in the 1960s, human rights over the course of his career, or on a daily basis for his constituents … Joe Lieberman has devoted a lifetime to public service,” Malloy said in a statement. The challenge, Lieberman said, is balancing those many constituents. “You’ve got a dual responsibility as an elected member of Congress, which is to really represent your state and give it the best advocacy you possibly can, but also to represent what you see as being in the interest of your country,” he said. Throughout his career, Lieberman was regarded as a member of the old guard — one of a group of career legislators who responded to President John F. Kennedy’s call to service — who wouldn’t hesitate to reach across the aisle. As an environmental advocate, Lieberman pushed for stricter pollution controls and has had a hand in nearly every climate change bill introduced in the Senate since his tenure there began in 1989. He admitted his disappointment in
station on Manhattan Street, the company announced Jan. 2. The project, which has been in the works “for at least five years,” would likely create hundreds of direct jobs and would add to the city’s tax revenues, said Frank Poirot, a spokesman for CL&P. CL&P, which is a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities Co. Inc., said it would apply to the Connecticut Siting Council in the first quarter of 2013 for a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need to construct and operate the new transmission line. If approved, construction on the project is projected to begin in the first quarter of 2014 and to be completed by the end of 2014. The utility will hold a public meeting on the proposal Jan. 8 at the Stamford Government Center from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Poirot said the project was not spurred by outages that resulted from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, but by new federal reliability standards that were adopted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2005
6 Week of January 7, 2013 • Fairfield County Business Journal
the inability of Congress to pass comprehensive climate change reforms. “We tried for over a decade to deter the advance of global warming, which, if we don’t do something soon, will threaten us in very major ways,” Lieberman said. “But that battle is not over and I know colleagues will continue it and I’ll do whatever I can outside the Senate.” Throughout his career in Congress, Lieberman fought for the preservation
of the Long Island Sound and national parks and refuges from Connecticut to the Arctic.
On education, Lieberman was a lead sponsor of the bill that ultimately developed into the No Child Left Behind policy, and earlier in his career, he introduced and played a key role in the passage of legislation to expand charter schools across the U.S. In 2007, Lieberman was a sponsor of the bill that gave way to the America COMPETES Act, which sought to spur innovation and ensure a globally competitive workforce. Another of Lieberman’s calling cards has been national security. He said that among his proudest achievements while in Congress were the roles he played in the formation of the 9/11 Commission in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and in the subsequent establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. Lieberman also expressed pride in his role in bringing billions of dollars in federal transportation funds to Connecticut, and in helping to bolster the state’s defense industry throughout his time in Congress. “The defense industry has remained one of the foundations of our state economy and today is much stronger than anyone would’ve predicted 24 years ago,” he said. “We just have great companies and great workers that turn out the greatest submarines, helicopters and jet engines in the world.”
in the wake of the 2003 blackout that blanketed the Northeast. “That was the impetus for this and many other transmission projects that we have around the state,” Poirot said. “We’ve been talking to city officials, including Mayor (Michael) Pavia, since January 2010 about starting to discuss the concept of connecting these two substations and the reaction has been one of complete cooperation.” The Glenbrook and South End substations are currently served by different transmission lines, Poirot said. He said that by connecting the two, there would be an additional path for electricity to travel should a power plant go offline or should there be a similar grid interruption. The transmission line would be paid for by consumers across New England, Poirot said. He said that because there is not currently an overhead transmission line connecting the two substations, the cost difference between an overhead and an underground line would be minimal.
“All of the funding for this comes from our customers,” Poirot said. “It’s a sharing of costs as well, so a portion of the costs will be covered by all electric customers in New England because there’s a regional benefit to doing this type of work, and then another portion of the costs will be covered by just Connecticut customers.” He said the exact formula has not been decided on. As part of the proposal, CL&P would also develop a traffic mitigation plan to minimize the impacts on local businesses and residents, Poirot said. Poirot said CL&P worked on an underground transmission project in Stamford as recently as 2008, when the utility built a cable connecting the Glenbrook substation to a substation in Norwalk. “That was all underground and a long stretch of that was along Route 1,” Poirot said. “Our construction impacts on that project were brief. There are impacts, and we will try to minimize them and accommodate everyone.”
“Ultimately it’s going to take leadership by the members of both parties to say, ‘I’ve worked so hard to get to Congress … because I wanted to make things better.’ Walking in lockstep to a political party or an ideology is not the way to make things better.” — Joe Lieberman