The Connecticut Policy Lab
Yale Law School · Student Research
The Connecticut Policy Lab
A Yale Law School Course by Tobin Scholar Zachary Liscow.
Connecticut Policy Lab Yale Law School — Professor Zachary Liscow
Government often does not work as effectively as it should: services can be hard for beneficiaries to access, building infrastructure is slow and expensive, and layers of regulation make public action difficult. During the 2025-26 school year, Professor Zachary Liscow taught a Yale Law School course called The Connecticut Policy Lab. In the course, second- and third-year law students used Connecticut as a case study for understanding the legal foundations of government effectiveness.
Connecticut is a revealing example for two reasons. First, it is small enough that students and researchers can get real access to decisionmakers. Second, it is a striking paradox—one of the richest jurisdictions in world history, yet one that struggles with poorly rated service provision, infrastructure that in some cases works worse than it did a century ago, high energy and housing costs, heavy debt, and significant inequality.
The class covered the fundamentals of policymaking with a Connecticut focus, and featured guest speakers from inside state and city government, including policy directors, agency officials, legislators, and the Mayor of New Haven. Sessions ranged across topics such as state capacity, infrastructure and permitting, housing, Medicaid, public-sector unions, fiscal guardrails and debt, and the role of procedure in government.
Each student wrote a substantial paper on some aspect of government effectiveness in Connecticut. The goal was to learn what prevents governments from delivering and, possibly, to make a difference on the ground by helping the state work better. Papers from the class are linked below—they represent the findings and opinions of the students alone. For further information please contact the authors at the email addresses below. For general inquiries about the Tobin Center’s work with Connecticut Government, please contact Sam Quinney and Eliza McKenney.
The Papers · click a tile to expand
Environmental Review
CEPA, Scoping, and Stoplights: Public Participation in Connecticut Infrastructure Projects
Tiger Bjornlund
tiger.bjornlund@yale.edu
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Challenging the assumption that more public participation is always better, Yale Law student Tiger Bjornlund traces the Connecticut Department of Transportation's (CTDOT) decades-long effort to remove two traffic signals on Route 9 in Middletown. The work played out over a nearly 30-year period in which project costs nearly doubled with little gain in legitimacy. The key findings: CTDOT voluntarily provides far more participation than the law requires, so the problems result from institutional choice, not legal compulsion. Bjornlund also argues that unbounded participation can ultimately undermine the legitimacy it claims to enhance.
Housing & State Land
Public Land for Public Good: How Connecticut can more effectively manage state-owned vacant property to mitigate its housing crisis and reduce its fiscal burden
Ivana Bozic
ivana.bozic@yale.edu
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Connecticut faces a severe housing shortage while owning roughly 1,411 acres of buildable, transit-accessible urban land that could yield tens of thousands of homes — yet of the 203 surplus buildings owned by the state in 2025, only one was listed for sale. In this paper, Yale Law student Ivana Bozic traces “state capacity” failures across the lifecycle of vacant properties. Bozic argues that the failures stem from weak incentives to declare properties as surplus and the absence of any agency obligated to fund cleanup. Bozic recommends targeted legal and administrative reforms to potentially unlock housing while saving taxpayer money.
Infrastructure Permitting
Designing Unified Infrastructure Review Processes: Consolidation, Closure, and Corridor-Scale Planning
Jack Davidson
jack.davidson@yale.edu
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Like many states, Connecticut struggles to deliver major transportation and energy infrastructure on time — not because it over-protects the environment, but because its review system cannot produce a single, final, binding decision. In this paper, Yale Law student Jack Davidson diagnoses three failures: fragmentation, weak closure, and town-by-town atomization. Drawing on examples from Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, Davidson proposes relocating public participation into one consequential, durable decision through consolidation, closure, and corridor-scale planning.
Digital Government & IT
Where's Our Digital Government?
Victoria Diaz-Torres
victoria.diaz-torres@yale.edu
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The State of Connecticut has made it a priority to be a digital-government leader, yet many resident-facing services remain slow and fragmented. In this paper, Yale Law student Victoria Diaz-Torres argues that the pace of digital modernization is shaped by the interaction of procurement structure, internal capacity, and policy priorities. “Best-value” criteria quietly favor established vendors, legacy systems hide the seams in digital services, data is siloed, and in-house technical talent is thin. The State's progress is genuine, but incremental. The goal should be to make digital government durable, scalable, and visible.
Public Participation in Siting
Re-imagining the Role of the Public in Public Policy
Trisha Gupta
trisha.gupta@yale.edu
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The Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) is the state agency responsible for choosing the sites for energy, telecommunications, and hazardous waste infrastructure in the state. Yale Law student Trisha Gupta argues that Connecticut's infrastructure siting regime fails the communities it serves. Hearings occur after designs are finalized, participation is dominated by affluent opponents, and there is no compensation for concentrated local costs. The resulting process, she argues, fuels litigation that delays needed projects for years. Drawing on two original case studies, Gupta proposes two complementary statutory reforms: Citizen Siting Juries (deliberative panels convened pre-application) and Community Benefits Funds (mandatory developer payments to host municipalities).
Federal Energy & State Advocacy
State Soft Power in a Federal Energy System
Hart Rapaport
hart.rapaport@yale.edu
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Since the latter half of the 20th century, the balance of power in energy law has gradually shifted from state to federal control through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and regional grid operators. The result is that Connecticut has lost direct statutory control over wholesale energy markets and energy transmission despite their impact on consumer energy costs and the State's clean-energy goals. In this paper, Yale Law student Hart Rapaport argues that states retain “soft power” through procedural, adversarial, and political tools. Rapaport recommends strengthening Connecticut's formal rights within its regional Independent System Operator (ISO-New England), creating a cross-agency advocacy committee, and raising pay for specialized energy staff.
Prison Healthcare
A Broke(n) System of Health Without Any Care: The Crisis Inside Connecticut's Aging Prisons
Sarah Rogers
sarah.rogers@yale.edu
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Connecticut now incarcerates roughly half as many people as at its prison population peak but spends about the same total amount on inmate medical care. The services delivered have spawned hundreds of lawsuits challenging the constitutional adequacy of care. In this paper, Yale Law student Sarah Rogers argues the crisis is structural: a high-cost labor market and a national workforce shortage make competitive staffing impossible, while decades of sentencing policy created an aging population whose needs outpace any staffing fix. Rogers argues that the durable solution includes a long-term reduction in the number of elderly people in prison, supplemented by nearer-term reforms.
State Workforce & Hiring
Speeding Up the Process: A Case Study on State Government Hiring
Keegan Vacanti
keegan.vacanti@yale.edu
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A key challenge in the State of Connecticut's hiring process is not a lack of funding or open positions, but speed. Agencies routinely take five to eight months to fill a position while the private sector averages roughly 36 days. Tracing a single Department of Social Services hire through four agencies, Yale Law student Keegan Vacanti identifies two mechanisms that strip discretion from hiring managers — mandatory candidate lists and affirmative action plans — and argues that neither actually achieves its stated purpose. Limiting both mechanisms could advance fairness goals while making hiring dramatically faster.