Chris Donovan Addresses Town Democrats

In the mid-1970s, Connecticut House Speaker Chris Donovan was working at a North Philadelphia day care center when one of the graduates and his sister were hit by a car that did not stop at a stop sign.

A local community organizer wanted a stoplight there for children's safety, so he, Donovan and other co-workers stood in the street and stopped traffic themselves. Eventually a stoplight was installed.

"I said, 'This is amazing, you can do this?'" Donovan told Avon Democrats Wednesday at a town committee meeting in . "You can make something good out of something that is maybe not so good. You can bring people together and get positive results."

That is something Donovan said he knows all too well as Speaker of the House, particularly after an extended session over the summer required Republicans and Democrats to compromise on Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's proposed "Plan B" cuts should unions decline to take proposed concessions.

"I talked to my colleagues and Republicans and tried to work things out," Donovan told Patch. "I listen, I talk, I want us to work together and I try to do that."

Donovan said he is frustrated with partisanship. He is running for U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy's Congressional seat in the state's 5th district, which town committee member Linda Merlin noted is one of the more balanced districts, party-wise.

"It's much more of a middle of the road district than anywhere else in the state," Merlin said. 

Donovan went to grad school in West Hartford to become a community organizer and later worked as a union organizer. Donovan was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1992, according to the biography on his website. In 2004, he was named house majority leader.

Donovan said he worked with Congressman John Larson, D-1st, on family leave legislation.The Family and Medical Leave Act states that employees are entitled to take a leave of absence without losing their job if they are having a baby, a child was just placed with an employee for adoption or foster care, if the need time off to care for a seriously ill loved one, they have a serious health condition or they have donated an organ or bone marrow, according to the Connecticut Department of Labor.

Job growth, health care reform and reducing energy rates are two things Donovan said he wants to work on.

"We pay the highest [energy] rates in the country," Donovan said. "We can do better than that."

When a question from town committee member Morton Katz came up about reviving the railroad system, Donovan said he advocated for a New Haven-Springfield line and improved public transportation. He also suggested having a railroad run from Bradley International Airport to make it easy for travelers.

"We have the infrastructure in our state right of way, but it's just not utilized," he said. "We could get by with $400 million and have it be good. But if we have a little bit more, we can electrify that whole rail and just be zooming. It'd be great. It'd be a high speed line.... We could do a better job of providing service for people. It just makes sense."

Getting funding, Donovan said, requires crossing party lines. He said that he hopes to break up the "log jam" in Washington.

Editor's Note: The original version of this story stated that House Speaker Chris Donovan was frustrated with bipartisanship. That was a typo and should read that he is frustrated with partisanship. The error has been corrected.

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