Gov.-elect Ned Lamont on Wednesday nominated state Sen. Beth Bye to oversee the Office of Early Childhood, an office dedicated to coordinating and improving the state’s childhood system.
Bye, who represents the state Senate 5th district, including a section of Bloomfield, most of Farmington, and all of Burlington and West Hartford, will complete her term as state senator and resign her member-elect status and will not be sworn in to a new term in the Senate.
Her salary will be $155,000, according to a spokesman for Lamont’s transition team.
Bye’s nomination will require approval from Connecticut’s General Assembly.
In November’s election, Bye won re-election over Republican challenger Phillip Chabot.
She is currently the executive director of Bloomfield nonprofit Auerfarm, a community farm that hosts 15,000 student trips a year and partners with a local kindergarten, Wintonbury Early Childhood Magnet School.
Bye previously served as the Early Childhood Director at the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC) supervising their birth to three program and helped open two early childhood magnet schools, Lamont’s office said.
She also was the director at the Trinity College Community Child Center and the University of St. Joseph for Young Children.
Bye’s 5th district successor
Later Wednesday, West Hartford Democrat Derek Slap, who was chief of staff for Senate Democrats from 2007 through 2014 — and spent the past two years representing West Hartford, Farmington and Avon in the House — announced he would run for the 5th District Senate seat being vacated by Bye.
Slap, 45, who spearheaded the 2018 push in the General Assembly for pay equity reform, said there are many other priorities he still wants to pursue.
“A sustainable budget and strengthening our economy — these have to be the top priorities for all of us,” said Slap.
Slap and Bye worked together over the past two years to build a bipartisan coalition that enacted a pay equity measure that prohibits employers from asking prospective hires about their pay history. Supporters argued that inquiries about wage history traditionally have been a tool used to maintain the gender gap.
A CT Mirror report contributed to this story
