Dems push major bills through three key committees

Democratic majorities in key legislative committees on Wednesday flexed their partisan muscle, approving bills that would make vaccinations mandatory for school kids, double the bottle-deposit law to 10 cents, promote more affordable housing and start to address regional needs to combat climate change.

It was a day for some of the year’s most controversial bills in a year when leading Republicans have urged the General Assembly to use the distanced session for COVID-19-related bills and only the most pressing issues that can’t wait.

The votes amounted to at least short-term victories toward goals that have been targeted for years by Democrats, who in 2020 saw the coronavirus pandemic end the legislative session two months early. But the bills still have a long way to go before the June 9 adjournment date, amid leadership acknowledgments that major changes to the bills could still occur before they reach the House and Senate floors.

And the parties remained far apart, deeply split as they eyed middle ground.

Republicans warned that the legislation would take away the power of parents to decide on their children’s health; make it more expensive for people to purchase beverages; take away the power of towns and cities to decide on their development and character; and raise gas prices at the pump by as much as 26 cents a gallon by the middle of the decade.

Democrats charged that herd immunity for school kids has fallen sharply in recent years in some of the diseases targeted by traditional vaccines. They said religious exemptions have been exploited to the point where public health is threatened, particularly for students with serious ailments that prevent them from seeking inoculations.

And the Democrats said raising drink deposits would partially address the state’s solid-waste and recycling crisis and give more money to those handling the empties.

Democrats also stressed the pressing need for better commitments from small and midsize towns in establishing more-affordable housing units, from new apartments in private homes, to making it easier for developers to site new housing — and leading to more desegregation.

And while the bills, collectively, represent mid-legislative-session wins for Democrats who control the Senate 24-12 and the House 96-53, pending two special elections, the legislation still faces obstacles and bipartisan negotiations.

Where to draw the line on vaccines?

The controversial vaccination requirement, which prompted a 24-hour-long virtual public hearing last month, on year after thousands of people crowded into the Capitol complex, would allow seventh graders and above to remain in school without proof of inoculations for childhood diseases. Lawmakers including Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, and Rep. Michelle Cook, D-Torrington, promised that they would work to amend the bill to allow all children already in the K-through-12 system to remain there without vaccinations.

Scanlon, who is now the chairman of the powerful Finance Committee, planned on a similar amendment last year before the pandemic forced the early closure of the General Assembly. “Going forward I believe the choice is clear,” Scanlon said.

“It truly bothers me that we continue to make public-health issues partisan issues,” said Cook. “For me, I think this is a horrible path for you to go down, especially on this committee. I cannot support this bill if there is not an amendment to grandfather children in K-through-12 on the floor.”

Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, DWestport, co-chairman of the Public

Health Committee, agreed that the legislation could change. “I look forward to further dialogue including some possible changes to the grandfather provision,” Steinberg said.

Steinberg charged that “disinformation” on the issue of childhood vaccines seems to be driving much of the opposition to the legislation. “Fear is a highly motivating emotion for so many of us, particularly when it comes to our children,” he said.

“It seems that the fate of these bills were predetermined, leading to some who would even say that it was a rigged process all along and the opposition never had a chance,” said Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, rankin Republican on the committee, who said he supports vaccines. “I genuinely hope that was not the case.”

Steinberg challenged Hwang. “I promised myself I would try not to get emotional today, but I can’t help but react to the use of the word ‘rigged,’” Steinberg said. “Whether you espoused it or somebody else did, introducing that word into this conversation offends me and I am sure it offends others. To suggest that anyone on this committee, anybody in this legislature, has attempted to rig the process, I find offensive.”

Housing compromise

In the legislative Planning and Development Committee, Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, D-Fairfield, co-chairwoman, said major housing-related bills have been amended, but are still aimed at making it easier for people at different incomes, ages and stages of life to find homes throughout Connecticut.

Controversial sections on legal challenges and housing mandates were taken out of legislation, in what McCarthy Vahey called a working document subject to further changes. The latest legislation would use existing affordable housing legislation and regional organizations to promote more-affordable housing efforts.

It wasn’t enough for lawmakers led by Hwang, who is also the ranking Senate Republican on that committee, to support them, including a bill that sparked a 24hour-long public hearing that pitted Republicans from towns against urban Democrats and affordable housing advocates including DesegregateCT.

“It is important to turn down some of the temperature,” Hwang said. In particular, public arguments have emerged in recent weeks between urban leaders including New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and leaders of towns along Fairfield County’s Gold Coast, including Darien and Greenwich. “I would encourage all of our towns to adopt an affordable housing plan. Having a road map is a good start to try to meet the goal of affordable, diverse housing.”

“This bill is, again, a work-inprogress,” McCarthy Vahey said. “We’ve talked a lot about racial diversity, economic diversity as well.”

State Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican from rural Chaplin in eastern Connecticut, said the legislation could sharply change the character of towns in his district, and even threaten farms.

“If 100 new housing units gets assigned to a town, who would build them?” Dubitsky asked.

“There would certainly have to be a builder who comes in and builds that,” said McCarthy Vahey. “Certainly a town can’t compel a builder to come in.”

“If we can believe there’s a problem, then the status quo cannot exist,” said Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, stressing that too many towns are dragging their feet on providing more affordable housing units.

“We need to de-escalate the rhetoric if we’re going to have a final product,” said Rep. Joe Zullo, R-East Haven, ranking House Republican of the committee.

Debating the price of climate

change bill

The climate-change legislation, called the Transportation Climate Initiative, is a key component of Gov. Ned Lamont’s initiative to upgrade mass transit and clean the air around the state’s larger cities.

Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, co-chairwoman of the Environment Committee, said the regional effort, based on cap-andtrade-style costs on petroleum wholesalers, could add between 5 cents and 9 cents per gallon to gasoline pump prices by 2023, when it takes effect. But it could generate $90 million that same year, to help with future transit needs including cleaning the air of urban areas that are centers of childhood asthma and other respiratory diseases.

It would help enable a billion dollars of transit projects over the next five years, according to Lamont’s budget.

Rep. Stephen Harding Jr., RBrookfield, ranking House Republican of the committee, noted that after 2023, consumer costs could rise to 26 cents per gallon. He agreed that while the goals of the program are laudable, experience in the past with so-called dedicated funds being raided to pay for other items in state budgets brings, out the cynic in him.

“At the end of the day, no matter how we examine it, this is going to be a tax on our consumers and constituents,” said Harding, who voted against the bill. “This is for all intents and purposes a gas tax.”

Harding also voted against the solid-waste and bottle-deposit bill, which would include so-called nips bottles. Provisions to include wine and distilled spirits in the legislation, sharply opposed by package stores, distributors and manufacturers, were dropped from the current bill, which would raise the deposit charges in 2022.

Negotiations are active with the industry, Cohen said, on how to remove empty wine and spirits bottles from the waste stream.