COLIN MCENROE

Connecticut’s new warden yet to beat system

As we attempt to put to bed the baby that was 2019inConnecticut, we see that it is a squawking, colicky, redfaced infant who despises sleep and waking life in equal measure.

The year began on a note of measured optimism. Ned Lamont promised to be a new kind of governor. On the other hand, he asked Joe Scarborough’s band to play at his inaugural ball.

As the year ends, it would be wrong to say that nothing at all has been accomplished, but it would feel right. Minimum wage, sick leave, plastic bag fees. Meh. These things happened. But we were promised jetpacks and we got a Segway.

So does Ned suck? It’s a reasonable question. He has not really addressed the state’s major deficiencies, and his approval ratings are south of shingles.

But the answer is ... complicated.

Flashback to last January. Ned Lamont prepares to be sworn in as governor. This involves processing the LamontBysiewicz Transition Policy Committee Reporting Templates from Lamont’s 15 transition policy committees. Nobody seems to know that 15 is too many committees. The committee proposals include ideas like “Enable collection of user fees (tolls) and establish a Tolling Authority to administer the program (first six months)” and “Teach a giant squid the rudiments of English grammar.”

Actually, only the first one is true, but the second one might as well have been, given the likelihood that any of these myriad ideas — both good and bad — were going to happen.

Even relatively small good things could not happen.

Let’s look at an example, but first a little context. Connecticut is considered a national leader in reducing the number of people in prison, and the state is doing some very cool stuff to help young men and women while they’re still in the joint.

But there’s still lots of room for improvement, and one area where Connecticut lags behind is, oddly, the cost of prisoner phone calls.

As you might imagine, it’s good for prisoners to talk on the phone to their loved ones, who cannot always manage to visit. Keeping up family ties correlates strongly with successful adjustment to postprison life.

When it comes to punitive phone charges, Connecticut is 49th out of 50. Only Arkansas is worse. A 15minute phone call will cost the caller $4 or more. The state gets a 68 percent commission on that, which was good for $7.7 million in revenue last fiscal year. It’s nice to get that money, but almost all it of is coming in from some of the poorest members of society.

A report prepared by one of the eight subgroups (I know, I know) of the Criminal Justice Transition Policy Committee recommended curbing that cost.

The good news. The legislature raised a bill that would have made prison phone calls free. Connecticut would go from No. 49 to No. 1. Only a few cities have free prison calling.

A member of the Judiciary Committee said its members were shocked and disturbed by the exorbitant charges hitting poor families. The committee sent the bill to the House.

And ... wait for it ... it died.

Various explanations were offered.

Securus Technologies, which makes gazillions by running prison phone systems all over the nation and kicking back a slice of the proceeds to state and local government, hired lobbyists to fight the change and then withdrew its opposition at the last minute. (They get paid either way. Wouldn’t it be nicer to have the state pay them than to continue grinding the money out of poor families with incarcerated loved ones?)

But then Lamont’s people didn’t support the bill. His spokesperson told The Intercept that the $13 million estimated cost — the loss of those kickbacks plus paying Securus — was impossible to deal with in the final weeks of the session. The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Josh Elliot of Hamden, changed the language so the costs wouldn’t kick in for two years. Nothing doing.

There was also the Universal Explanation for Every Good Idea That Doesn’t Pass in the Connecticut Legislature: it would have passed on its merits as a standalone, but it got folded into an omnibus bill or its destiny became part of larger negotiations involving unrelated bills. The latter is not unusual. You can have my vote for your bill, but in return you have to vote for my bill, which allows hunters to stab baby deer in the eyes with icepicks on Sunday mornings.

Whaddaya mean your conscience won’t allow it?

Also, maybe the backers of the bill should have realized sooner that the $13 million “fiscal note” attached to the bill would cause trouble and looked for ways to get the number down.

And what was up with Ned’s administration, failing to back a proposal generated by his own team before he was even sworn in?

In the end, it’s often hard to pin down exactly why a reasonable proposal craters. Most of it is just inertia — the tendency of an object to keep doing what it’s doing. Right now, Connecticut charges friends and families of inmates a lot of money to pay for the cost of having their calls recorded and monitored. Why upset such a lovely arrangement?

So does Ned suck? Not as much as the system that was in place long before he got here. But if you want to change the system, you have to change your own mentality.

I believe it was former Gov. William O’Neill who said: “No, maybe I can’t win, maybe the only thing I can do is just take everything he’s got. But to beat me, he’s gonna have to kill me, and to kill me, he’s gonna have to have the heart to stand in front of me, and to do that, he’s gotta be willing to die himself and I don’t know if he’s ready to do that. I don’t know, I don’t know.”

No, actually it was Rocky Balboa. Doesn’t matter. Ned’s gotta go to that place if he wants to be a champ in 2020. Colin McEnroe’s column appears every Sunday, his newsletter comes out every Thursday and you can hear his radio show every weekday on WNPR 90.5. Email him at colin@ctpublic.org. Sign up for his newsletter at http://bit.ly/colinmcenroe.