Lawmakers consider school lunches, bottle bill

HARTFORD — Connecticut’s popular, statewide free school lunch program would extend through the academic year at a cost of $60 million, under a wide-ranging bill that was set for approval Thursday in the General Assembly.

It was part of a rare long February day of debates and votes, beginning in the House of Representatives, where it passed 144-0 after an hour-long debate. It next headed to the Senate, lawmakers were prepared to win bipartisan approval of the legislation, which includes an extension of fiscal restraints that date back to 2017, when an 18-18 stalemate in the Senate gave Republicans the power to be a full partner in the budget negotiations.

The bill also rewrites the bottle-deposit law over the issue of so-called hard seltzers. Explicitly leaving out carbonated beverages that include wine or distilled spirits from the deposit requirement is expected to free up tensions among lawmakers and allow for the confirmation of Katie Dykes, the commissioner of the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection; and provides support for UConn as it pursues a grant in cooperation with Pratt & Whitney to study hydrogen-powered jet engines.

Advocates including local school officials say that the pandemic-era free-lunch program should become part of the state budget going forward, because the $90-million a year investment, giving all children free meals, results in higher participation in eating lunch, as well as less bullying and shaming of lowerincome students. There are about 497,000 children enrolled in public schools.

But speaking to reporters before the House session Thursday morning, Democratic leaders including Speaker of the House Matt Ritter of Hartford, Majority Leader Jason Rojas of East Hartford and Rep. Toni Walker of New Haven, said they were more inclined to consider the wealth of communities going forward, to decide what school populations should be covered for the free meals like Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford.

“We’re definitely going into June 30th this year,” Walker told reporters in Ritter’s State Capitol office. “If you go back a few years and look at how we did pay for school lunches before, before it was an application process and the percentage of people in poverty were represented in the exchange. This does a little bit more than that. We have to also think about how some of the districts have the ability to pay. They have the ability. We have to direct these dollars to different things.”

“You can look at the poverty rates in any of those communities and come to a pretty quick determination about whether they can afford to pay for it themselves,” Rojas said.

Ritter said that while the legislation session is still in its early stages, measures of income will likely take center stage in the upcoming drafting of state budget documents, the same way it figures into the state’s Educational Cost Sharing formula. “If you’re getting more money in ECS, one might argue that also could be reallocated to help with that issue,” Ritter said. “So you could do a matching program, you could do a grant program. We’ll figure it out. We know we have enough one-time revenue to do it this fiscal year and then we have to have a conversation going forward.”

House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, RNorth Branford, agreed. “I think we have to have that conversation,” he told reporters outside the House chamber. “It’s about resources. If you look at all the Democrats’ proposals, I think they’re probably $2 billion over the spending cap right now. They’re way out of whack from where the governor is. So if they want to do all these programs you have to prioritize. That is not a program that I think we should be prioritizing beyond June.”

Candelora said that a broader conversation among lawmakers is needed on the issue of school lunches. “Is there really a need, or is this just political fodder,” he said. “That’s what we need to hammer out.”

State Rep. Rachel Khanna, D-Greenwich, whose district includes part of Stamford, said that students in her district have benefited from the free lunches. “It is a fact that young minds are more ready to filled with knowledge when their stomachs are filled with healthy food,” said the first-term lawmaker during the floor debate. “And when all students have access to free meals, economic distinctions between students in lunch lines are erased and with it the bullying absenteeism and shaming that often results.”

Ritter said that after closed-door discussions between majority leaders and Gov. Ned Lamont on Wednesday, they agreed to extend for 10 years the fiscal restraints called “guard rails” including spending caps, with an option for the legislature to end the constraints after five years by a simple-majority vote.

“I think what we’re doing today sets the framework for the budgeting process going forward in an important way,” said Rep. Maria Horn, D-Salisbury, the new co-chairwoman of the taxwriting Finance, Revenue & Bonding Committee. The bill includes increased mandatory payments to the state’s emergency reserves. “That Rainy Day Fund is there to protect us in a moment where we do not want to be slashing services or cutting taxes.”

“Republicans are pleased that we’re having the conversation now about what the caps should look like in this budget process,” Candelora said. “I think it’s important to get it out of the way before we engage in budget negotiations. “The governor’s approach is that we need at least 10 years to get our pensions paid down and in a position that makes it actuarial sound. So I understand that reasoning and that’s why we would support support going to 10 years.”

Candelora said that state environmental officials mistakenly included hard seltzers in the expansion of the bottle redemption legislation, but there is no actual definition of the beverage in state law. “So we very clearly put on the record that it didn’t include spirits or wine products because that’s not an industry that’s ever been subject to a deposit bill nationally,” Candelora said. “So for the department to step in and frustrate that legislative intent creates a problem. And that is why Commissioner Dykes’ nomination remains on the calendar.”

Rep. David Rutigliano, R-Trumbull, a top GOP member of the legislative General Law Committee, said that clear that the intent of the bottle-bill legislation, which as of Jan. 1 includes sports drinks and teas among the universe of bottles and cans for redemption, was to protect distilled-spirit distributors, because they do not have the infrastructure to handle bottle returns.