Building a more efficient General Assembly

If you need a model for fulfilling those hopeful New Year’s resolutions ... don’t look toward the Connecticut General Assembly as a model.

Our state lawmakers are all about making wish lists, but follow a pattern every winter that reliably ends with a flurry of stalls, compromises and failures (like most resolutions).

There needs to be a leaner process.

There’s nothing wrong with the way Republicans and Democrats tally priorities at this time of year. They even manage to identify interests that dovetail. But they arrive at every deadline like disorganized college freshmen cramming to finish papers at dawn that were assigned months earlier.

Part of the problem — much like anyone with a personal pledge — is facing reality. There’s been a glimmer of promise in this area as they wisely look to take on the polarizing tolling discussion in a special session, and have resolved nagging issues over tipped workers and a deal with hospitals to erase a $4 billion liability.

If they can clear the static over tolls, they should be able to tune the frequency to other matters that are overdue for consideration.

First, leaders need to put lawmakers on a diet. This is not a cable access reality show where the lawmaker with the most bills wins a prize. It’s about the best bills, not the most bills. In the first six weeks of the 2019 session, Democrats and Republicans signed off on more than 7,300 bills. Each lawmaker was attached to an average of 46 in that span.

We prefer the minimalist approach taken by state Rep. Chris Perone, D-Norwalk, who pitched a single bill aimed to hike the minimum age to buy electronic cigarettes to 21. It is now law.

We’re glad to see vaping back on this year’s list of Democratic public health priorities. There’s also potential for bipartisan solutions to cap the cost of prescriptions drugs, notably insulin.

While making a decision on legalizing recreational marijuana may seem contrary to taking a harsher stance on vaping, Connecticut lawmakers need to

In the first six weeks of the 2019 session, Democrats and Republicans signed off on more than 7,300 bills. Each lawmaker was attached to an average of 46 in that span.

make up their minds on whether to follow the lead taken by neighboring states. We don’t like the reasoning that drives many lawmakers to back marijuana, sports gambling and tolls — that we’re leaving money on the table. But if there is a potential for past marijuana arrests to be expunged, people shouldn’t be sitting in prisons while lawmakers put off the hard work.

Whether or not the matter of tolls is resolved in a special session, sports betting negotiations with the state’s Native American tribes remains in the hands of Gov. Ned Lamont’s office and should not (for now) be a distraction for lawmakers.

Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, has also circled an issue we would like to become a priority — better oversight of Connecticut’s quasi-public agencies, which cry for more scrutiny.

But if we could only have one wish, it would be for a more efficient General Assembly.