New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
What passed, what failed
CT’s legislative sessions concluded this week
Connecticut’s legislative sessions concluded Wednesday with a flurry of bills passing the House and Senate — and others failing to draw a vote before the midnight deadline.
In all, the 12-week session included plenty of action, with legislators approving tax cuts for residents, pay raises for state employees, new laws on abortion and voting rights, measures to protect children’s mental health, legislation to reduce carbon emissions and more.
Here are the key bills that passed over the course of the session, as well as some notable proposals that failed.
Key measures that passed
Broad tax cuts
Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget, approved by the House and Senate, included hundreds of millions in tax cuts for Connecticut residents.
Those cuts include expanded property tax credits, a one-year child tax credit of $250 per child, a new maximum mill rate for personal vehicles, a temporary increase in the earned income tax credit and the extension of the state’s gas tax holiday through Dec. 1.
Republicans argued Lamont and his Democratic allies should have gone further, implementing long-term cuts as opposed to temporary ones, while Democrats countered that the package represents one of the largest tax cuts in Connecticut history and the state was limited by federal law in how much deeper it could have gone.
Raises for state employees
Late last month, legislators approved a four-year contract package for state employees worth about $1.9 billion, negotiated by the state and the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition.
The deal included 2.5 percent raises for 46,000 state employees and as much as $3,500 in bonuses for some workers.
The contract passed largely along party lines, with Democrats touting deserved rewards for state employees and Republicans criticizing a deal they viewed as excessive.
Lawmakers also got raises of their own during this session, as part of a separate bill that passed this week, marking their first pay bump in more than two decades.
Children’s mental health
Legislators on Tuesday approved a sweeping package that will provide tens of millions of dollars to address what experts describe as a crisis in children’s mental health — an issue some lawmakers described as the most important of the session.
In the end, the House and Senate passed three bills relating to children’s mental health:
One that will offer grants for school districts to hire and retain more school social workers and counselors, allows school nurses to give students opioidreversal drugs, permit local school boards to offer remote learning and more.
One that will establish a fund to help families pay for mental health treatment and provide around-the-clock mobile crisis response services, among other measures.
Another aimed at expanding services in the medical sector and the community.
Despite interparty disagreements on some elements of the package, all three bills passed with significant bipartisan support.
Abortion protections
In a move that would appear prescient only days later, lawmakers passed a bill positioning Connecticut as a safe haven for people in other states seeking abortion.
The legislation shields abortion providers in Connecticut from anti-abortion laws passed in other states, while also broadening the categories of medical providers who are authorized to perform abortions.
The news policies gained particular relevance this week when a leaked draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito revealed that the Supreme Court may be preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to ban abortion if they choose.
Lamont signed the abortion measure Thursday afternoon, saying he had been anxious to do so “as soon as possible.”
Broader mail-in voting
Lamont in early April signed a bill to allow wider mail-in voting, which proponents say will allow for greater participation at the polls.
While the bill did not allow no-excuse absentee voting, which would require an amendment to the state constitution, it loosened the language in the law, making it possible for commuters
and people with a range of disabilities or illnesses to vote by mail.
“I want people voting,” Lamont said the day he signed the bill. “I want people to know that their vote matters. I want people to have a stake in the election and a stake in the outcome. I do believe that the more people who vote, vote with integrity, vote with safety, is the right thing to do for this state.”
Juvenile justice
Following several years of political posturing around a short-lived uptick in motor vehicle thefts, lawmakers on Wednesday passed a bipartisan bill that establishes stricter consequences for juveniles convicted of crimes.
The legislation, which awaits Lamont’s signature, will shorten the amount of time before young people appear in court, allow GPS monitoring of minors and broaden law enforcement access to minors’ records.
Despite back and forth between Republicans who sought stricter measures and Democrats who warned that increased penalties would harm Black and Latino children, the final compromise measure eventually passed with broad support in both houses.
Juneteenth holiday
By a vote of 148-1, the House on Wednesday passed a bill making Juneteenth, a day commemorating the end of slavery, a state holiday.
The legislation had previously passed the Senate and now heads to Lamont, who has indicated a willingness to sign it.
The Connecticut bill comes nearly a year after President Joe Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday, to be observed each June 19.
Climate legislation
After years of frustration over lack of progress in the legislature, climate advocates had plenty to cheer this session, with a slew of bills intended to reduce carbon emissions in the short and long term.
A bill targeting transportation emissions that adopts California’s emissions standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, establishes a grant program for electric school buses, creating new incentives for electric vehicle purchases and expands access to electric vehicle charging stations passed both houses following extensive debate last week.
A bill that requires Connecticut to obtain all its electricity from clean-energy sources by 2040 passed last week with bipartisan support.
A bill that doubles the amount of solar energy allowed to be produced at commercial and shared solar facilities passed easily last week as well.
Proponents say these measures can help Connecticut get back on track to meet its emissions reduction goals, after a report last year indicated the state was lagging on those targets.
Key measures that failed
Aid-in-dying
After appearing to have some momentum early in the legislative session, a bill that would have let terminally ill people request medication to help them die more quickly failed to pass out of the judiciary committee following a rare parliamentary tactic from Rep. Craig Fishbein, a Wallingford Republican.
“It says a lot about support for medical aid in dying, both inside and outside the Capitol, that opponents had to resort to a rarely used parliamentary maneuver to defeat the legislation," Tim Appleton, campaign director for the advocacy group Compassion & Choices, said at the time.
Aid-in-dying proposals have circulated in the Capitol for years and will likely be back in future sessions.
Bolstering the Contracting Standards Board
Despite unanimous passage in the Senate, the House failed to vote on a bill that would have provided more resources and staffing to the state’s Contracting Standards Board, which provides oversight of contracts the executive branch enters.
Paul Mounds, Lamont’s chief of staff, said Thursday that the heads of several executive branch agencies raised concerns about the measure “based upon what they saw would be constraints, particularly in their emergency contracting standards.”
Republican leaders said they were disappointed the measure failed, arguing the executive branch requires greater accountability.
“That was a bipartisan piece of legislation,” House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, RNorth Branford, said. “We wanted to provide that level of insight, and it was unfortunate that it couldn’t get across the finish line.”
Housing reforms
It was a relatively quiet session for housing policy, with several proposals to curb soaring rental prices failing to reach the floor.
Multiple bills favored by advocates did not advance out of committee, while an effort to allow housing authorities to develop affordable housing outside their jurisdictions passed through several committees but never came up for a vote in the House or Senate.
An exception: The legislature did pass a bill requiring municipalities with at least 25,000 residents to establish fair rent commissions.
‘Tesla bill’
Lawmakers once again failed to pass a bill that would have allowed Tesla and other electric vehicle manufacturers sell directly to Connecticut residents.
Automakers are required to sell new vehicles through thirdparty dealerships — not through the company-owned stores and showrooms Tesla and others have opened elsewhere.
While legislation letting Tesla sell its vehicles directly to consumers has now failed several sessions in a row, it will likely be raised again in the future, and proponents remain confident it will eventually succeed.
Open container ban
Amid bipartisan opposition, an attempt to ban open containers of alcohol in motor vehicles was removed from a broader transportation bill in late April.
Connecticut will therefore remain one of a handful of states that still allow open containers — at least until lawmakers inevitably raise the issue again in a future session.
Ban on flavored vapes
Lawmakers sought first to ban flavored vaping devices altogether, then to limit them to people 21 and older.
Eventually, the proposed legislation failed to come to a vote in either the House or Senate, as opponents argued that vapes are useful in helping people quit smoking traditional cigarettes.
A ban on flavored vapes has been raised in several successive sessions — and will likely come up again in the future.