Lamont seeks COVID power extension

In a letter to the state legislature, Gov. Ned Lamont is asking lawmakers to extend Connecticut’s public health emergency and about a dozen COVID orders, including school mask mandates, when his executive authority expires next month.

The 11 executive orders include allowing the commissioners of education and early childhood to issue rules like mandatory masks and social distancing in schools. He also asked the legislature to continue the state's civil preparedness emergency and “establish a process to respond quickly in the future to the ongoing public health threat from COVID-19.”

The letter comes less than a month before Lamont’s authority to declare a continued state of emergency and issue executive orders expires on Feb. 15.

“We are not out of the woods,” Lamont wrote in the letter Friday to the General Assembly.

The latest COVID surge, driven by the omicron variant, has resulted in record-high case rates in Connecticut and hospitalizations increasing to levels not seen since spring 2020.

Lamont hinted to legislators last week that he was not going to formally request an extension of his emergency authority, but left open the possibility of a narrow continuance. He also announced he was going to compile this list of executive orders for the legislature to consider.

“I’d like the legislature’s imprimatur on that,” he said last week in an online news conference. “The legislature may say, ‘I don’t think we ought to be wearing masks in schools’ or ‘I don’t think a store should be able to ask people their vaccination status.’”