Lawmakers get a few things right in 2022

Everyone is supposed to hate the government.

We’re so ingrained with right-wing ideology in this country that anything other than disdain for elected officials is taken as wildly inappropriate. The only socially acceptable view of politicians is that they’re all terrible.

It makes it much easier for enemies of progress when all government action is seen as de facto wrong.

It’s worth considering whether Connecticut legislators, though, are not terrible. They have gotten a few things right in recent years, including by judging the changing mood of the country and reacting accordingly.

Gov. Ned Lamont’s focus since his election in 2018 has been the budget, which had been a mess for years. It’s not a mess anymore, and there’s more money coming in than the state knows how to use. Though the governor will surely campaign on this success, plenty of credit goes to COVID relief, which will soon run out, and a still-climbing stock market.

The much-ballyhooed tax cuts, too, are generating outsize attention, but they’re not the most important products of the General Assembly’s recent term. Given the size of the surpluses, state leaders were almost forced to act, and the gas tax holiday, for instance, raises as many questions as it answers.

The state is chronically short of money for highway funding — that’s what tolls proposed early in Lamont’s term were supposed to be about. There was a federal infrastructure law passed, but it stands to reason that the money not collected from the gas tax this year — which will conveniently kick in again shortly after the election — will leave a mark. Still, the governor’s campaign is happy to tout new projects in the works.

It’s on nonbudgetary matters where legislators get higher marks. It would be a mistake to think the General Assembly is hitting on all the big issues, because it continues to fail on housing. Despite some good bills, little has been able to pass, and it doesn’t help that the governor has shown absolutely no interest in this issue.

But there are successes worth noting. Atop the news is abortion, where the Supreme Court is apparently about to overturn 50 years of precedent and many states will follow quickly with bans. Connecticut is one of the few states that appears to have understood the stakes, and passed a law this year that will provide a legal safe harbor for women from states with restrictive abortion laws who come to Connecticut in need of health care.

With red states passing increasingly radical and punitive laws aimed at limiting abortion, this is the approach states like ours need to take, and more should follow Connecticut’s lead; New York, to name one, seems poised to follow suit. If anyone thought sending abortion “back to the states” would settle the issue, they’re about to find out otherwise.

Connecticut also made progress on environmental issues, with passage of the Connecticut Clean Air Act likely the most consequential. Human-created climate change remains the most pressing issue facing all of us in coming decades, and while no one would argue one state alone can turn the tide on such a massive crisis, it’s important to take what steps we can.

The state needs to cut emissions, and since it’s unwilling to take steps to limit driving, that means encouraging loweremissions vehicles and, equally important, cleaner power sources. New laws take good steps in that direction.

Finally, there’s the police accountability law, passed in the wake of massive, worldwide protests against police overreach. It’s notable that for all the talk, few jurisdictions took concrete steps to reform policing in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Connecticut was one of them, and it’s come into focus with a current case against a state trooper charged with killing a Black teenager in 2020.

The key is accountability. When there’s no independence, when police and prosecutors investigate themselves, it’s hard for the public to see a workable process. Regardless of how the case plays out, the new law provides that independence.

Republicans, of course, hate it and are campaigning against it. But that was inevitable under any circumstances. Republicans are running this year on convincing suburbanites they’re in imminent danger of violent crime, which is not backed up with facts. The reality of the situation has nothing to do with what they’re charging.

That’s something worth acknowledging. Political opponents are going to attack you no matter what you do, no matter which laws you pass. You can’t preemptively shield yourself from attacks, so you might as well do something meaningful along the way.