Odds not good for Lamont’s Big Four
Don’t expect any profiles in courage from your General Assembly.
Lawmakers don’t exactly care about gauging public opinion. Once the average legislator sits in one of those comfy chairs in the House or Senate, their sense of self-worth inflates exponentially, while their ability to remember the people who elected them deflates accordingly.
And there is a massive disconnect between Democrats and their governor, who’s supposed to set the tone of fiscal and social policy.
Something about being elected to represent a 25,000-population House district or a 95,000 Senate district creates an egomultiplier in the heads of many oh-so-average politicians. And aside from caucus leaders and a minority of others among the 151 House and 36 Senate denizens, most in the legislature should aspire to average.
Yeah, as high and mighty as some think, they’re not exactly a moral compass. There was a bill that could have made the end-of-life a little easier for the terminally ill, but it recently expired, for the sixth year or so, without even a debate in the House or Senate.
The bill failed to get to reach a formal vote in the Public Health Committee because an actual roll call would have been embarrassing for the panel’s Democratic majority, who didn’t want to be caught out, on the record, for prolonging pain in people they will never meet. Yep, too often legislative leaders protect the guilty.
Transparency, thy name is not the General Assembly, where some committee agendas are posted in the last minute and not the day ahead; where crucial rewritten language of legislation gets into the hands of lobbyists well before reporters and the general public.
If you think this biennium’s Democratic majorities are running roughshod with progressive legislation, you’ve been attending too many anti-toll “public hearings,” those cleverly warmed-over GOP marketing events for the 2020 General Assembly election. There is a palpable fear among a certain strata of GOP pros that the 2020 presidential turnout will dwarf the huge 2018 numbers that flipped the state Senate to solidly Democrat, and gave Ned Lamont the governor’s race.
It reminds me how the “highest tax hikes in state history” battle cry didn’t precede a Republican victory for governor and the General Assembly last year, thanks to their underwhelming candidate for governor, and the Trump effect.
There’s really not a better idea for guerrilla political
There are strong anti-toll sentiments among the progressives, as well as anti-cannabis people, because they know so much and are so authoritative.
sniping than playing to the crowd’s toll-phobia. Forget the hundreds of millions of dollars in out-of-state road usage money being left on the table. What is a better re-purposed branding effort than “Lying Ned,” the businessman who upon election realized trucksonly tolls couldn’t generate enough cash to fix the state’s transit infrastructure?
Tolls are too much of a sitting duck, and would take most of Lamont’s first term to install. Rank-andfile Democrats are generally cowardly, and the so-called progressive caucus are prone to be situational. There are strong anti-toll sentiments among the progressives, as well as anticannabis people, because they know so much and are so authoritative.
Governor Lamont is about to see how important the denizens of the General Assembly, mostly rankand-file, think they are. There may not be legal “sports betting” in Connecticut, but I can think of some odds that don’t look too good for Lamont’s four major proposals.
Tolls: 3 to 1 against, with ’fraidy cat Democrats fleeing from the GOP’s “Lying Ned” battle cry.
Recreational marijuana: 4 to 1 against because it’s easier to be a reactionary than a visionary, and the cannabis package has many parts to it. If there’s a chance for Connecticut lawmakers to hem and haw, and rub their hands together, and ignore that most people support legalized weed, they will.
Remember, it took five years to enact the no-brainer ban on drivers’ use of handheld mobile phones. Besides, recreational cannabis users now just have to drive to the marijuana market town of Northampton, or consult their traditional underground dealers. Don’t forget, Massachusetts only won retail cannabis because of a statewide ballot initiative, a process for the people of the Commonwealth that Connecticut does not have. Instead we have dithering lawmakers.
Family and medical leave as a mandatory program with a payroll deduction: 5 to 1 against. A four-year phase-in for the $10.10 minimum wage to rise to $15: 3 to 1 against.
For General Assembly members, a long-term vision is only until the next Election Day.