The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Hundreds of bills passed. These ideas didn’t.
HARTFORD — In what House Speaker Matt Ritter referred to as “the most fascinating three or four hours in Connecticut politics,” dozens of measures made it through the frenzied final night of 2023 legislative session Wednesday, joining hundreds of other bills that could soon become law with Gov. Ned Lamont’s signature
Other ideas, however, were not so lucky.
Here are just a few of the more notable measures that never made it to final vote in 2023:
Paid sick leave
In his final pre-session huddle with reporters on Wednesday morning, Ritter, D- Hartford, was asked what bills he lamented had gotten away this session. He quickly focused on one bill in particular to expand access to paid sick leave to nearly all private-sector employees.
“We had deals that seemed [like] they were close,” Ritter said. “I’ve hosted many summits in here over the last two weeks, so that’s one I wish we had gotten done.”
The proposed bill would have given up to 40 hours of paid sick time to workers in most privatesector industries, save for construction workers who are covered by collective bargaining agreements.
That would have been a massive expansion from current law, which only guarantees paid sick leave to certain “service” workers at companies with more than 40 employees.
Members of both parties appear to have balked at the scope of the expansion, and fought to exempt smaller businesses from the requirement. As drafted, the bill would have offered sick leave to nearly 1.6 million workers in Connecticut.
Minimum teacher salaries
Legislators declined to pass minimum salaries for teachers and paraeducators, a priority for teachers unions this session.
Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said this week she was disappointed not to see measures regarding teachers’ salaries in the state budget, despite $150 million for the state’s Education Cost Sharing program.
“There are additional funds going to the ECS formula, but we asked specifically, ‘How do we dedicate those resources to salary improvement?’ and that didn’t appear,” Dias said. “So the budget has money going to education, but it’s not earmarked and directed to the classroom.”
Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Ritter and House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, DEast Hartford, said that they expected that school districts would use at least a portion of their additional ECS money to boost teacher salaries in the upcoming fiscal year.
Census-based tax exemptions
The leader of the legislature’s tax-writing Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, state Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, turned many heads earlier this year when he inserted language into a bonding measure that would exempt certain residents in high-poverty neighborhoods from having to pay the state’s income tax.
Fonfara’s reasoning was that residents of those census tracts often flee as soon as they gain some economic mobility, fueling a downward cycle of poverty.
Lawmakers opted instead to follow Gov. Ned Lamont’s approach of offering broad-based income tax cuts for lower and middle-income residents. Still, Fonfara did succeed in winning last-minute approval for up to $350 million in state bonds that will be dedicated toward projects such as housing rehabilitation and workforce development in the state’s high-poverty census tracts.
Single-use foam containers
Efforts to ban the use of ubiquitous single-use foam containers date back several years in Connecticut. For now though, advocates will have to wait.
Legislation that would have implemented a ban on expanded polystyrene — commonly known as styrofoam — in disposable food containers beginning in 2024 made it all the way to the House floor in 2023, but lawmakers there never called it for a vote.
Taxes on tribal lands
Amid a flurry activity surrounding indigenous issues this year, leaders of Connecticut’s two federally recognized tribes had been especially hopeful that lawmakers would address their longstanding concerns about the taxation of private business located on tribal lands.
The issue concerns shops and restaurants that serve customers at the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos in eastern Connecticut. While the casinos themselves are considered sovereign and not subject to local property taxes, tribal leaders say the towns of Ledyard and Montville collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes annually from other businesses located on tribal lands.
Capping visitors at state parks
Lamont signed a bill into law on Wednesday directing the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to set a limit for how many people can safety fit inside Squantz Pond State Park in New Fairfield on crowded summer weekends.
Back when the legislation was first filed in January, however, it would have applied every one of the more than 100 state parks in Connecticut.
Those parks have record attendance levels in recent years, and Squantz Pond is just one of the parks that has struggled to accommodate the swell of visitors seeking a place to swim on hot, sunny weekends. While park officials will close parking lots as the fill up, current state policy allows an unlimited number of walk-ins.
Rabbit farming
In a deal that may prove costly for bears in Connecticut, rabbits earned a reprieve.
Last Friday, House lawmakers gave final approval to a controversial bill that expanded the circumstances in which residents can shoot and kill black bears to preserve life and property. That measure infuriated animalrights activists, so as a consolation, legislative leaders agreed to torpedo a section of an unrelated bill allowing for the commercial slaughter of rabbits for food.
Animal rights groups contended that the bill would allow “factory farming” of rabbits, and could lead to the spread of diseases. Supporters of the measure said it would help Connecticut farmers diversify their business and sell locally-raised meat.