The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Distanced session will keep public on outside
History will be made Thursday in a near-empty State Capitol building, when the House of Representatives meets for the first time since March 11 to vote on coronavirus and Black Lives Matter-related bills in the first half of a two-day special legislative session.
The public and lobbyists will be prohibited from entering both the Capitol and nearby Legislative Office Building, where most lawmakers will be sequestered in their offices. Outside on the Capitol grounds, groups of police, schoolteachers and people opposed to expanded access to mail-in ballots will be protesting at various periods throughout the day.
Police are expected to demonstrate against a measure in a draft transparency bill that would end individual immunity from civil lawsuits resulting from police brutality. But in recent days, right up until Wednesday night, lawmakers were discussing the likely removal of the controversial section of the legislation.
Teachers are concerned about what they believe are vague return-to-school guidelines from Gov. Ned Lamont.
And Republicans, citing apparent limits in the state Constitution, will echo President Donald Trump’s criticisms of potential fraud against efforts to provide absentee ballots for the November election to peo
ple who might be afraid to go to the polls if the coronavirus continues a rampage that has been implicated in the deaths of 4,406 people since March 17.
Secretary of the State Denise Merrill recently mailed absentee ballot applications to all registered Republicans and Democrats for the Aug. 11 party primaries. While a group of four GOP hopefuls for nominations to challenge Democratic members of the U.S. House lost a hearing in the state Supreme Court on Monday, a ruling in state Superior Court on Tuesday set up another hearing with the Supreme Court on related issues, and their attorneys on Wednesday asked for an expedited hearing.
Inside the Capitol, the 151 House members will be discouraged from entering the ornate second-floor chamber except to speak on bills. The chamber will be occupied only by caucus and committee leaders, key staff members and print and broadcast reporters.
Rank-and-file lawmakers will be watching the proceedings on TV and voting remotely from warrens throughout the LOB and Capitol. Their computer keyboards will allow voting, and can signal Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz their requests to join the debate in the session, which is scheduled to start at 11 a.m.
Lawmakers will have to be physically present in the historic House chamber to speak on bills.
In addition to the police transparency bill, which would prohibit choke holds, mandate body and dashboard cameras and create new procedures to fire rogue police officers, there are two insurance related bills that would cap the price of insulin and provide for telehealth coverage,
Inside the Capitol, the 151 House members will be discouraged from entering the ornate second-floor chamber except to speak on bills. The chamber will be occupied only by caucus and committee leaders, key staff members and print and broadcast reporters.
which has emerged as an important issue for lawmakers during a coronavirus public health crisis that has prevented many patients from going to doctors offices.
The unique legislative day, which will include an outdoor barbecue for lunch and boxed dinners that they will pick up from the cafeteria in the LOB and consume in their offices, will likely feature the telehealth and insulin bills early. The bills on mail-in balloting and police reforms are expected to take longer to debate.
“Connecticut and the nation demand meaningful police accountability reform, and CCM supports reform” said Joe DeLong, executive director and of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. “If legislation eliminates local government immunity, however, the actions of rogue police officers may only further punish property taxpayers across Connecticut; force local tax hikes in poor, urban communities and bring about cuts in services where they are needed most.”
But Kelly Moore, policy counsel for the ACLU of Connecticut, said the provision should remain in the legislation.
“Qualified immunity only serves to further harm people whose rights have been violated by police,” Moore said. “It is an unnecessary doctrine that allows even police who've violated people's constitutional rights to avoid accountability. Ending qualified immunity in Connecticut is a critical piece of police accountability, and getting rid of qualified immunity is a necessary part of giving survivors of police violence and families of people killed by police the chance for redress in court.”
The Senate is scheduled to meet next Tuesday to review, debate and vote on measures that pass the House. In the coronavirus pandemic the regular session of the General Assembly was abandoned on March 12 with only a handful of bills that had passed.
The insulin legislation in particular was a priority of Senate President Pro Tempore
Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, at the start of the regular legislative session and had already been approved in committee.
The General Assembly never got back together in time for its May 6 adjournment deadline. Last week the governor called the legislature back into special session and on Tuesday, the Senate adopted joint rules.
House Majority Leader Matt Ritter, D-Hartford said that navigating the indoor social distancing might be harder than discussing the actual quartet of bills.
“Tomorrow’s going to weird in the chamber,” Ritter said in a Wednesday afternoon interview. “We are going to have a lot of rules issues. Unless you are in leadership or a top deputy, take a bill out as a committee chairman, or speak, we want you staying in the LOB.”