The Day – Five highlights from the Connecticut legislative session

Hartford — Legislation concerning climate change, adjustments to the state budget, juvenile justice, abortion, mental health and other issues made it through the General Assembly during this spring’s short session.

Both Republican and Democratic leaders said on the session’s last day Wednesday that they were pleased — though Democrats more so — that priorities established at the beginning of the session had been more or less achieved by its close.

House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, recognized the time constraints of a short session, but said the legislature was productive nonetheless.

“There’s always the chance that things go sideways, and I don’t think they have between the two parties,” he said Wednesday.

House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said Republicans were particularly happy with policy achievements on mental health and juvenile crime, both of which were bipartisan bills.

“We did a lot of things and topics that have been around a long time,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford. “It’s been a great two-year cycle, quite frankly. Our chamber leaves with everybody feeling respected.”

Other bills passed during the session included raising legislators’ pay and establishing Juneteenth as a state holiday; other legislation died without being raised in one or both chambers.

Budget

The state’s budget adjustment passed by partisan votes in the House and Senate but caused much less acrimony among Democrats than in last year’s budget process. The $24.2 billion budget represents a 2.5% increase from last year’s spending plan and contains $600 million in tax cuts.

A total of $2.8 billion in state funding will go to municipalities. Bozrah, East Lyme, Griswold, Groton, Lebanon, Ledyard, Lyme, Montville, New London, North Stonington, Norwich, Old Lyme, Preston, Salem, Stonington, Waterford and the City of Groton are in line for a share of almost $200 million.

The State Contracting Standards Board, a watchdog agency that ensures state contracting and procurement requirements are understood and followed, is also fully funded in the budget.

The budget was another coup for state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, the Appropriations Committee co-chair who navigated millions of dollars toward Norwich for various projects, $1 million to the Coast Guard Academy in New London for its library, $1.4 million for the Eastern Workforce Investment Board for the purpose of hiring 3,500 new employees at Electric Boat and $500,000 to Montville for its tennis courts, among many other expenditures.

“A lot of the talk all year focuses on what the executive branch of government wants, and what the administration is proposing. But that’s just one branch of government, and legislators have a say on their own budget, and their own priorities, and that was my focus over the past several months as a member of the state legislature,” Osten said in a news release Thursday. “My priorities are and always will be eastern Connecticut: jobs for eastern Connecticut, economic development for eastern Connecticut, and funding for eastern Connecticut.”

Juvenile crime

Following a political push by Republicans, which started over the summer, to make juvenile crime an issue this session, a compromise bill that partially represented some Democratic and Republican requests gained final passage in the Senate on the last day of session.

Many on the left criticized the bill for going too far in politically driven “tough on crime” measures criminalizing youth and for not getting at the root causes of crime among young people in the state. Republicans acknowledged the bill did not get at root causes but was a step in the right direction.

Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, referred to himself as the “reluctant proponent” of the bill during debate on Wednesday. “Although I’m standing as the proponent of the bill, I don’t think there’s a victory here today,” he said.

According to the bill analysis, House Bill 5417 would allow for “more immediate arraignment and services for juvenile offenders, electronic monitoring in certain circumstances … and require the Commissioner of Emergency Services and Public Protection to inform the Chief of Police or other appropriate official of the town in which a firearms permit applicant resides if such applicant fails a background check.”

The bill would increase the maximum time, from six hours to eight hours, that a juvenile can be held in lockup without a detention order from a judge. The legislation also addresses an issue Republicans have been raising for months, as it extends access to juvenile delinquency case records and proceedings to municipal agency employees and state and municipal law enforcement officials conducting investigations. 

Abortion

Before a draft decision from the U.S. Supreme Court leaked this week indicating that the high court would overturn the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the legislature passed a bill strengthening abortion rights and access in anticipation of such a development.

Gov. Ned Lamont has signed House Bill 5414 into law.

The legislation, a combination of two earlier proposals, protects out-of-state women from prosecution for getting an abortion in Connecticut and Connecticut medical providers from legal actions taken against them from another state. It also now allows advanced-practice clinicians — such as advanced-practice registered nurses, or APRNs, and nurse-midwives — in the state to perform aspiration, or suction, abortions in addition to medication abortion.

Several Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the bill. Sens. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague; Norm Needleman, D-Essex; Heather Somers, R-Groton, and Paul Formica, R-East Lyme, all voted in favor.

In the House, state Reps. Christine Conley, D-Groton; Emmett Riley, D-Norwich; Kevin Ryan, D-Montville and Joe de la Cruz, D-Groton, voted in favor of the bill, while Reps. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme; Anthony Nolan, D-New London; Kathleen McCarty, R-Waterford; Greg Howard, R-Stonington; Devin Carney, R-Old Lyme; Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin, and Mike France, R-Ledyard, all voted against it.

Members of Connecticut’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, the Lamont administration and the Connecticut General Assembly on Tuesday — through a flurry of statements and a news conference — strongly condemned the Supreme Court’s draft decision.

However, state Republican legislators said that if the draft decision stands, they expect it won’t affect Connecticut much, as state laws — including the one just recently passed — protect abortion rights here.

Environmental bills

The legislature passed several significant environmental bills, including Senate Bill 4, a sweeping climate-change mitigation bill meant to reduce emissions and expand the use of electric vehicles in the state, and Senate Bill 10, which requires the state to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from electricity supplied to Connecticut customers by 2040.

SB 10 had some bipartisan support, but SB 4 was mostly partisan, with Republicans concerned about costs to businesses and the state if efforts to bolster Connecticut’s electric infrastructure are ramped up.

“Everyone agrees that we want a planet that is as pristine as possible,” Cheeseman had said of SB 10. “We also, I hope, agree that we live in a state with extraordinary high costs, particularly with regard to energy and electricity, and the last thing we want to do is unfairly burden our residents with even more costs.”

SB 4, according to the bill’s joint favorable report, is meant to launch the state toward its clean air goals by “setting dates at which Connecticut’s fleet of cars and light duty trucks” must be composed of 50%, 75% and 100% battery electric vehicles.

Among other actions, the bill calls for the installation of electric vehicle charging stations throughout the state, aims to make electric vehicles more affordable to people, municipalities and businesses and would create regulations for transportation projects in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions that cause global climate change. 

Mental health

Children’s mental health, a focus for both parties in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, garnered broad support on several bills, including House Bill 5001, An Act Concerning Children’s Mental Health.

The bill is meant to “improve access to mental health, behavioral health, and substance use disorders, particularly for children, and promote awareness about these insidious problems,” according to its joint favorable report. The bill is intended to expand licensing for behavioral health professionals in order to improve recruitment and retention, increase access to school-based mental health services, cut down wait times for treatment and address other issues.

The bill also will allow for training for physicians and pediatricians to be able to handle their patients’ mental health needs rather than sending the children elsewhere for treatment.

In her support for the bill, state Rep. Kathleen McCarty, R-Waterford, said, “I cannot emphasize enough how important this bill is to address the mental health needs of all of our children in the state, and all of the other fabulous provisions in the bill that look at workforce development.” 

s.spinella@theday.com