The process of making laws is seldom pretty. But the doings under Hartford’s golden dome June 12 are worthy of a special spot in the annals of one-party rule.
Consider:
1) What started as a special session to implement budget housekeeping morphed into a veritable do-over for a regular session that stalled in intra-party wrestling.
2) Majority Democrats, operating without their speaker whose congressional campaign had been caught in an FBI sting, wrangled past the last minute about what to include. The result was two bills, totaling 660 pages, that were made available Tuesday. As a practical matter, that assured nobody had read the entire legislation before voting.
3) By one count, there were 173 sections covering 111 concepts in the two bills and 40 of those concepts had never received any hearing. The ’emergency’ status made that legal and legislators were left with no choice beyond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on each of the two bills.
“Is this democracy,” whined House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk.
Being in the minority means you’re not going to win but it doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
In this case, Cafero is right on target. This process is lunacy. There’s virtually no opportunity for review much less comment by the people whose lives and livelihoods are affected. The chance for debate and refinement is gone; the chance for errors is magnified.
In one case, the state’s Freedom of Information watchdogs caught the Malloy Administration using ‘could’ instead of ‘would’ in a definition of what information it would keep secret in dealing with companies seeking state economic assistance.
The effect of the wording would have allowed Team Malloy to operate entirely off the radar. Simple mistake in the rush to get the bill done or a lucky catch of a hand in the cookie jar? We’ll likely never know for sure. But the decision to amend the problem away rather than rewrite the clause in the name of expediency is telling.
Similarly, voters will never know where their representatives stand on touchy issues like mandatory state trooper staffing levels, a strings-attached bailout to the troubled Bridgeport school district, delaying the tax effects of property revaluation, and yet more tweaks to the education reform bill.
For conspiracy buffs, there’s a small change in the schedule for reporting state revenue in 2013. Instead of reporting the numbers two weeks before the election, they will come out two weeks after. No discussion. Just a straight party line vote. To be fair, even four Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to vote for this legislative hodgepodge.
This isn’t gridlock in the Washington sense. The Republicans are so outnumbered in Hartford all they can do is jeer as the train rolls past. This is the result of an inept Democratic leadership being unable to work the admittedly arcane levers of power in a reasonable way within the timeframe allocated by law.
One wag suggested this legislative do-over is just a step toward a full-time legislature. Let’s hope not. But at the same time, we can’t keep repeating this nightmare. This is the kind of lawmaking in the dark that lends itself to all sorts of skullduggery. And, as we know, Connecticut’s record for state government corruption is hideous.
To be sure, there were lots of good measures approved within those two bills. The jobs bill expands eligibility on some good programs; the expansion of Connecticut Innovations holds promise. Some energy and environmental legislation — and the budget implementation steps — got the approval they should have had last month.
All in all, Connecticut has dealt itself another black eye. It’s tempting to say there’s no place to go from here except up but that would be to shortchange the governing class. People who would make laws this way are capable of untold havoc and we had best not challenge them to find new lows.
