With about 2,000 bills proposed this year, far more measures failed than passed. More than 600 bills were passed by various committees this year, but legislators knew that many of them lacked enough support in the full legislature as they raced to meet a state constitutional deadline that closed the session on May 8.
When the session finally ended, 254 measures had been passed by both chambers, ranging from complicated bills to the nominations of judges.
Making progress on some issues, legislators said, was difficult in a short, three-month session in an election year. They pledged to come back again next year when new legislators will occupy some seats after the November election.
Among the bills that failed when the session ended last week:
Artificial intelligence
On the cutting edge of technology, a high-profile bill to regulate artificial intelligence failed after Gov. Ned Lamont said publicly that he would oppose the measure. His remarks short-circuited the bill, prompting leaders in the state House of Representatives to avoid debating because it would have been a waste of valuable time in the final days if Lamont was going to veto the bill anyway.
Lamont feared that too much regulation might scare entrepreneurial companies away from Connecticut and did not want the state to take a go-it-alone strategy on a first-in-the-nation bill in a fast-moving market.
“How much do you regulate the startup industries in a place like AI, where it is just so brand new?” Lamont asked reporters. “Do you want 50 states doing their own thing or is maybe that not the right way? I talked to the governor of Colorado, and they didn’t go for it, either, at least in my understanding. Whatever you do, you don’t want one state to do it. You want this done on a much broader basis.”
Relying partially on his own personal experience in creating a cable television company in the 1980s, Lamont said he feared too much regulations might backfire.
“I’m in the startup world. That’s sort of the place where I live,” Lamont said, adding that he received feedback on the issue. “A lot of them said, all other things being equal, if it’s more likely that I get sued in Connecticut than I do in Georgia, maybe I’ll start my company in Georgia.”
Known as Senate Bill 2, the measure had been a high priority for Senate Democrats, who are expected to raise the issue again next year.
Electric cars
Even before the session started, one of the top issues was electric cars. Lamont pushed strongly for the state to meet California’s emissions standards, which would mean that all new cars sold in Connecticut after 2035 would be all-electric or hybrid.
The issue had such support that some wanted a special session before the regular session, which never happened. In the end, all proposals were rejected, including a special, 40-member commission that would have studied the issue.
Asked what might change the public’s views on the environment, the 70-year-old Lamont responded, “Young people. Guys my age say, ‘Look, the environment’s important, but it’s a little expensive, and I’ve got other priorities. China is not doing it, so why should I?’ Those are all the arguments you’ve heard. I think it’s costing the taxpayers every day in terms of flooding and resiliency. You saw a lot of that last summer.”
Climate change
Although designated as a high priority for House Democrats, a bill on climate change was not debated in the Senate as Republicans staged long filibusters on several bills on the session’s final day.
Democrats hailed the multifaceted bill for taking steps like expanding solar canopies in parking lots and creating a task force to study electric transmission that would include offshore wind. Known as House Bill 5004, the measure offered incentives like tax credits and business fee waivers, along with fostering training in green jobs, helping municipalities, encouraging water and air health, and supporting energy-saving grid enhancements. It also included incentives for alternative energy like solar power and electric heat pumps.
But Republicans blasted the 52-page legislation as the “Green Monster” and questioned how the state would pay for subsidies for expensive electric heat pumps and other items. They also questioned the overall outcome if the United States closed pollution-spewing coal plants at the same time that China and India continued running their plants at full steam.
“It’s a big victory,” Senate Republican leader Stephen Harding Jr. said of the bill’s demise. “Republicans have been warning that this bill, while well-intentioned, would give unfettered authority to an unelected official: the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. It would enable the DEEP commissioner to implement basically whatever she deems fit to meet certain carbon emissions. That could mean new taxes and new government programs that Republicans would object to, but would have no say over.”
Lori Brown, executive director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters and a longtime lobbyist at the state Capitol, countered, “The failure to pass climate legislation is a severe blow to Connecticut’s environmental future. … This inaction will have lasting consequences, and put us farther behind in reaching our state’s climate goals.”
Chinese-made drones
Despite a strong push from Senate Democrats, time expired before the House could pass a consumer protection bill that would have prohibited cities and towns from buying drones made in China and Russia. The concern is that sophisticated drones that cost more than $12,000 could take pictures of critical infrastructure like electrical grids and send them back to China, as well as being able to plug into a town’s computer system and potentially spread viruses.
The issue, contained in Senate Bill 3, split lawmakers largely along party lines with Democrats in favor of the provision and Republicans against. In Congress, where lawmakers remained deadlocked on most issues, legislators passed a law last year that bans the use of foreign drones for the military and the U.S. government.
The Connecticut state police have already said they will stop using the Chinese-made drones, lawmakers said.
First responders, including police departments statewide, have already spent an estimated $1 million to $2 million on sophisticated drones, but they will eventually be replaced because the average lifespan is three to five years, officials said.
Many in the general public, Democrats said, are not fully aware of the problem that many of the drones are currently being purchased from an arm of the Chinese military.
A problem, lawmakers said, is that the Chinese-made drones get purchased because they are generally cheaper, but Democrats countered that $3 million was being set aside in the annual bond package to help towns buy the drones.
Republican initiatives
Since Republicans are in the minority in both chambers, their ideas often get blocked and sometimes do not even get a hearing.
House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford said two initiatives in particular that failed were increasing funding for special education costs and improving the criminal justice system after changes were made following the high-profile death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
“Trying to get consent searches returned for our police officers is a big issue,” Candelora told The Courant in an interview. “It speaks to the issue of our roads not even being safe, let alone the crime that we see with car thefts. We need to do a better job in this state in improving law enforcement in terms of giving them the tools that are necessary to do their job. … I was not happy to see that police officers still cannot pull people over when they’re smoking pot or when they smell pot. When it comes to criminal justice reform, the legislature gets an F.”
Democrats, however, have consistently defended the changes that were made in the comprehensive police accountability law that was signed by Lamont in July 2020.
Another failure in the Republican view is the legislature did not do enough this year to hold down electricity rates for cash-strapped consumers as bills are expected to increase in July. As part of their energy initiatives, they say the Public Utility Regulatory Authority should become more independent by being broken off from the state environmental protection department after being merged into the same department under then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
When asked after the session by The Courant, Lamont said that he was not immediately appointing two more members to the PURA board, which can legally have five instead of the current three.
“The governor is ignoring the law,” Candelora said. “I think that’s the bigger issue. If you wanted three, then advocate that the law be changed back to three. But what has happened is we have a governor that refuses to make the appointments so we can have a discussion about the way PURA is running.”
Abortion rights
Democrats sought a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution because they fear that conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn a series of rights in addition to abortion.
But changing the constitution is a difficult, years-long process that eventually must be approved by the voters in a statewide referendum.
The conservative Family Institute hailed the defeat, saying, “Beating this bill was a priority of the Connecticut March for Life and a big win.”
Car tax
For more than 30 years, governors and legislators have been unable to eliminate Connecticut’s unpopular car tax.
The problem is that cities and towns collect $1 billion per year from the tax, causing mayors and first selectmen to say their budgets would have huge holes without proper reimbursements from the state. Lawmakers cannot agree on how to raise $1 billion in other taxes to cover the shortfall or cut spending by a similar amount.
Despite working with a 22-member task force for months, Sen. MD Rahman, a freshman Democrat from Manchester, was unable to reach a compromise on the best way to eliminate the tax.
In a final attempt, Rahman pushed for allowing towns the option to eliminate the car tax by increasing their assessments on real estate from the traditional 70% in order to cover the shortfalls that would be phased in over five years.
Small business health care
Chris DiPentima, the chief executive officer of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said one of the year’s biggest failures concerns health care costs for small businesses.
“For the second consecutive session, lawmakers were presented with bipartisan, transformational legislation that would change the lives of hundreds of thousands of small business employees,” he said. “It’s not news that the small group health insurance market is broken — reinforced by the departure of yet another carrier this week — with small businesses and their employees battling rising costs and shrinking options. There was a meaningful solution on the table, and it is incredibly frustrating that the bill failed to even receive a committee vote.”
Tipped wages
With the restaurant industry largely back on its feet after the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers battled over a proposal to increase the minimum wage for workers who receive tips.
Connecticut has a two-tiered system where about 70,000 tipped workers currently receive a reduced minimum wage because their tips boost their overall compensation beyond the minimum wage.
But the labor committee voted to gradually eliminate that system over three years and pay workers the regular minimum wage that is currently $15.69 per hour in Connecticut. The federal minimum wage remains at only $7.25 per hour, and workers argue that Connecticut needs increased wages as a high-cost state.
The Connecticut Restaurant Association, an influential lobbying group at the Capitol, opposed the measure while saying that servers and bartenders like the current system the way that it is. The association said that a survey showed that “the average server in Connecticut makes $33 per hour,” and the average bartender makes $38 per hour.
Connecticut would not have been the first to change the system. Seven other states, from California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada to Minnesota, Montana and Alaska, and places like Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Flagstaff, Arizona have passed the phaseout of the subminimum wage.
Drunken driving at .05
Despite a spate of wrong-way crashes and high-profile accidents, lawmakers were unable to change the state law to make it easier for police to arrest motorists by reducing the threshold for drunken driving charges.
Utah remains the only state where the blood alcohol level threshold is .05%, compared to .08% in Connecticut and all surrounding states.
The measure was part of a broader plan to reduce the fatalities on Connecticut roads. Legislators were stunned at 366 deaths on the roads in 2022 — about one per day. The statistics show that 2022 was the worst year on Connecticut roads since 1989. While fatalities dipped to 323 last year, officials fear that the state could break another record this year.
Four people were killed in a wrong-way crash at about 1:45 a.m. Thursday on the Merritt Parkway in Stratford. So far this year, 11 people have died in wrong-way crashes on the highways, which is more than the total of seven for the entire year in 2023.
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com.
