Free Daily Headlines :

  • COVID-19
  • Vaccine Info
  • Money
  • Politics
  • Education
  • Health
  • Justice
  • More
    • Environment
    • Economic Development
    • Gaming
    • Investigations
    • Social Services
    • TRANSPORTATION
  • Opinion
    • CT Viewpoints
    • CT Artpoints
DONATE
Reflecting Connecticut’s Reality.
    COVID-19
    Vaccine Info
    Money
    Politics
    Education
    Health
    Justice
    More
    Environment
    Economic Development
    Gaming
    Investigations
    Social Services
    TRANSPORTATION
    Opinion
    CT Viewpoints
    CT Artpoints

LET�S GET SOCIAL

Show your love for great stories and out standing journalism

At the legislature, time is short — but there’s time to kill

  • Politics
  • by Mark Pazniokas
  • May 18, 2017
  • View as "Clean Read" "Exit Clean Read"

ctmirror.org

Sens. Craig Miner, left, and Len Fasano after Miner’s bear hunting bill was called, then postponed Wednesday night.

It’s theater season at the Connecticut General Assembly, a time when all is not what it seems, when some debates are about delivering messages, not making law. Take the debate Thursday in the Senate about bear hunting. Or the one in the House about electing future presidents by the popular vote.

In each case, a legislator was permitted to passionately argue for something controversial — allowing state wildlife officials to use hunting to manage a growing bear population, and electing a president in a new way. Opponents pushed back with equal fervor.

Neither passed. Their fates were pretty much known before each chamber devoted hours to debating them, even though time is quickly running out on the 2017 session. The popular vote bill didn’t get a vote, just a contentious debate.

What, you may wonder, is going on?

The short answer is legislating.

A longer answer involves the interconnectedness of things in the General Assembly, an institution where the failure to call a Sunday deer-hunting bill for a debate once doomed an early-childhood initiative, and allowing a vote on glass-eel fishing was necessary to ban the disposal of fracking waste in Connecticut.

“Sometimes, there is a member who has a passionate interest in a bill and insists on that being called. Sometimes, it’s a strategic sort of bridge between a couple of issues — if that one gets called, it resolves other issues,” said Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven. “Sometimes, there is no obvious connection.”

This year, things are more complicated with an evenly divided Senate and a House where Democrats hold the smallest working majority in the history of the chamber, a 79-72 advantage.

With neither party firmly in control, everyone still is learning what favors are necessary to grease the machinery of making law, an undertaking famously compared to making sausage. (If you love either, you never should watch them being made.) “Air time,” as time for floor debates is known, is carefully negotiated between the parties in the Senate, less formally in the House.

“We’ve run into a scenario where if two people have a cold and another person is out for a personal matter, we’re basically tied,” said House Majority Leader Matt Ritter, D-Hartford. “It’s a big change, a big difference. I think we’re still adjusting to that reality, without question.”

Another factor contributing to the chambers taking time to debate bills without chance of passage is that the General Assembly doesn’t have a consensus necessary to take up bigger issues, such as the expansion of casino gambling, rewriting the rules for how electricity is procured or striking a deal to balance the budget.

In other words, they have time to kill — even as time is running short.

On Thursday, the Senate adjourned at 3 p.m., the House a little after 4. When they return on Tuesday morning, two weeks and one day will remain until the constitutional adjournment deadline of midnight June 7.

The House gave over time Thursday to debate a bill that would have authorized Connecticut to join the National Popular Vote Compact, an agreement in which each state would agree to cast its electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote for president. Then Ritter pulled the plug, cutting off debate and forgoing a vote.

“The reality is we did not have the votes today to pass it,” Ritter said. “To me, it’s not a good exercise to do a bill, a debate for an extended period of time, for which you don’t have the votes. But it also doesn’t mean we have to hold every bill and not give people the opportunity to say what they really feel passionate about. You try to find the balance there.”

ctmirror.org

House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, left, and House Majority Leader Matt Ritter explained that the popular vote bill would get a debate.

The balance Thursday was about 90 minutes to debate the popular vote compact, an issue that predates the election of Donald J. Trump, who lost the popular vote but carried the electoral college vote, as did George W. Bush in 2000.

“That’s healthy,” Ritter said. “The public gets an airing of the issue.”

Senate Republicans insisted that Sen. Craig Miner, R-Litchfield, get a chance to debate the bear hunting bill, even though it was unclear if the measure enjoyed a majority in his own caucus. It was called for debate late Wednesday night, but never came to a vote.

The Senate took it up again Thursday.

The bill would have allowed the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to authorize a bear hunt, if its wildlife experts deemed it advisable. To attract more support, Miner offered an amendment limiting a hunt to the rural northwest communities of Litchfield County.

“I think this is more of a public safety issue than a hunting issue,” Miner said.

“God forbid, someone gets mauled by a bear in Connecticut,” said Len Fasano of North Haven, the Senate GOP leader who insisted on the air time for Miner.

Rather than defeat the bill, the Democrats passed an amendment that struck all references to bear hunting and and turned the measure into a vehicle for an anti-hunting proposal favored by Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk.

Duff’s amendment, which was killed as a standalone bill in the Environment Committee, discourages hunting of five African trophy species — elephant, lion, leopard, black rhinoceros and white rhinoceros — by making it a crime to import the body or a portion of the body of any of those five animals.

It passed on an 18-18 party-line vote with Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman breaking the tie. Because it would impose criminal penalties, the amended bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee.

“It seemed there were a number of people that wanted to get a message across today. I think it gave them a forum and opportunity,” Miner said of the debate.

He said his message was that human-bear conflicts are on the rise, especially in his part of Connecticut, and the legislature needs to do something.

Miner is a long-time House member elected to the Senate last year with a reputation as a master of legislative procedure, often involving the creative use of amendments. He smiled when asked if Democrats sent their own message by turning his hunting bill into an anti-hunting measure.

“So, for 16 years I’ve participated in this process by the amendment process,” Miner said. “The message I heard: They’re capable of playing that as well.”

Duff called his amendment “appropriate.”

He said the Senate, which can bundle non-controversial bills and quickly pass them on consent calendars, had a productive two days, passing 42 bills on Wednesday and 47 on Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff saw the Senate as productive on Wednesday.

Sign up for CT Mirror's free daily news summary.

Free to Read. Not Free to Produce.

The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit newsroom. 90% of our revenue comes from people like you. If you value our reporting please consider making a donation. You'll enjoy reading CT Mirror even more knowing you helped make it happen.

YES, I'LL DONATE TODAY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Pazniokas is the Capitol Bureau Chief and a co-founder of CT Mirror. He is a frequent contributor to WNPR, a former state politics writer for The Hartford Courant and Journal Inquirer, and contributor for The New York Times.

SEE WHAT READERS SAID

RELATED STORIES
Big dollars hang in the balance as CT finance panel rushes to finish work
by Keith M. Phaneuf

Millions of dollars in proposed tax hikes and cuts remain in play as the finance committee nears its Thursday deadline.

Bill that would eliminate CT’s religious exemption from mandatory vaccines clears House
by Jenna Carlesso

The measure passed by a vote of 90 to 53 after 16 hours of debate.

Feds will not be placing migrant children in Connecticut
by Mark Pazniokas

The closed Juvenile Training School had been under consideration as a shelter

Lamont closed the restaurants. Now he is their promoter.
by Mark Pazniokas

A year after Gov. Ned Lamont banned indoor dining due to COVID-19, the industry has welcomed him as its savior.

CT lawmakers call for funding to stop ‘mass killing’ of Black and brown children
by Kelan Lyons

Lawmakers identified a $5 billion proposal by the Biden administration, and marijuana and sports-betting legalization efforts, as potential funding.

Support Our Work

Show your love for great stories and outstanding journalism.

$
Select One
  • Monthly
  • Yearly
  • Once
Artpoint painter
CT ViewpointsCT Artpoints
Opinion Biden is right to think big on infrastructure
by Jim Cameron

Hurrah! It was finally “infrastructure week” in Washington. In his first 100 days as President, Joe Biden has delivered a plan that his predecessor just kept teasing us with for four years:  a complete rehabilitation and expansion of the nation’s infrastructure.

Opinion My life and every other Black life matters
by Eugene Bertrand

"My life and every other black life matters." This is every black person's motto in the United States of America. In the past few months, we've seen an increase in deaths among the Black community.

Opinion Send us the children
by Kellin Atherton

Send us the children, President Biden. Send us the children, Governor Lamont. But not just the children. Move heaven and earth to find their families. Find mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins. Children are coming here alone. Find someone to ease their loneliness and bring them too.

Opinion Lobbyist uses seniors and people with disabilities to protect drug company profits
by Ellen M. Andrews

Reading William Smith’s opinion (Connecticut must protect vulnerable populations from biased and discriminatory healthcare practices, April 13, 2021), I was worried that my state had passed draconian laws that were harming the health of seniors and people with disabilities. Thankfully, that isn’t the case. Our anti-discrimination laws are still in place and functioning.

Artwork Grand guidance
by Anne:Gogh

In a world of systemic oppression aimed towards those of darker skintones – representation matters. We are more than our equity elusive environments, more than numbers in a prison and much more than victims of societal dispositions. This piece depicts a melanated young man draped in a cape ascending high above multiple forms of oppression. […]

Artwork Shea
by Anthony Valentine

Shea is a story about race and social inequalities that plague America. It is a narrative that prompts the question, “Do you know what it’s like to wake up in new skin?”

Artwork The Declaration of Human Rights
by Andres Chaparro

Through my artwork I strive to create an example of ideas that reflect my desire to raise social consciousness, and cultural awareness. Jazz music is the catalyst to all my work, and plays a major influence in each piece of work.”

Artwork ‘A thing of beauty. Destroy it forever’
by Richard DiCarlo | Derby

During times like these it’s often fun to revisit something familiar and approach things with a different slant. I have been taking some Pop culture and Art masterpieces and applying the vintage 1960’s and 70’s classic figures (Fisher Price, little people) to the make an amusing pieces. Here is my homage to Fisher -Price, Yellow […]

Twitter Feed
A Twitter List by CTMirror

Engage

  • Reflections Tickets & Sponsorships
  • Events
  • Donate
  • Newsletter Sign-Up
  • Submit to Viewpoints
  • Submit to ArtPoints
  • Economic Indicator Dashboard
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Commenting Guidelines
  • Legal Notices
  • Contact Us

About

  • About CT Mirror
  • Announcements
  • Board
  • Staff
  • Sponsors and Funders
  • Donors
  • Friends of CT Mirror
  • History
  • Financial
  • Policies
  • Strategic Plan

Opportunity

  • Advertising and Sponsorship
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Use of Photography
  • Work for Us

Go Deeper

  • Steady Habits Podcast
  • Economic Indicator Dashboard
  • Five Things

The Connecticut News Project, Inc. 1049 Asylum Avenue, Hartford, CT 06105. Phone: 860-218-6380

© Copyright 2021, The Connecticut News Project. All Rights Reserved. Website by Web Publisher PRO