With no explanation and scant debate, an incurious Connecticut House of Representatives voted Friday night for legislation intended to provide up to $3 million in state aid to striking workers without explicitly saying so.
The legislation would shift unexpended funds held by the state comptroller’s office to a new “Connecticut families and workers account” and direct the comptroller to use it “for the purposes of assisting low-income workers.”
In explaining the measure to the House, Rep. Manny Sanchez, D-New Britain, made no mention of strikers. He simply said, “The comptroller will have broad authority to create and develop the criteria of the disbursement of the funds.”
Passage required a complicit Republican minority. The GOP’s sole speaker in the debate asked no questions about the fund’s purpose or lack of standards and shrugged off the $3 million expenditure as “rounding error.”
Only after the House had adjourned for the weekend did House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, acknowledge what was unsaid during the debate: The measure is an attempt to resolve a standoff by the Connecticut AFL-CIO and Gov. Ned Lamont over jobless benefits for strikers.
The labor federation’s top legislative priority for 2024 is House Bill 5164, a straightforward proposal that would make striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits after 14 consecutive days on the picket line. It sits untouched on the House calendar, opposed by Lamont.
According to sources interviewed Friday night and Saturday morning, the vote Friday night comes after conversations between Ritter, Lamont and Comptroller Sean Scanlon, the man who would end up in the awkward position of defining a controversial new benefit program, should it become law.
“We tried to find a bill that would give the governor some space,” Ritter said. “We tried to find a compromise. I don’t know if we found it. He may still not like it.”
Creating a fund outside the unemployment system resolves one objection: It would not further burden an underfunded unemployment insurance fund nor subject companies with striking workers to higher unemployment insurance rates.
But it leaves intact the governor’s underlying concern: Does providing financial assistance to strikers put state government’s thumb on the scale, taking a side in labor-management disputes? It also raises a new one over the propriety of giving a constitutional officer carte blanche over a $3 million account.
Jonathan Dach, the governor’s chief of staff, acknowledged those concerns but said the proposal would be reviewed.
“We saw it for the first time yesterday,” Dach said Saturday. “And we need more time with the language and the proponents to understand what they intend and what this language allows.”
Ritter said the approach was unusual, basically telling his friend Scanlon to figure it out. It potentially puts Scanlon, a former House member with ambitions for higher office, in an untenable position between labor and business, with the governor and lawmakers also looking over his shoulder.
“But I think a lot of people have enough respect and trust for him to try to figure it out on our side,” Ritter said. “It’s gonna be a lot of pressure on him to try to figure this out. But he’ll meet everybody in the various groups and talk about the policy. And if people find it abhorrent, then come back and change it legislatively.”
Scanlon said he did not seek the role.
“I like to solve problems, and people know that,” Scanlon said. “I did not plan to be solving this one. But if this bill does end up passing and the governor signs it, I obviously will look at the language to see what authority I really have. Then we’ll see what ability I have to get people to agree to something that they couldn’t agree to during the session.”
Chris DiPentima, the president of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said he is urging the governor to veto the bill if it reaches his desk as both bad public policy and questionable legislative process.
“It’s a sneaky way to work around a discussion that was very public in nature,” he said.
The vote Friday night comes a day after a major employer, General Dynamics Electric Boat, sent a letter to Ritter, House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, and House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, saying that either the jobless benefits bill or new one would upset the “delicate balance” between labor and management.
The amendment creating the new worker’s fund was attached to House Bill 5431, which would have established a “Stabilization Support and ARPA Replacement Fund” to bolster spending for higher education, non-profit service providers and children’s mental health initiatives. The original contents of the bill were deleted.
Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, co-chair of the Labor and Public Employees Committee, welcomed the House approach, even if it fell short of the jobless benefits bill sought by labor and favored by Senate Democrats.
“I think this is a very good approach,” Kushner said. “I think the House decided to pilot this in a way that will give us a greater understanding of both the impact and importance to workers to have the ability to take action.”
Ed Hawthorne, the president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, complimented Ritter for attempting a compromise.
“The labor movement is deeply grateful to Speaker Ritter and Comptroller Scanlon for working to establish a workers assistance fund,” Hawthorne said in an email. “This will provide much needed support for working people, and we look forward to the Senate passing this bill in the coming days.”
It was unclear why Candelora, who could not be reached Saturday, offered no opposition to the amendment passed Friday on a 90-59 vote, with seven Democrats and 52 Republicans opposed. No Republican voted for the measure, but the GOP caucus offered tacit consent by agreeing not to stage a debate.
The annual session ends Wednesday night, and the General Assembly’s tradition of unlimited debate gives the GOP minority significant influence of which bills are called for a debate and vote. Simply by talking at length this week, Republicans blocked passage of a regulatory bill and forced a significant change on another one.
On Friday night, the only Republican to speak during the debate, Rep. Jason Perillo of Shelton, spoke for a minute. He mildly objected to making alterations to the budget outside a broader budget debate.
“It’s only $3 million. And let’s be honest, that doesn’t seem like a lot of money. It’s a rounding error in our budget,” Perillo said.
But he complained about the budgetary process, while saying nothing about the broader implications of the bill or asking any questions of Sanchez, the co-chair of the Labor and Public Employees Committee.
“If we’re going to talk about the budget, we ought to talk about the budget,” Perillo said. “But that’s not what we’re doing here. I’m not going to go into great detail. There’s much more that could be said here. The hour’s late, but I would just caution us as a collective group to avoid doing things like this. It’s really not the way things ought to be done.”
The House took three minutes to discuss, amend and pass the bill.