Two “emergency-certified” bills crafted by the Connecticut General Assembly’s Democratic super-majorities sped Wednesday night to passage in the Senate after a partisan election-year debate over policies, process and power.

One of the bills, Senate Bill 298, is a 98-section behemoth that, among other things, revives significant House education and labor bills that died last year without votes in the Senate. The second, Senate Bill 299, is a stand-alone measure addressing bottle-bill redemption fraud.

The first passed on a 26-10 vote, with every Democrat and one Republican, Sen. Tony Hwang of Fairfield, in favor. The vote for the second was 35-1, with only dissenting vote cast by Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott.

The modest Republican minorities, which have leveraged Connecticut’s tradition of unlimited debate and its relatively short annual sessions to shape some bills and block others, accused Democrats of an abuse of power with potentially lasting consequences.

“Today is really a sad day in the legislature, in that there are institutional aspects of this building that we’ve all respected on both sides of the aisle, and that’s completely getting thrown out the window today,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield.

Uncertain is whether the emergency legislation reflects a broader willingness by Democrats to take fuller advantages of their majorities — 25-11 in the Senate and 102-49 in the House — and place greater pieces of their agenda on a fast track to passage.

“These are bills that we believe are timely. It’s essential to do them now. We’re worried about Republican efforts to filibuster and delay if items are delayed later into the session,” said Senate President Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven. “These are bills that, in most cases, were adopted in one chamber or the other last year.”

Senate Bill 298 would provide millions in earmarks and other grants to select communities and groups, extend a moratorium on addressing racial imbalances in schools, aid a firefighter cancer relief fund, and revise election and freedom of information laws, child support enforcement and behavioral health regulations.

It also would increase reimbursement for intermediate care facilities, repeal a building code change meant to make apartment construction cheaper, revise training standards for how police deal with persons with disabilities, tweak the calculation of municipal pensions and set worker-friendly standards on warehouses.

One of the provisions is a certificate-of-need change intended to help UConn Health. Another provides $750,000 to CREC, the Capitol Region Education Council, for a teacher training program. Republicans complained that CREC is the employer of Sen. Douglas McCrory, D-Hartford, whose influence in providing earmarks is being investigated by the FBI.

“Do any of those things sound like emergencies?” Sampson said during the all-day debate.

The warehouse bill is a major labor initiative that passed the House last year on a partisan vote. It was prompted by labor concerns over Amazon’s use of quotas and biometric surveillance to manage its warehouse workers.

The revised version includes a stronger private right of action, allowing workers to sue for damages if the new standards are not met. Looney was unhappy with last year’s version, which would have allowed companies to recover their legal costs from workers in cases where the company prevailed.

Looney said Wednesday that “meant that a poor worker who might sue Amazon and not win a judgment would then be liable for Amazon’s costs and attorney’s fees. So we changed that language to say that if the plaintiff prevails, they could be able to secure costs and attorney fees.”

Debate immediately began on the second bill, which Democrats called a partial fix to a problem created by Connecticut raising its beverage container deposits to a dime, double nearby states. After a GOP amendment that would have rolled back deposits to a nickel failed, the bill quickly passed.

Among other things, the bill increases penalties for fraudulently redeeming out of state bottles and cans in Connecticut and lowers from 2,500 to 1,000 the number of containers a redemption center can accept from a person without collecting identifying information.

The House is scheduled vote Thursday on SB 298 and the bottle-redemption bill, SB 299.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said the quick action on the two bills benefits Connecticut workers and businesses.

“These are issues that are important to the people of the state,” Duff said, “That’s why we’re here, and we feel that we need to get these things done as quickly as possible, so people have a way to plan.”

If they agree, Looney and House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, have the authority to designate a bill as “emergency-certified,” a step that bypasses the normal vetting of bills, which typically are viewed by committees and subjected to public hearings.

The Democratic leaders said most elements in the emergency bill had been subjected to hearings either last year or in this session.

Connecticut is one of 38 trifecta states where one party controls both chambers of a state legislature and the office of the governor. Twenty-three are Republican and 15 are Democratic.

Some Democrats and advocacy groups have complained at times that the General Assembly is too deferential to the Republican minority, allow it to kill bills by running out the clock with long debates.

The rules allow the majority party to end debate by calling the question, but it rarely is used. One reason: There is no guarantee political futures will not change over time. As recently as 2017 and 2018, Republicans held half the seats in the Senate and came within four seats of winning a majority in the House.

Environmentalists were furious in 2024 when a climate bill opposed by Republicans died without a vote on the Senate calendar. If Democrats called the bill on the session’s last day, the GOP lawmakers were prepared to debate the measure until the midnight adjournment deadline.

Harding said Wednesday that tradition is an important check and balance, and Democrats are eroding it. Harding said there is no reason for Democrats to take shortcuts, as they did Wednesday.

“They control literally every single lever of state government. If they want a bill to be passed, it’s going to get passed,” Harding said.

The demise of the education bill that died without a vote in the Senate last year, only to find new life in the emergency bill Wednesday, cannot be blamed on the GOP minority, Harding said.

The House passed it on May 17, three weeks before the end of the session in June.

“You waited to the very last second to call it and then blame the minority party for why it didn’t pass? Give me a break,” Harding said before the debate.

Looney said the Democrats were acting in the cause of “efficiency.” There was no reason to have the bill going through the committee and hearing process, not in a three-month session, he said.

“Public hearings are not supposed to be obstacles,” said Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton. They are an opportunity for the public to speak, she said.

“They deserve a government that respects them, not one that rushes past them,” Somers said. “We are elected to serve, not to dictate. We are here to listen, not to dismiss, and we are entrusted with power, not to abuse it.”

Looney, who had the last word as the Senate’s leader, was unapologetic.

“This bill is responsive to the concerns of the people,” Looney said. “I think what opponents of the bill are saying is that the concerns about warehouse workers are not important. Concerns about some of the education changes in the bill are really not that important. All of the other provisions are, for some reason or other, not important enough to accelerate the effective date on these things and make them available for the benefit of the people of Connecticut sooner rather than later.”

Looney said the Republicans were inconsistent in their denunciation of one-party government.

“Many of the complaints that have been raised by the minority party might sound a little more credible if they could have been directed equally at what’s happening in Washington, where their party is the majority,” Looney said.