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May 8, 2024

On final day of session, a showdown is threatened in CT Senate

MARK PAZNIOKAS / CTMIRROR.ORG Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff speaking on Tuesday night. At left, Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding.
By Mark Pazniokas, CT Mirror

A collision seems unavoidable today, the last day of the 2024 General Assembly session, over two bills the Senate Democratic majority pledges to pass and the Senate Republican minority vows to block.

Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said Tuesday night he intends to force votes on the Republicans’ two least favorite bills: One declaring a climate crisis and another providing state aid to strikers.

“We intend to get those voted,” Looney said.

Exactly how he would make that happen is unclear, given the legislature’s tradition of unlimited debate and a vow by Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, to filibuster those bills until the session ends at midnight.

Holstered in the legislature’s rules is a weapon rarely brandished, never mind actually used: A motion to “call the question,” which would end debate on a bill and allow a vote on passage.

Looney, whose party holds 24 of the 36 seats in the Senate, declined to say if he would press that advantage and call the question.

“I’m not getting into any discussion on procedure,” he said.

Looney spoke in an interview in his corner office of the Capitol, where a video feed from the House played on a large screen television, allowing staff to easily track how efficiently the House was moving Senate bills. He declined further exploration about a possible strategy in promising a vote.

Harding, who assumed leadership of his caucus in an unprecedented mid-session challenge to his predecessor, Sen. Kevin Kelly of Stratford, said in an interview earlier Tuesday that the two Democratic bills are non-negotiable. Accommodating Democrats with an agreement to limit debate would be unthinkable.

“Those are measures that I think, resoundingly as a caucus, we believe are very bad policy for the state of Connecticut, and to sit there idly by and allow those policies to go through I think would be irresponsible for our constituents,” Harding said.

Connecticut would declare a climate crisis and outline steps to sharply reduce greenhouse gases by 2050 under House Bill 5004, a measure the House passed a week ago after a debate reflecting the deep divide among Democrats and Republicans on the science, economics and politics of climate.

The idea of state aid for strikers, whether through jobless benefits or other means, is anathema to Republicans. On Friday night, the House passed a bill that would create a $3 million fund to assist low-income workers with an intention of providing aid to strikers.

“I don’t see how those bills are brought out,” Harding said.

The mere suggestion Democrats might call the question on either bill could impact the final day, when the majority party needs the cooperation of the minority party to move business, typically by calling some GOP bills or shedding difficult provisions in Democratic ones.

“It’s a fascinating time,” House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Tuesday. “And then tomorrow, the last six hours, I always say is the most fascinating six hours in politics down here.”

On a voice vote on Tuesday, Democrats accepted a Republican amendment on a bill intended to give municipalities greater input in the decisions of the Connecticut Siting Council. The gesture produced a shorter debate on an evening when the House was quickly passing bills.

It’s a time when real or perceived slights across the aisle, or between the chambers, can ripple through the building. 

One staffer from an agency with bills still on the calendar flinched when a bill sought by Rep. Carol Hall, R-Enfield, was rejected on an 81-64 vote. If Democrats had killed a GOP bill after agreeing to passage, Republicans would have stopped business for the rest of the night.

But Republicans took no offense. They said Hall had asked the bill be called without the votes for passage, so there was no betrayal in the Democrats’ opposition.  

The bill would have limited when local property tax assessors can increase or decrease gross property tax assessments after an appeals board modification.

The Senate began Tuesday with 275 bills on its calendar; the House, 249. Most were destined to die by the constitutional adjournment deadline of midnight Wednesday.

With the passage Tuesday of a budget stabilization bill in the House and Senate, there is little on the calendars that are must-do. One exception is a bonding bill that passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.

The House and Senate each are holding bills deemed priorities of the other chamber.

Senate Bill 2, which would put Connecticut at the forefront of setting standards for artificial intelligence, passed the Senate, but it stuck on the House calendar, a victim of opposition by Gov. Ned Lamont.

Efforts to negotiate a compromise made no progress as of late Tuesday, according to the bill’s sponsor, Sen. James Maroney, D-Milford.

House Bill 5004, the climate bill, is a House Democratic priority.

The success or failure of other bills will turn on whether deals can be struck for quick passage.

“At this late hour, you really can’t promise anybody anything — you just do the best you can. But I always say the people who are most successful the last day and a half have forged relationships sometimes over the years,” Ritter said.

He recalls his first last-day scramble as a new lawmaker.

“I had one job when I got elected: The Hartford assessment issue,” Ritter said. “It was the only thing. If I didn’t pass a bill, everyone in Hartford’s taxes doubled.”

Hartford homeowners were the beneficiary of a law that allowed the city, which has one of the lowest percentages of home ownership in the U.S., to tax homes at a lower rate than commercial property.

The so-called “differential” law was expiring. Ritter said the extension came on the final day.

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