End of Regular Session Newsletter
June, 2007

The regular session ended on June 6th after a flurry of activity in the last two weeks.  It was exciting and fast paced, but I it took me a few days to recover from sleep deprivation.  I don’t think I stayed up so late for so many days in a row even in college!

As you know, the budget negotiations have not been completed. So we will need to come back in for a special session to review and vote on the budget package.  Hopefully the various parties will find a common ground soon. The negotiators include Democratic and Republican leaders from the House and the Senate, as well as staff from the Governor’s office.

Here are some of the highlights of the regular session.  I’ll email you again once we have a budget and tax package.

ELECTRICAL ENERGY
We passed a comprehensive energy bill.  In brief, it fosters energy conservation through a variety of programs that provide tax credits, rebates, and subsidies, as well as some requirements, for energy efficiency.  These include such items as a rebate for replacement of inefficient air conditioners and heating systems with modern efficient equipment.  The bill also includes planning for the possible development of new energy generating capacity, especially for peak usage times, development of renewable technologies, and promotion of small scale distributed (local) generation.  The tax break for solar panels was extended.  The bill requires power companies to offer advanced meters, which enable you to pay according to the time of day at which you use energy.   Thus, by avoiding energy consumption during peak hours you can lower your electric bill.  Subsidies are also funded for low income folks during the winter heating months.

The final bill was a compromise, and as such, included only the sections that most people could agree on.  It did not include provisions that would have eliminated the “middlemen” brokers, who buy power from the power generating plants and sell it to CL&P and other utility companies.  These middle men appear to add significant cost to our electric bills and have reaped enormous profits.  So, it is possible that we’ll re-visit this issue in the coming years to take more aggressive action in trying to cut electricity costs.

The Governor did veto two of the most important parts of the bill, about which there was no disagreement at the legislature: the programs to promote energy conservation and to provide subsidies to help low income folks with their heating bills.  The veto was issued because the budget was not yet complete.  I expect these provisions will be restored in the budget, as I can’t imagine the Governor actually disagrees with the substance of these measures.

HEALTH
As you may recall, with my background in healthcare, I was a strong advocate for health reform.  Many, but not all of my proposed reforms were adopted.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I wasn’t the only one with some of these ideas!) The health reform bill raises the age to 25 for dependents to stay on their parents’ family benefits, creates a body for data collection and analysis that can be used to support quality improvement and comparative data about provider performance, promotes the establishment of electronic medical records, improves outreach to low income families to get more children enrolled in HUSKY, expands Medicaid/HUSKY eligibility for pregnant women, newborns, and aged or disabled persons, and improves reimbursement to Medicaid doctors, dentists, and hospitals – which will in turn improve access to care for people insured through Medicaid.

Unfortunately the parts of my health reform bill that failed would have made more affordable benefit plans available to uninsured individuals and small business, would have provided premium subsidies for low income folks to buy coverage, and would have provided tax credits to small employers and to employers of low wage workers to off-set their expenses for employer health benefits.  I’ll pursue this again next year!

TEACHERS’ PENSIONS
The State has engaged in a pattern of shortchanging the teachers’ pension fund for many years.  The fund is now under-funded by $6.9 billion. We passed legislation committing the state to contributing 100% of the actuarially recommended amount and makes a large catch-up payment through the issuance of State bonds.  Many, many teachers contacted me in support of this initiative.

EMINENT DOMAIN
In the wake of the New London case that went to the Supreme Court, several states passed laws prohibiting municipalities from taking  private property through eminent domain for any purpose other than a public purpose.  In New London, the property was taken to enable construction of a private economic development project.  We passed legislation that will make it harder, but not impossible, for towns to use eminent domain for private development purposes.  I voted for an amendment that would have offered greater protections for owner-occupied homes in such cases, but the amendment did not pass.  The underlying bill is a step in the right direction, although I wish it had gone a little further to protect home owners.

BOTTLE BILL
This bill died in committee and was not taken up again by the House or Senate.

OTHER
These are but a few of the bills we passed.  We also passed legislation related to veterans, senior services, brown fields re-development, gun safety, environmental protection, stronger penalties for child molesters, insurance, responsible growth, and on and on.  I’m sure I’ve missed a topic that you care about.  But you can take a look at a much longer summary of bills we passed, prepared by the democratic caucus, located here.