From abortion to paid sick leave to electricity rates, state legislators will be scrambling over the next 10 weeks to solve the state’s problems in an election year.
Lawmakers are crafting important policies as Democrats and Republicans clash over the best ways to resolve difficult issues in the legislative session that ends on May 8.
One of the most vexing problems that has bothered consumers for decades is the price of electricity in Connecticut, which has often ranked at the top or near the top of the most expensive states for utility costs.
Republicans issued a six-point plan Friday to rein in the costs in a complicated industry where the large utilities do not own the generation plants in the deregulated energy world and instead must purchase the power from third-party suppliers.
Republicans are calling for allocating about $190 million in unspent federal money from the coronavirus pandemic to pay back unpaid charges for residential customers during a shutoff moratorium that has lasted four years. Otherwise, those customers would need to start paying when the moratorium ends on May 1.
“We are the longest state in the nation to be giving away free electricity to residents,” said House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Haven. “Now, there’s going to be a bill to pay.”
Some Democrats, though, are cautious about spending taxpayers’ money to pay off utility charges for thousands of customers whose low incomes allow them to qualify for the shutoff moratorium that lasts from Nov. 1 to May 1. Eversource said that about 50,000 customers have past-due charges in a total that constantly changes as customers pay up, and those customers owe about $160 million. The moratorium also applies to United Illuminating customers, who are largely in Fairfield County.
“Any time there is a delinquency, that is covered under the rate base,” said Sen. Norm Needleman, an Essex Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s energy committee. “I own a business. I have bad debt. We have an allowance on our books for bad debt. There’s a normal allowance for bad debt that is built into our cost of operation. I am sure that both [electric] utilities have an allowance for bad debt that is typical that is built into their rate base.”
In another proposal, Republicans are calling for decoupling the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Those entities were merged in 2011 under Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, and Republicans say they should be separated so that the regulatory agency can be independent once again. In 2015, three PURA commissioners said the agencies should separated because the merger is “dysfunctional.”
In addition, the state legislature passed a law so that five members would be allowed on the PURA board, but only three of the positions are currently filled.
Both Republicans and Democrats said in 2019 that one of the PURA appointments would be set aside for Nick Balletto, the former Democratic state chairman who was ousted by Lamont as the party’s leader. But the Lamont administration said the authority was being expanded to go back to its original, five-member board of the past and not as a favor for Balletto, who has not been appointed in the years since then.
“You have two different agencies, frankly, that are going in two different directions,” said Sen. Stephen Harding of Brookfield, an attorney who is the new Senate Republican leader. “We have to separate those two agencies because they obviously have two separate agendas in terms of what they’re looking to do for consumers.”
But Lamont’s spokeswoman, Julia Bergman, said the governor does not foresee changes.
“The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is functioning as it should be as an autonomous agency that balances the interests of ratepayers with the need to have a clean, reliable and affordable energy grid,” Bergman said. “The connection between PURA and the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is purely administrative. As the governor recently said, he has no plans to make changes to the makeup of PURA.”
Paid sick leave
Senate Democrats are also pushing for an expansion of the state’s law on paid sick days, seeking to extend it to cover all employers with one or more workers. Currently, the law covers employers in the private sector with more than 50 employees.
If approved, the law would become effective on Oct. 1, but would be retroactive to a year earlier in order for workers to start accruing the paid sick time.
“Expanding paid sick time benefits makes a critical difference for employees who might otherwise be putting themselves at financial risk by taking unpaid time off – or might put their co-workers and customers at risk by going to work while sick,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney of New Haven.
Connecticut has fallen behind, Looney says, after passing its first paid sick days law in 2011 under Malloy, who was the state’s first Democratic governor in 20 years. Since then, multiple states have enacted the broader law that Connecticut is now seeking, including Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota, Arizona, and Washington.
But the state’s largest business lobbying group, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, is opposed to the measure, along with similar bills offered by Lamont and Democrats in the state House of Representatives. The three bills have the same goals with relatively minor differences in implementation. The opponents argue that the mandatory paid sick leave would hurt small businesses and startups, particularly bioscience companies that are trying to get established.
“We have paid family and medical leave,” Candelora told The Courant, referring to the current state law that generates money from .05% of workers’ paychecks. “It is running a surplus of over $700 million. Before we add another program into the mix, we need to make sure that program is actually being utilized the way it needs to be. My understanding is 25% of the applicants are rejected. … Let’s make that more user-friendly before we add another proposal.”
Abortion
Democrats are highly concerned about the U.S. Supreme Court because former President Donald J. Trump nominated three conservative justices who overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling and sent abortion decisions back to the states.
A long-running precedent that lasted for nearly 50 years, Democrats are calling for a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights into the Connecticut constitution.
“What we’re seeing right now is just a rollback of rights all across the country in states across America,” said Senate majority leader Bob Duff of Norwalk. “What this amendment would do is it protects the values that we have here in the state of Connecticut, and it is also is a defense to the extremism that we see in the United States Supreme Court and in Washington, D.C.”
Duff noted that Justice Samuel A. Alito last week had raised concerns about the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that legalized gay marriage in a 5-4 vote where he had dissented.
“If anybody thinks that some of these things are settled, they’re not settled,” Duff said, “which is why we have to have a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of the people of the state of Connecticut.”
Looney said the state needs to take preventive measures.
“Everything seems to be up for grabs right now with the U.S. Supreme Court,” Looney said. “The words ‘right to privacy’ do not appear in the constitution, per se. But the court said that you should look at the language of the Fourth Amendment and couple that with the 9th amendment, which says in effect that not every right that exists is one that has been expressed or articulated.”
But Christopher C. Healy, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference that represents the state’s bishops, said that the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade caused “the nationwide panic by the abortionists” that has led to the proposed amendment.
“It’s completely unnecessary,” Healy said of the Connecticut proposal. “You shouldn’t mess with the constitution.”
Placing abortion into the state constitution, Candelora said, is a bad idea that would cause problems in the future that would require further constitutional amendments if lawmakers wanted to make changes.
“These guys are grasping for political weapons for the campaigns, rather than solving the important policies in Connecticut — one being energy costs,” Candelora said.
Nondisclosure agreements
Democrats are also pushing a bill designed to help workers by banning nondisclosure agreements that are sometimes used by employers to keep workers silent after enduring sexual harassment and discrimination.
Greenwich resident Gretchen Carlson traveled to Hartford recently to push the bill for cases similar to hers. After the former Miss America was fired by the Fox News network, Carlson filed a lawsuit personally in 2016 for sexual harassment against Roger Ailes, the most powerful player in cable news at the time. She signed nondisclosure agreements with the network and with Ailes that she says remain in effect today, even though Ailes died in 2017.
When Ailes was at the peak of his power, few workers had the courage to speak out against him or file a lawsuit.
“The final reason why I decided to jump off the cliff by myself [and file the lawsuit] was because they fired me,” Carlson said when asked by The Courant. “So it was the ultimate act of retaliation. They fired me from a 32-year career in television news that I had reached the top and killed myself to get there. And they took away my career. So I decided that if I don’t jump off this cliff, who will? Who will tell the truth? And that’s why I did it.”
Both Carlson and fellow former Fox News employee Julie Roginsky said they cannot talk about their own cases because of the constraints of the nondisclosure agreements. They can talk about each other’s cases, but not their own.
“This bill will ensure that all employers know that it’s morally and legally reprehensible to try and sweep sexual harassment and discrimination under the rug with an NDA,” said Sen. Mae Flexer, co-chairwoman of the legislative committee overseeing the issue.
Connecticut is trying to follow in the footsteps of New Jersey, California, and Washington, which have the three toughest laws on nondisclosure agreements. If passed, the law in Connecticut would be the first in New England.
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com.
