CT laws taking effect July 1: School lessons, e-books, budget

Over six dozen Connecticut laws, including the state’s next budget and bond package, will wholly or partially take effect on July 1.

Here’s a look at some of the dozens of laws that will be implemented next month.

New biennial budget

Now with Gov. Ned Lamont’s signature, Connecticut’s next biennial state budget will take effect at the beginning of the state’s next fiscal year, which is July 1.

The budget prioritizes children, would boost funds for nonprofit social service agencies two years from now, and would increase taxes on corporations. It also dramatically scales back a pledged boost to health care providers who treat the poor and relies on accounting maneuvers to comply with the state’s constitutional spending cap.

$9.7B bond package

A $9.7B bond package to finance school construction, transportation upgrades and other capital projects for the next two fiscal years will take effect on July 1.

The borrowing plan would expand non-education aid for cities and towns, increase affordable housing and combat homelessness, bolster security at places of worship and support construction and renovation of child care facilities.

It recommends new capital investments in higher education — including $5 million to advance the planned renovation of Gampel Pavilion at the University of Connecticut — and a new $60 million program to help K-12 school districts fund small-scale renovation projects.

Education requirements in public schools

Beginning in the 2025-26 school year, Connecticut public schools will be required to add two units to their social studies curriculum: Asian American and Pacific Islander history and civics and media literacy.

The AAPI studies provision, part of a bill that lawmakers passed in 2022, requires schools to teach the history of Asian American and Pacific Islanders in the state, region and country, including the contributions of AAPI individuals and communities to the United States’ arts, sciences, government, economy and civil rights advancements.

A separate law that passed in 2023 requires the civics and media literacy lessons. Civics is defined in the bill as “the study of the rights and obligations of citizens” and media literacy will cover the role of all forms of media in society and how to use, evaluate and analyze the media that a person consumes or creates.

Absentee ballot drop box recordings

As of July 1, municipalities are required to have implemented video recording technology, complete with date and time evidence, at each of their absentee ballot drop boxes. They will be required to start recording the boxes on the first day absentee ballots are issued for an election or primary and continue recording until the town clerk retrieves the last ballots.

The law also requires that the recordings be made available to the public as soon as possible — and no later than five days after the town clerk’s last ballot retrieval — and that they keep the recordings for at least a year.

Legislators approved that requirement in the wake of an absentee ballot abuse scandal in Bridgeport, where a court ordered a re-do of the city’s 2023 Democratic primary after a video surfaced of Democratic Town Committee vice chairwoman Wanda Geter-Pataky appearing to place multiple absentee ballots into a Bridgeport absentee ballot drop box.

Five people, including Geter-Pataky and three Bridgeport council members, have been charged with election-related crimes as part of a sprawling investigation into that primary.

Limits on library e-book contracts

This year, lawmakers gave full passage to a bill designed to address the high costs libraries incur when buying electronic and audiobooks by banning them from entering into contracts with e-book publishers that contain terms that some lawmakers call restrictive.

E-book contracts for libraries often come with terms that mean the library has to re-purchase the book after it’s been borrowed 26 times or every couple of years, whichever comes first. The law prohibits libraries from contracting with publishers that place simultaneous restrictions on the loan period of an e-book and the number of times people can borrow it.

Though the law takes effect on July 1, it will only be implemented if one or more states with a total or combined population of 7 million enact similar laws, and mandates that the state librarian check quarterly whether any other states have passed a similar law.