A good session for horses, not so good for eels or democracy

“It’s amazing what you all have accomplished in the last couple of days,” Governor Malloy told the General Assembly when they had adjourned after midnight on May 8.Well, amazing in some ways. Or maybe embarrassing is the better word to describe the 2014 session, in which nothing really happened until the hours before midnight on the last day.Very good for horses, not so good for glass eels, would be another way of summarizing the session. We’ll explain.From February through April, the House and Senate had passed a grand total of 13 bills, then came the final night. That’s amazing, unless you’re an admirer of democracy.It wasn’t all bad, of course. The governor and legislature can point to some achievements, like a start on pre-kindergarten for disadvantaged children, but the way it was done was all bad.On that final night about a week ago, scores of bills — the final tally isn’t in as I write this — were passed without debating them or even knowing what was in some of them. In the last 50 minutes of the session, the Senate lumped 50 bills together into a single vote and passed legislation that ranged from improving the state’s three deep-water ports to denying the right of the woman mauled by a chimpanzee to sue the state — all in a single bill passed with a single vote. As usual, a main reason for the session, passage of the budget implementation bill, was delayed until the final hours. The bill, which outlines the particulars of the budget, has become a dumping ground for bills that failed to attract votes in the regular session and for the so-called rats, the special-interest legislation advocated by individual legislators or lobbyists. And so, in addition to implementing the budget, the bill eliminates admission taxes for arenas in Hartford and Bridgeport in an effort to encourage more customers for these failing venues. It does finally reduce the pensions of judges who serve fewer than 10 years on the bench after the governor appointed two elderly judges, who will get $100,000 pensions after working for a couple of years. Under the “reform,” they’ll have to get along on a paltry $40,000.This pension giveaway has existed for years, but dealing with it was delayed until the final hours and then sneaked into the budget bill. Also passed was a bill giving a three-credit college course free to any college dropout who goes back. Those who stay in will continue to pay.The budget implementation bill wasn’t the only dumping ground. State Sen. John Fonfara (D-1) slipped an interesting 25 words into the 97-page bond package that had nothing to do with bonds. It requires Flower Street, a small street in Hartford that has been closed for construction of the Hartford to New Britain Busway, to “remain open to vehicular traffic for at least 20 hours a day.” It seems some sandwich shop owners had been complaining to their senator.u u uThe day also featured a lengthy filibuster by House Republicans against a three-year moratorium on a natural gas fracking procedure in a state that has no known natural gas deposits, but also stops the possible deposit in Connecticut of fracking waste from other states. The Democrats got their fracking bill passed after they made a deal with the Republicans to lift a ban on fishing for glass eels, a vulnerable but not officially endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reconsidering a decision on the eels’ endangered status, so the Republicans wanted to let its fishing constituency get its hooks into the $2,000-a-pound delicacies before they’re declared endangered. Fortunately for the eels, this bill has to be approved by something called the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which sounds suspiciously pro-eel.While the glass eels slipped through both houses amid the last day’s chaos, the horses’ quest for losing their recently acquired vicious label needed only the vote of the House, having unanimously passed the Senate earlier. This bill was prompted by a court decision that noted horses could be vicious after one bit a child on the cheek and thereby endangered not the horse, but horse owners who feared their liability insurance would rise. All of this lunacy — Did I mention the Senate devoted the first several hours of that busy last day to windy tributes to retiring colleagues? — should remove any doubt that how we make laws in Connecticut is amazing only in the most negative sense. It’s been this way forever and no one seems to mind. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.