Governor Rell vetoes seven more bills

HARTFORD — Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced she had vetoed seven bills July 2, increasing the number of bills vetoed this session to more than 35.

“Each of these bills is problematic in some fundamental way,� Rell said. “Some — like the ‘menu bill’ — are attempts to legislate what should be common sense and would impose burdens on the people of Connecticut and add costs for businesses and agencies in the midst of a deep recession. I cannot, in good conscience, let any of these measures become law.�

These latest bills vetoed by the governor are:

• Senate Bill 1080, An Act Concerning Access to Health and Nutritional Information in Restaurants: This bill would have required chain restaurants in Connecticut to disclose on their printed menus or menu boards total calorie counts for standard menu items. The Department of Public Health would have been charged with enforcing the measure.

• Senate Bill 1078, An Act Establishing a Bi-state Long Island Sound Commission: This bill would have created a 14-member panel with seven members each from Connecticut and New York. The panel would have been tasked with reviewing major environmental, economic and ecological issues concerning Long Island Sound.

• House Bill 6502,  An Act Concerning the Standard Wage for Certain Connecticut Workers: This bill would have allowed private contractors whose employees work in state buildings to pass along increased costs to the state based on private-sector union contracts.

• House Bill 6684, An Act Establishing a Correctional Staff Health and Safety Subcommittee of the Criminal Justice Policy Advisory Commission: This bill would have created a subcommittee to study inmate assaults on correction officers and how they are reported.

• House Bill 5021, An Act Concerning Wellness Programs and Expansion of Health Insurance Coverage: This bill would have expanded mandated health insurance coverage for individual and group policies in several ways. It would have increased the coverage limit for mandatory ostomy supplies and added mandatory coverage for prosthetics, wigs for hair loss associated with alopecia areata, hearing aids for children between ages 12 and 18 and leukocyte testing for bone marrow transplants. It also prohibited co-payments for colonoscopies and required group health insurance policies to offer a health wellness program that provides incentives to participate.

• Senate Bill 1068,  An Act Concerning Green Jobs: The bill required the Department of Economic and Community Development to apply for federal stimulus funds to establish a program to create green jobs, promote green energy and conservation by targeting investments in renewable energy. The governor called the bill both “unnecessary and inconsistent.â€� The governor said her Executive Order No. 23 of Feb. 2 created a Green Collar Jobs Council, which has already reviewed every available ARRA green job grant opportunity and recommended which entities should apply.

• House Bill 6649, An Act Concerning the Programs and Activities of the Department of Transportation: This bill would have made several changes to statutes affecting the Department of Transportation (DOT), including amending the process for a municipality to terminate or modify a port authority and requiring the DOT to erect numerous signs naming roads, bridges, overpasses and other infrastructure. None of the provisions, the governor said, are critical to the DOT’s daily operations and the proliferation of signs would be costly to install and maintain “at a time when significant financial challenges have made it necessary to implement reductions in the state fleet, designate furlough days and eliminate all non-essential contractual services.�