State Representative Gail Lavielle, one of the more
thoughtful and business-like legislators in Connecticut’s democracy-averse
General Assembly, recently gave on Facebook a painfully accurate overview of how
legislation is made.
One of her constituents was wondering in what coffin the “regionalization/redistricting
proposals will be buried” before the vampire is resurrected at the last moment to
become, as Otto von Bismarck used to say, law. Scholars are now quibbling over attribution,
but Bismarck easily could have said, “Laws are like sausages — it is best not
to see them being made.” And indeed, there are sausage-makers in the General
Assembly, the majority of them Democrat, who do not want the general public to
see how laws are made.
Lavielle responded: “… it's too early to tell. I do think
the Education Committee Chairs will want to vote at least one bill out of
committee. Here's how budget bills work. When the Governor makes his proposal,
it is delivered in both narrative form and in the form of a number of
governor's bills. Those bills eventually die, and much of their content is
absorbed in what are called ‘budget implementers.’ The legislature first passes
a budget bill, which essentially contains the bottom line numbers and the most
important line items within them. The implementers, which come afterwards (and
are always rushed, giving legislators very little time to read them), contain
the details of how the money is allocated and how the revenue is raised. So
whatever is approved, or not -- and it doesn't have to be governor's bills --
ultimately appears in the implementers. Any bills that are passed on their own
by both chambers are sent to the Governor to become law whether they are also
contained in the implementers or not. Sometimes entirely new material that has
never had either a public hearing or a vote appears in the implementers. It is
a very confusing and not very transparent process.”
Perhaps the most odious “budget implementer” farce occurred
when former Governor Lowell Weicker was preparing his income tax sausage.
Implementer language – necessary definitions that activate provisions in the
bill – were not included in the constitutional language that capped spending,
with intended results. The constitutional cap was a teaser designed to lure
people into voting in favor of the income tax. See, here is a cap on spending
that will stop us from looting the state. Without the definitions, the
constitutional cap was null and void; so said Attorney General George Jepson
about two decades after the income tax had been written into law. The
constitutional cap on spending was buried in a private ceremony. The deed done,
the General Assembly went about its business of taxing and spending without
further interruption. By the time former Governor Dannel Malloy – approval rating
on leaving office hovering around 25 per cent -- wisely decided to cut short
his political career, the state had tripled its spending. The General Assembly
has since settled upon implementer language that may activate the cap, but no
one is holding his breath while waiting for the prodigal sons to cut spending.
Feeling the tax lash on its back, the general public still
has not recoiled against the whipping; during the last election, the big
spenders managed to capture by significant margins both houses of the General
Assembly. Taxing and spending may now continue at a furious pace. One budget
watcher reckons that after Governor Ned Lamont’s elimination of tax exemptions,
his sales tax extensions, car and truck tolls and other revenue producing
devices are in place, the Lamont administration will have gathered in more
revenue than the Malloy administration of blessed memory. Added together,
Malloy’s two massive tax increases represent the largest ingathering of revenue
in state history.
“During last Friday's
Education Committee public hearing on bills that would mandate regionalization
of schools,” Lavielle noted on Facebook, “I had the opportunity to question
Sen. Martin Looney on SB 738, a bill he had introduced. He had said several
times previously that his intention in introducing the bill was merely to start
a conversation on the issue. So I asked him why the bill -- a concept bill, a
type of bill that is usually vague and intended to lack substance -- was not written
that way; why it included specifics like mandating regionalization for school
districts in towns of fewer than 40,000 people, using the model of the probate
court districts, and requiring the bill to be implemented on a certain date,
with or without legislative approval. His answer, which you can hear in the
video, was quite stunning.”
Here is the colloquy with Looney,
who answered Lavielle’s question by reacting much in the way the oversensitive
princess in the fairy tale reacted to the presence of a pea under her mattress.
Looney: Because [those] precise things drew attention to the
bill and to the subject, I think in a way that otherwise might not have
occurred if it were just a generic bill about “let’s study this once again.”
What I put in there was a model about the probate system and then saying that
if the commission is not able to develop an alternative, the probate system,
since it has already been achieved as a single initiative of large scale
regionalism that we’ve achieved in our state, that could be the default model.
But again, the purpose of the bill was to begin a discussion, and I think a more
generic bill with vaguer terms would not have served that purpose.
Lavielle: I’ve got to say something, which I say with all
due respect; please believe me. But are you saying that you had that bill
drafted in a way that would purposely mislead?
Looney: No, I did
not, and I think you know better than to ask that…
Lavielle: Well, I did it with all due respect, because I
don’t understand…
Looney: The reality is that it was not intended to mislead.
[Indeed, it was intended to lead the legislature to a prescribe course of
action] It was intended to generate a discussion. Everyone knows that a
proposed bill early in the session is coming into the process for everyone to
participate in, and to vet it, and to change it within the wisdom of the
committee. You’ve been here long enough to know what the committee process is.
Lavielle: As I said,
we’re all familiar with concept bills. But I think that answers my question,
and I thank you very much for coming before us this evening.
Looney: Thank you.
In point of fact, Looney’s “concept bill” had quite a bit of
flesh on the bone, much more so than the usual concept bill, which generally is
written in such a way as NOT to impose specifics on the committee that is
responsible for vetting and shaping the bill. And the proposer, in this case,
was no ordinary legislator. Looney, as President Pro Tem of the state Senate,
is a bill gatekeeper who determines which bills make their way through
Bismarck’s sausage machine; he also exerts a great deal of influence as a
legislative leader of the General Assembly’s Democrat caucus.
The Looney bill was not at all misleading. Just the
opposite; it was leading majority Democrats to a pre-appointed destination. The
bill to which Lavielle took exception was more in the nature of a marching
order than a concept bill. Looney has been in the General Assembly long enough
– more than a quarter of a century -- to
understand how legislative sausage is made. We are all familiar with concept
bills, are we not?
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