Ken Dixon's Blog-O-Rama

Monday March 31, 2008

Today, shortly after the annual Legislative Guides were finally delivered to the Capitol in time for the last five weeks of the session (Sorry new Sen. Rob Russo, R-Bridgeport, you didn’t make it) the General Assembly again proved the earth is flat.
The Judiciary Committee a few minutes ago adjourned their meeting without even discussing two small, if interesting consumer bills, which are now sailing west toward India.
One would have overturned local restrictions against clotheslines. Yes, at a time when the newspaper classifieds are full of foreclosure notices and the nation is teetering on recession, there are still hoity-toity community associations that ban clotheslines.
The legislative summary is pretty amusing: “The bill generally prohibits municipalities and various other entities from imposing ordinances, regulations, or other restrictions prohibiting the drying of clothes using direct solar energy through the use of clotheslines, drying racks, or other apparatus in any residential setting.”
Another sensible bill, though too far ahead of its time, would have banned plastic bags from retail outlets. It would have established fines of up to $200 for a first offense and $1,000 for subsequent offenses.

Friday March 28, 2008

Republicans don’t usually get their way in this Democratic-dominated General Assembly.
But Rep. Kevin DelGobbo, R-Naugatuck, (whose name is conveniently left out of the alphabetical listing of House members in the 2007 Blue Book) scored one in the Appropriations Committee today.
DelGobbo, ranking member of the committee, persuaded his colleagues to amend a bill that would have given judges pay raises, without legislative action, whenever executive agency supervisors got them.
DelGobbo said he was worried about tying executive-branch decisions to the judicial branch.
DelGobbo pointed out that a nonpartisan staff study indicates that executive-branch salaries pump up about 6 percent a year.He then offered the amendment that would give judges and magistrates three-percent raises this year, but that’s it.
The latest pay hike for rank-and-file Superior Court judges occurred on January 1, 2007, bringing their salaries to $146,780 a year.
“I’m kind of persuaded by you,” Rep. Denise Merrill, D-Mansfield, committee co-chairwoman. The amendment passed in a voice vote and the overall legislation, which heads to the Senate, was approved easily.
.The original bill included lawmakers themselves tied into the automatic-raise mechanism, but that was excised, it being an election year and all.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Nestled deeeeep inside today’s Quinnipiac University Poll are a few potentially troubling revelations about state voters.
In questions posed to nearly 1,700 registered Connecticut voters about the leading presidential candidates,10 percent said they don’t think Hillary Clinton (remember when she insisted that her unmarried surname of Rodham should be included?) would make a good president because she’s too liberal; 25 percent said she lacks integrity; and 19 percent “Just don’t like her.”
I think the sexists, however, emersed themselves in the 22 percent who answered “Nothing in particular” because they didn’t want to join the tiny 3 percent who admitted that a woman should not be president.
In McCain’s negative question, 53 percent said he would not make a good president because of his stand on the war;14 percent blamed his positions on the economy; and 3 percent said he lacks integrity. While 19 percent said he’s “too old,” I believe that many among the 22 percent who said “Nothing in particular” were into the age thing as well.
Finally, among the list of reasons why people think Obama might not be a good president, 69 percent said he lacks experience;11 percent said he’s too liberal; and 5 percent admitted “racial motivations.” But down at the bottom, in the “nothing in particular” line, 18 percent laundered what Blog-o-rama fears could be racial prejudices in the year 2008.

Wednesday March 26, 2008

Relax people, it was just a coincidence that Bridgeport Day in the Capitol fell on Realtor Day.
Despite the fact that 5,200 city homes are enmeshed in the subprime-mortgage crisis, Blog-o-rama saw no evidence of blazer-wearing, glad-handing Realtors offering fire-sale prices to Bridgeport’s citizen lobbyists for their homes.
As usual, Gregg Dancho, director of Connecticut Beardsley Zoo, was front-and-center on the PR front, today sporting a beautiful boa constrictor around his neck as a conversation starter.
I walked up, stroked its cold-blooded back and dubbed the boa “Joe Ganim” in honor of the snake that keeps on snaking, saddling the city for a cool $200 a hour in the never-may-end civil trial in Waterbury with spurned Steel Point developer Alex Conroy. That’s happening while Ganim crosses off calendar days down at the Fort Dix federal prison.
Dancho’s zoo got about $250,000 in the budget approved a few hours later in the Appropriations Committee. Sen. Judi Freedman, R-Westport, said it wasn’t enough.
“That’s peanuts,” she suggested in a zoo pun.

Tuesday March 25, 2008

Two bills that never even made it to the final agenda of the Judiciary Committee yesterday were the revised civil-unions law and the legislation that would have required gun makers to have firing pins that would etch serial numbers on bullet cartridges.
The co-chairmen of the committee, Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven, and Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, decided it wasn’t prudent to pursue either bill in the short session of the General Assembly.
The cartridge-etching technology is controversial, as gunmakers claim it’s not a foolproof way to trace a weapon to a crime. They also say it would add up to $200 more per weapon for consumers.
“Our goal this year was to get the discussion going,” Lawlor said over the phone a little while ago.
On the gay-rights legislation, McDonald admitted that the case pending in the state Supreme Court, in which activists claim that the civil-union law is a violation of equal-protection provisisons of the constitution, is problematic.
Though it was heard before the Supremes last May, the high court has yet to rule.
It could throw the issue back to lawmakers, ordering them, like the Massachusetts high court a few years back, to enact a marriage law; uphold the civil-union law as constitutional; or send the whole thing back to the lower court.
So given a chance to punt, the committee did.
Except, quietly nestled in legislation approved by the committee yesterday on probate courts, is a requirement – resulting from complaints of gays and lesbians – that probate judges waive fees for name changes as a result of civil unions.
.
_________________________________________________________________

Monday March 24, 2008

Today was the “JF” day for the powerful Judiciary Committee.
Their 5 p.m. deadline for action meant death by legislative neglect for a bunch of things, including the resolution that would have exonerated the dozen or so people who were executed for witchcraft in Connecticut in the 1600s.
Time management on the committee, a two-and-a-half-hour caucus, plus a little slowdown from pouty Republicans – still bitter over the trumping of their so-called three-strikes legislation last week – worked against the witches.
By the time the clock pushed to 5, there are about 31 bills left on the agenda and about 54 acted upon, according to Blog-o-rama’s little agenda/scorecard.
Among those that were approved was the legislation that would encourage bars and restaurants to offer Breathalyzer tests to tipsy patrons.
On every Judich JF day, I think about the late Chief State’s Attorney Jack Bailey, who always sat in Room 2-C of the Legislative Office Building and watched the annual death by neglect of An Act Concerning Investigatory Grand Juries. It died at 5 p.m., again, a couple hours ago.
Another bill would allow the Judicial Review Commission to offer judges ethics rulings before possibly embarrassing action on the part of the jurists.
Rep. Mike Lawlor, co-chairman of the committee, said after the meeting that the witches resolution had bipartisan support, but, like the Yankees, will have to wait until next year.

Friday March 21

Today Blog-o-rama, alone in the Capitol with a few other ink-stained wretches and a pair of radio reporters, asks why is a Holy Day of Obligation in the Roman Catholic calendar, a full-blown day off for 52,000 state employees?
It’s the 21st century, so shouldn’t we have finally done something about that separation-of-church-and-state thing?
You’d think so, yet the only state employee earning his paycheck today is the omnipresent Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, who, because he’s Jewish, is not too likely to show up at 3 p.m. Mass to observe the cruxifixion of Jesus. Blumenthal, in a near-empty state office building, took a shot at JuicyCampus.com. (See Saturday’s Connecticut Post)
So who of the 52,000 aforementioned state employees may miss the first half of the UConn men’s NCAA game this afternoon because they’ll be at that 3 p.m. Mass?
The Connecticut Catholic Conference claims 1.3 million Catholics in the state’s 3.5-million general population. Let err on the high side and say that’s a third of the state population. So the state is observing a massive work-stoppage holiday for less than 17,300 state employees?
The rest, presumably, are spreading their highly paid incomes around in the consumer sector today. So maybe it’s not a bad thing. Afterall, the last paid state holiday was wayyyyyyy back on February 18, President’s Day.
Why, state employees actually worked for a whole month without a paid holiday.
They must be exhausted.

Thursday March 20, 2008

Spring has sprung and with it, the Auditors of Public Accounts have released the latest scathing indictment of what was so lovingly called UConn 2000 by the cadre of legislative leaders in 1995 who gave the state land-grant university carte blanche in its billion-dollar development project.
Among the tasty nuggets in today’s brief but explosive assessment is the reiteration of claims that UConn subverted state bidding requirements and even undertook building projects – including a $5-million warehouse – that weren’t included in the enabling legislation.
“The lack of bidding and public opening of bids on certain construction projects are violations of General Statutes,” the audit offers, suggesting that the attorney general be consulted about its violations of state law.
. “The University should publically advertise to solict competition for projects that have not previously been publicly advertised and for which less than three bids have been received,” is another interesting assessment.
The report essentially gangs up on UConn. It’s like putting your Husky sweatshirt on AFTER the men’s team gets eliminated in the NCAAs. That should happen any day now.