Legislature Picking up Steam
Legislative Committees Hold Meetings to Raise Bills
It is an Election Year
Links to live by
- As we enter the second week of the short session, things are beginning to round into shape.
- We already know what’s on the Governor’s mind with respect to the budget as he enters his last Legislative Session. Now we are starting to get a sense of what the Committee’s think of the Governor’s budget proposals and other issues.
- For CRMA, we have begun our meetings with key legislators and Committee Chairs to review what issues we are concerned about; we have also joined forces with allies in coalitions on other issues.
- Those meetings will give us a better sense of what the session will look like as the action is sure to pick up its pace.
Legislative Committees Hold Meetings to Raise Bills
- A number Committees held meetings this week to begin the process of raising bills for drafting and public hearings. Here is rundown of what went on this week:
- The Labor Committee will be busy again this year. They held two meetings this week and raised a number of “concepts” that will be drafted in bill form and scheduled for a public hearing.
- They raised bills dealing with Pay Equity and increasing the minimum wage as well as paid family medical leave. They also raised a bill once again dealing with predictive scheduling.
- The Environment Committee held two meetings this week to raise bills, but as of yet there is nothing that impacts retailers. But, they still have time. We expect that a fee or a ban on plastic bags will be back as well as some product stewardship issues as well.
- The General Law Committee also met yesterday and among the issues they raised was a bill to allow the retail sale of marijuana. We expect the General Law Committee to meet again next Thursday to review more bills.
- Next week the Banks Committee and the Commerce Committee will both hold committee meetings and we will keep an eye on what is going on with those committees.
- No word just yet on when the Finance Committee will hold a committee meeting, but we are scheduled to meet with the Finance Committee leadership next week to review retail issues that we expect will be before that important committee.
- Finally, the CRMA Legislative Committee will be holding our next call on Wednesday of next week. The Legislative Committee is open to all members. If you are interested in joining on the call, please email Cathy in our office at cathy@ctretailnetwork.com.
It is an Election Year
- One of the underlying themes that takes place every short session is that the full General Assembly is up for re-election. And every 4 years we have State wide office holders, like the Governor and Lt Governor, that are also up for grabs.
- We know that Governor Malloy is NOT running for reelection and that some prominent Republicans like Republican Senate President Len Fasano (R-East Haven) and House Minority Leader Themis Klarides (R-Derby) have announced they are not running for the top spot in State Government.
- So that leaves a wide open field and with that comes a lot of jockeying for each party’s nomination. We will keep you up to date, as best we can on how that process for both parties is going as we move along during the session, but we cannot discount the fact that election year politics will play a factor.
- Also, after years of tough budget battles, including last year, where it seemed the session would never end, we expect that there will be a LOT of State Legislators who will not seek reelection in the fall.
- There are already a couple of House Members, like Waterbury State Rep. Jeff Berger, who was once the House Chair of the Finance Committee, who has announced he is not running again, but we expect there will be lots more.
- Throughout the session we will keep you up to date on others that announce they will not seek reelection; we think the list is going to be large by the time the session ends.
Links to live By
- One of the best places to get a broad view of what is happening every day at the State Capitol is to go to these two sites:
- www.ctcapitolreport: This site is managed by former state senate Tom Dudchik. Tom does a great job of gathering all the news about CT politics and some other interesting things about our state, on his site. It is one of most visited sites by insiders at the Capitol.
- The other site we recommend is CT News Junkie, www.ctnewsjunkie.com Managed by Christen Stuart, CT News Junkie also does a great job of covering the State Capitol and all the comings and goings that take place there.