Connecticut’s budget committee presides over the deaths of dozens of bills

CT Insider – Monday, May 19, 2025
By Ken Dixon

HARTFORD — This time of year, in the last few weeks of a legislative session, the meeting room in the Legislative Office Building where the budget-writing Appropriations Committee gathers, can become a burying ground of pricey bills.

It’s where the optimism of a new legislative session can meet the reality of Connecticut’s financial constraints as Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative leaders reach the endgame of budget negotiations.

Legislative inspirations of January and February are meeting the strictures of a $55.5 billion state budget that may or may not be finalized by the upcoming June 4 adjournment date. It’s the Appropriations Committee’s role to decide what proposals to sacrifice because of potential fiscal impacts. A few of the bills may come to life again as late-session amendments to other bills.

In fact, the most dreaded words this time of year in the Connecticut General Assembly are “fiscal notes,” which can send even the most-worthy bills to their deletion in the 53-member panel known as “Approps.”

Take, for instance, “An Act Concerning Juror Compensation,” which would have increased the maximum per-day pay for otherwise unemployed jurors from the current $50, to the state’s minimum wage of $16.35 per hour. or $130.80 for an eight-hour day in court. It would have also raised juror travel reimbursements from 20 cents per mile to the 70 cents, as set by the federal General Services Administration.

During a recent meeting of the Appropriations Committee, the bill was never even called when its number came up on the 134-item agenda. Hours later, when the meeting finally ended, it ceased to exist. Its fiscal note, prepared by the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis, estimated the cost of the potential juror benefits at between $1.93 million and $3.76 million in the budget year starting July 1 and $2.58 million to $5 million in the second year of the biennium.

More than two dozen other pieces of legislation, all of which had been drafted, redrafted, debated and voted on in one of the General Assembly’s 25 committees, died without being called that day, expiring in the House and Senate’s rules that require action within a few days of referral from the two legislative chambers.

Another bill that died that day would have banned the sale and use of polystyrene food packaging and containers along with plastic straws, starting on July 1, 2027. It would also mandate water fountains in state and municipal buildings to be replaced with water-cup-and-bottle-filling stations at a cost of $5,000 to $10,000 per fountain.

Another piece of legislation deleted in that day’s agenda would have provided Medicaid coverage of medically needed diapers for kids three years or age or younger, as determined by medical professionals. But its fiscal note for the first year was $20 million.

State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, veteran co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said Friday that this year the committee received about $7 billion in spending requests. Many bills, she said, come to the committee only partially drafted. “A lot of the fiscal notes will preclude some things from being enacted,” Osten said, stressing that she and Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, the other longtime committee co-chairwoman, try to give deference to major legislative priorities of House and Senate leaders.

“I say it’s part of the process,” Osten said in a phone interview as she was driving to the Capitol for another Appropriations Committee that included a shell of a housing bill that would become a focus of the House of Representatives leaders in the final weeks of the session.

“Approps doesn’t have the final say on bills. We understand there may be significant modifications before they ever get voted on in the House and Senate.”

Osten said she thought the diaper bill and the ban on plastics will both come back to the General Assembly next year, as lawmakers deal with an immediate need to grapple with an estimated $280-to-$300 million deficit in the state’s Medicaid budget.

State Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, co-chairwoman of the Human Serviuces Committee, said that the diaper bill would have required a waiver from Medicaid officials in Washington. “In this political climate we’re unlikely to get it,” she said in a Thursday interview on the House floor. “We’re working behind the scenes with the Diaper Bank to try to address the need.”

Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where the juror compensation bill originated, said on the House floor that he would have liked to raised the pay rate. “But obviously we’re trying to finalize the state budget process and we recognize the reality of the state spending cap. As much as I believe jurors deserve more compensation, there are other priorities. For example, Bridgeport schools are facing a multi-million-dollar deficit and I’d rather invest in school librarians and teachers.

House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said Friday that the Appropriations Committee has already approved too much this session.

“By no means should Appropriations be called a watchdog,” he said. “They killed a few bills, but in the last few meetings they passed $2 billion in additional spending that’s not in the budget. Just as it’s sort of a game to see which bills go to Approps to die, it’s an equal game to see what bills go to the committee to live. In a way the committee is irrelevant.”

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