Democrats increase majority in General Assembly, but as session begins Ned Lamont has become a more powerful governor

When Democrats picked up nine additional seats in the Connecticut legislature this fall, they contemplated a liberal agenda that included raising taxes on the wealthy and expanding publicly-funded health insurance.

But still lacking veto-proof margins in both chambers, Democrats must now deal with a different and more powerful governor than the one that many of legislators knew before the pandemic.

Gov. Ned Lamont, empowered by nine months of near-complete control of state government and enjoying wide support for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, is no longer the same chief executive who presided over an uneven first year in office marked by a failed plan to add highway tolls in the state.

While the legislature has largely been sidelined since the Capitol was closed to the public in March, and Lamont has used extraordinary powers though executive orders to put his stamp on state government and public life. His afternoon press conferences have become required viewing across the state featuring Lamont’s trademark let’s-all-try-to-get-along style. Public opinion polls give him high marks for his leadership during the pandemic.

“I think he’s saying he wants to be seen as a uniter, which I think is a great message,” said state Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Guilford, a liberal leader in the General Assembly. “On the other hand, I think he’s indicating that in no way are we going to see any reform to our tax structure.”

Elliott predicted that liberals will gain “some pretty big wins” in the new year on issues like legalizing marijuana. But he pointed to Lamont’s recent decision to appoint Mark Boughton, the former Republican mayor of Danbury, as tax commissioner as a sign of what’s to come.

Without the ability to override the governor, lawmakers say Lamont will have a strong hand in blocking issues like the so-called millionaires’ tax on the state’s richest residents that liberals have long sought. At the same time, Lamont is expected to work together with liberals on issues like legalizing recreational marijuana.

CEO in charge

With sweeping powers during the pandemic, Lamont has acted for the past nine months like the chief executive officer he was during much of his business career, and he has avoided the frustrating stumbling blocks from the legislature that stopped him last year from achieving his controversial goal of instituting electronic highway tolls. Now he must deal with the legislature once again in a new session that starts Wednesday.

Democrats believe Lamont sent a major signal recently by naming Boughton, a fiscally conservative Republican who ran for governor three times and only two years ago proposed eliminating the state income tax.

In a recent Zoom meeting with business leaders from the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce, the only official in the administration who appeared on the call besides Lamont was Boughton. In a surprise appearance, Boughton bantered with Lamont and told the business-friendly audience that he would be spending time collecting as much revenue as possible so that Lamont could balance the budget.

Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, a leading liberal Democrat from New Haven, was surprised upon learning of Boughton’s appearance. Looney expects Boughton will be a solid manager from 20 years of balancing budgets in Danbury, but wants his influence to remain simply as a manager in the huge state bureaucracy.

“I hope the governor won’t have him as a major policy adviser as a Republican whose approach to tax policy hasn’t been particularly progressive,” Looney said in an interview. “I wouldn’t be happy if his ideology has a great deal of influence with the administration. That remains to be seen.”

At the same time, Looney expects the legislature to work well with Lamont on complicated and controversial issues like legalizing the recreational use of marijuana and allowing sports betting for the first time — after years of being stalled in the legislature.

“The marijuana issue needs to move forward this year,” Looney said. “We need additional revenue. We cannot continue to put our heads in the sand when it is happening around us. The same is true of sports gaming and internet gaming.”

While some liberals disagree with Lamont on various issues, Looney said that Lamont has made multiple moves over the past nine months with his executive powers that the legislature simply could not have done because it is a relatively slow, deliberative body that requires public hearings and drafting of legislation, which take far more time than crafting an executive order.

Democrats clearly have the votes to get many of the issues they want in 2021. They control the House by 98 to 53, but they need 101 votes to override a veto. The Senate will hold a veto-proof margin of 24-12, but conservative Democratic Sen. Joan Hartley of Waterbury often votes with Republicans on budgetary and financial issues — thus nullifying an override.

No legislation without compromise

Senate Republican leader Len Fasano of North Haven, who will be leaving the legislature after 18 years, said he expects some clashes between liberals and Lamont.

“There’s always dust-ups. It’s a fact of life, no matter what the numbers are,” Fasano said. “The question is whether Democrats will try to roll over Gov. Lamont.”

But incoming House Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford said that neither Lamont nor the Democrats will get everything that they want in 2021 and beyond. He noted that the majority Democrats often disagreed with another leader from their party, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

“You can’t pass legislation without a lot of compromise,” Ritter said. “The governor has demonstrated an ability to be flexible on negotiations, as has the House and Senate. Let’s just see where we get. But I don’t think it ends up being as big a problem as people think it is when you look in totality at the amount of things we agree on.”

Ritter added, “It jumps off the page when you propose something and the governor says no — because he can veto things. We’ll figure it out. ... If your tactic is, ‘This is what I want, and nothing else can make me happy,’ then you will have a very unsuccessful career in Hartford. I don’t care who you are. The nature of it is compromising. To be fair, it’s not just the governor that has different viewpoints. It’s our caucus that has different viewpoints.”

House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford said that Democrats already should be keenly aware of Lamont’s positions against the millionaires’ tax.

“All along, he has been remiss to touch anyone’s wallet in Fairfield County,” Candelora said.

Candelora, though, says the legislature must provide a laser focus on fixing the problems of the pandemic, such as the increasing addictions and depression that are related to difficult times for many unemployed workers. He said that some Democratic priorities are misplaced.

“Public option, pot and sports gambling,” Candelora said. “If that isn’t the most tone-deaf agenda that I have ever seen in the middle of a pandemic, I don’t know what is.”

Budget the priority for Lamont

Deputy House Speaker Robert Godfrey of Danbury, one of the longest-serving legislators, said he believes Democrats can eventually agree with Lamont on complex issues like the public option for health care and eliminating the religious exemption for vaccinations.

“The public option had a lot of support last time,” Godfrey said. “The numbers have now increased a bit [for Democrats]. The question is really going to come down to the details and what’s actually in the bill. We don’t vote on concepts. We vote on specific language.”

But Godfrey says that the COVID-19 pandemic will help push health care to near the top of the list, saying it has “a better chance” of passage than a millionaires’ tax.

“People we know don’t have coverage, and people we know are getting sick,” Godfrey said. “People we know are dying, and people we know are in the hospital — and the hospitals are just so stretched. That adds a lot more to the debate.”

Lamont’s chief spokesman, Max Reiss, said Lamont will focus on the basics, such as eliminating the state deficit and bringing the Connecticut economy back after the pandemic subsides.

Lamont will be working closely with Democrats on the key issue of crafting the two-year state budget amid shifting estimates of what the state deficit will be in coming years. Those estimates will change with improvements in the economy and the amount of federal money that Connecticut receives with help in 2021 from the administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Lamont has repeatedly stated that he wants to avoid tax increases on millionaires or anyone as he works to balance the two-year budget. The current year’s budget deficit is projected at $640 million, but that could be covered by the state’s rainy day fund of nearly $3.1 billion that has been accumulating over multiple years. The deficit, however, could drop further if Wall Street continues breaking records as it did in 2020, along with an economic rebound that could come from widespread distribution of the coronavirus vaccine that could eventually lead to a return to normalcy for restaurants and other businesses.

“One of the fundamental differences this time from the last budget session is that the rainy day fund is at a historic high,” Reiss said. “The governor has been very clear that that is probably one of our best defenses to any state-level tax increases. The state of Connecticut has seen an influx of families moving into our state. They have seen the benefits of living in Connecticut, and we want to put forward policies that encourage that as much as we can.”

Christopher Keating can be reached at [email protected].

___

(c)2021 The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.)

Visit The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) at www.courant.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.