I suppose the legislature, having earned an incomplete on the last session, took to summer school with the cram down goal of needing to pass, in order to graduate. Maybe it was the early feedback on the election narrative that voters were milling about looking for the proverbial pitchfork. Brian Lockhart recounts the fractured fairy tale below:

The state Senate left at 1 a.m., but the state House of Representatives did not head home until after 3 a.m.

State Rep. James Shapiro, D-Stamford, said legislators wanted to finish their business instead of adjourning to return later yesterday.

“Nobody wants to come back,” he said.

Democrats successfully limited the agenda to a handful of bills, thwarting Republican proposals at every turn.

“C’mon!” shouted a frustrated House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, just after 1 a.m., when yet another GOP amendment was shot down in the House.

The biggest news was passage of an ethics bill that, until Wednesday, many thought would become the victim of a dispute between the Democratic co-chairmen and vice chairmen of the Government Administrations and Elections Committee.

When the regular session ended May 7, House Democrats, at the urging of committee chairman Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport, and vice chairwoman Diana Urban, D-Stonington, balked at a Senate ethics package allowing a state Superior Court judge to strip corrupt elected officials and public employees of their pensions.

Championed in the Senate by committee co-chairwoman Gayle Slossberg, D-Milford, the measure was also backed by Republicans in both chambers and GOP Gov. M. Jodi Rell. House Democrats said the bill interfered with collective bargaining agreements and said judges should be limited to ordering that unionized employees’ pensions pay for their restitution.

The compromise backed unanimously in the Senate and by 124 members of the House specifies that the attorney general can first ask a judge to fully revoke a unionized workers’ pension.

If the judge determines the request violates a collective bargaining agreement, the judge then is given the option of reducing the pension to pay fines, restitution or jail costs.

“We’ve done our job here. We’ve set the public policy,” Slossberg said before the House and Senate votes. “We also recognize we have contracts, and the court is going to look at those, and we need to respond accordingly.”

The ethics package also:

* Makes failure to report a bribe and failure to report witnessing a bribe a crime.

I guess we call that the Lou DeLuca provision.

* Defines the governor’s spouse as a public official.

* Limits gifts to public officials to major life events, such as the birth of a child, and to $1,000 or less.

* Prohibits state contractors from offering a job to a state employee who participated significantly in awarding a contract to that firm.

* Requires lawmakers to complete ethics training.

Lawmakers also extended increased rates in the tax on real estate sales until 2010.

This last one should make municipalities breath a sigh of relief. The real estate conveyance tax remains for a little longer.

Before 2003, cities and towns collected $1.10 on every $1,000 of a home or a business sale.

The General Assembly then raised that to $2.50 and allowed 18 communities, including Norwalk and Stamford, to raise the tax to as much as $5 per $1,000.

Norwalk residents pay the maximum and Stamford charges $3.50 per $1,000.

The tax was scheduled to end June 30. Cities and towns that have come to rely on the money to balance municipal budgets begged lawmakers to extend it.

When local officials were crafting their budgets earlier this year, Norwalk was anticipating $4.9 million in revenue from the real estate tax next year and Stamford was counting on $6.5 million.

Realtors such as state Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, have pressed for the higher rates to expire.

“My beef is that there’s no accountability to the funds whatsoever,” Duff said after voting against the extension.

He said he might support the increased rates if cities and towns were forced to use the additional dollars for infrastructure needs or affordable housing. “This is nothing more than an unregulated slush fund for most communities,” Duff said.

In the House, Shapiro also voted against extending the higher rates.

Republicans argued the tax affects residents suffering from the poor housing market.

They unsuccessfully offered a host of amendments last night to lower the tax for seniors, members of the military and residents caught in the subprime mortgage crisis.

The conveyance tax was the original reason Democrats scheduled yesterday’s special session.

The extension was contemplated earlier this year as part of a package of adjustments to the two-year state budget passed by the General Assembly and signed by Rell in 2007.

But everything changed in the final few days of the regular session, when the state’s six-digit surplus turned into a deficit.

Democrats and Rell agreed the best response was not to change a thing and to allow the governor to use her limited authority to make necessary cuts in coming months.

Republicans offered instead an early retirement plan for state employees they said would not only balance the budget but also provide additional aid to cities and towns and nonprofit organizations.

But budget staff and the state comptroller questioned the GOP’s numbers, and the minority party failed to raise its proposal for a vote before midnight on May 7.

Cafero and state Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, had hoped to force a debate on their budget by attaching it to other bills.

Democrats outmaneuvered them, drafting and passing a narrowly defined set of guidelines for the special session that allowed them to kill any GOP amendments.

Cafero and McKinney repeatedly challenged the Democrats, arguing they unfairly were stifling debate.

But their amendments consistently were ruled out of order by the Democrats.

Cafero at one point appealed to the majority party, arguing it is their responsibility to protect the minority party’s rights.

“I believe we’re establishing an incredibly dangerous precedent,” he said. “You might not agree with us, but for God sakes let us be heard.”

At one point, state Rep. Arthur O’Neill, R-Southbury, read a passage from senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope.”

O’Neill recounted the author’s frustrations in the Illinois Senate dealing with a Republican majority that constantly found creative ways to thwart Democrat proposals.

O’Neill said he thought Connecticut’s General Assembly was immune to such “hyper-technical rulings” and the majority allowed for robust debate.

State Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, an Obama supporter, said Obama would support the Democrats’ tactics.

“The Republican budget is irresponsible, and the governor of their own party has rejected it out of hand,” Tong said.

There must be funny koolaide up there. Republicans quoting Obama, and Democrats thinking Obama supports parliamentary tactics thwarting minority party representation.

source: The Advocate, Legislators OK ethics bill, extend conveyance tax, By Brian Lockhart, 06/13/2008