Despite strong opposition from Republicans and small businesses, House Speaker Matt Ritter predicted Monday that the legislature will pass one of the session’s most controversial measures.
“I think this year we’ll get paid sick days done,” Ritter told reporters Monday. “I do.”
With only six weeks left in the legislative session, lawmakers are looking ahead at the state Capitol to determine which bills will pass before the short session ends on May 8.
One of the top priorities for Democrats is an expansion of the state’s law on paid sick days as they seek to extend the law to cover all employers with one or more workers. Currently, the law covers employers in the private sector with more than 50 employees.
If approved, the law would become effective on Oct. 1, but would be retroactive to a year earlier in order for workers to start accruing the paid sick time.
A 14-year veteran at the Capitol, Ritter understands the road ahead will not be easy for paid sick days.
“We think we have fashioned a House version — that’s why there’s a House version — that we think accommodates some of the concerns that we heard last year,” Ritter said. “We hope. We’ll see. It’s going to be a tight one, though. I think we can get there. … Some of our members who were a ‘no’ have been willing to listen and work on it. So, we’ll see.”
The state’s largest business lobbying group, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, is opposed to the three measurers that have been offered by House Democrats, Senate Democrats, and Gov. Ned Lamont. The three bills have the same goals with relatively minor differences in implementation. The opponents argue that the mandatory paid sick leave would hurt small businesses and startups, particularly bioscience companies that are trying to get established.
All three bills were passed recently by the Democratic-controlled labor committee on party-line votes of 8-4. The bills mandate that each employee must have at least 40 hours of annual paid sick leave.
“While these bills are very well intentioned, a one-size-fits-all policy is not a solution,” Ashley Zane of CBIA said in recent testimony. “The state should not be treating ‘mom and pop’ shops on Main Street the same as multi-billion-dollar corporations. Connecticut is already the 8th highest cost of doing business in the country, and these bills will only add to our reputation of being a bad state for business.”
Zane added, “Many small companies are already offering paid time off in order to recruit and even more importantly, retain their employees. Companies who can’t offer paid time off are at a significant disadvantage. Simply because a state statute doesn’t require them to offer paid sick leave, doesn’t mean companies are not offering it. This piece of legislation will have significant unintended consequences to our most vulnerable businesses who are already working towards improving benefits and recovering from a pandemic.”
Connecticut has fallen behind, Democrats say, after passing its first paid sick days law in 2011 under Malloy, who was the state’s first Democratic governor in 20 years. Since then, multiple states have enacted the broader law that Connecticut is now seeking, including Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota, Arizona, and Washington.
House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Haven argues that the state already has a paid program that is funded by payroll deductions from workers.
“Paid sick leave is a major problem because I don’t understand why our state is looking for another program when we have paid family and medical leave that’s in place that workers are paying for,” Candelora told reporters Monday. “A half percent is coming out of their paychecks. It’s running a surplus of $700 million. A third of the applicants are being denied. Rather than move onto a new program, I think we should be looking at how we make that program work for employees who are already paying into it.”
Electric car study
Another controversial issue this year has been whether the state should impose any mandates related to electric cars. Lawmakers have been battling over whether the state should adopt the California standards on emissions that some Democrats favor or the less-stringent federal standards that many Republicans favor.
Instead, the General Assembly will likely approve the creation of a 40-member commission that will make recommendations.
Legislators, Ritter said, simply have too many unanswered questions that make it difficult to make final decisions on electric cars.
“Massachusetts has spent a lot of time working on it, thinking about it,” Ritter told reporters. “What about the city of Hartford and people who live in apartment buildings? How are you going to address that? Where are the charging stations going to go? You have to show people actual charging stations. What happens if you only have two [stations] in an apartment building of 10 people? How does that work? How quickly can you do it?”
He added, “This, unfortunately, has had very little buy-in from urban legislators and some moderate legislators. … We will get there. We have to plan for it.”
The issues, he said, still need to be fleshed out.
“The questions raised over the last six months are very good questions,” Ritter said. “What happens to our grid if everybody starts plugging in? I don’t know that we’re ready. People can dismiss the commission all they want, but if people think they’re going to wake up next January and roll out regulations through regs review, that’s a bad assumption. It’s not going to happen. There’s too many questions that are unanswered. So I think work in the off-session is important.”
House majority leader Jason Rojas, an East Hartford Democrat, said progress often takes time.
“I think the goals to address climate change have always been far more ambitious than what’s happening on the ground,” Rojas said. “There’s a lot of work happening on the ground. DOT has plans for charging stations. DEEP has a plan for charging stations. But we’re just coming out of a period where there were supply-chain issues. So whatever plan may have been developed four years ago were impacted by supply chain, and we have to adjust that — but the goals are still there.”
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com
