Hearing on Appealate Court and Workers' Compensation Commission nominees.

The Judiciary Committee held a hearing and meeting on interim nominations by the Governor to the State Appellate Court and the Workers' Compensation Commission.

An interim appointment is a temporary appointment made between regular sessions of the General Assembly. All three of today's nominees are being appointed only until the sixth Wednesday of the next regular session of the legislature - which is March 12, 2008. The Governor can do this with the approval of the legislature's Judiciary Committee in order to allow for the jobs to be filled until the full legislature has time to review the nominations.

I decided to vote for all three interim appointments. The votes are presently being "held open", meaning that Committee members will be allowed to cast their votes on the motion to confirm the nominees until 5pm today. That is when it will have been decided. But, at the formal meeting, all of the legislators present supported all three nominees.

It looks like Attorney Jodi Murray Gregg of Stamford is about to be confirmed as a Workers' Compensation Commissioner, and Judge Robert E. Beach, Jr. of Glastonbury and Judge Richard A. Robinson of Stratford are about to be confirmed for the State Appellate Court.

Since the Appellate Court makes decisions similar to, though not as final as, the State Supreme Court, there was a couple of very important matters I asked both nominees about.

First, I asked them about the individual rights we have under that State Constitution. Of course, individuals have rights under the U.S. Constitution. But we also have rights under the Connecticut Constitution. It is understood that our rights in Connecticut are the whichever of the two constitutions gives us the strongest individual rights. So, if the federal Constitution has stronger individual rights, the State courts follow the U.S. Constitutional rights. If the State Constitution has stronger individual rights, the State courts follow the State Constitutional rights.

My question was, supposing that the State and U.S. constitutions have provide for the same or similar rights, but the federal courts rule that those constitutional rights provide less protection for individuals than the similar rights have been applied here in Connecticut under our State Constitution. Should the State Appellate Court go along with the Connecticut Constitutional rights or the federal courts' decisions?

This is a question I consider very important in light of a lot of the actions of the federal executive branch in recent years and some of the laws that were passed by Congress, especially before the 2006 election, that undermine individual rights and freedoms, combined with concerns that the new federal Supreme Court seems less inclined than past ones to take a stand for a lot of individual rights. I want to know that government officials of Connecticut will have to respect people's rights under our State Constitution.

The second question I asked both nominees might sound esoteric, but it is actually very important to a number of important issues that come before the State's courts. Both the State and federal constitutions provide that everyone is entitled to the equal protection of the laws. But, when we are asking whether someone actually has the equal protection of the laws, we can look at things in two different ways.

On the one hand, we can look at how the law is written and judge whether the law gives people equal treatment on paper. Do the words, themselves, give equal weight to the rights of everyone?

On the other hand we can look at the practical effect of the law. When we look at the real world results of government agencies or others following the law, do the outcomes that occur result in equal protections for everyone?

While Courts clearly must look at both of these, my question to the nominees was which of these two ways of looking at things should have greater weight?

Since there is not a lot going on at the Capitol right now, you will probably have the opportunity to watch the hearing on CTN. What do you think of the two judge's answers to my questions?

Special session today.

Today the House and Senate were in special session. But, was, really, for procedural reasons.

The foremost of these reasons was to approve a resolution that calls the legislature into a special session to take up:

Bills relating to criminal offenses, sentencing and procedure, the incarceration, release and supervision of offenders, and the sharing of criminal justice information, including the costs related to such bills.

That session could, legally, be convened tomorrow. But, it looks like it will really occur in January.

There are a number of other issues that I am trying to also get taken up in that special session, as well. For example, the legislature approved $1 million to assist ambulance services, like the New Britain EMS, that have special funding needs, but the state Department of Social Services is refusing to release the money the way the legislature intended, so we need to approve legislation to direct the Department to release the money where it is needed.

More work is ahead in both of these areas.

Judiciary Committee hearing on public safety.

The legislature's Judiciary Committee, of which I am a member, is holding a public hearing today - still going on now - on public safety concerns that have arisen from the horrific murders in Cheshire and other serious crimes.

With a great interest in taking action on this issue, the two chairpersons of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Mike Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, very wisely scheduled a public hearing and put out a request to legislators and state agencies to propose their ideas. Fourteen different items of legislation were proposed.

Even with the great emotion people feel for and against different proposals being offered, the refreshing thing about today's hearing is that there is a lot of common ground about what needs to be done. There are criminal laws that can be strengthened and there is a lot about the way the state does the job of protecting the public from crime that needs to be improved.

There are some disagreements, to be sure, but today's hearing has revealed that those differences are not really so great. I am very optimistic that the Committee will be able to produce strong legislation that can be overwhelmingly approved into law.

Jury Duty

Genghis Conn of Connecticut Local Politics just posted a notice that I think is very relevant: He is off to jury duty.

Now, I have met few people who like jury duty. It interrupts lives, you have to do it, legally, it could cost you money and most people consider it just to be an all around pain. I agree, having had to do it, myself.

On the other hand, the jury system really is a critically important protection for us all. Government officials can accuse people of crimes, but regular people decide if the accusations are correct. And, in civil lawsuits decided by jury, it is average, everyday people who decide which side is right - an important way of helping ensure that everyone stands on equal footing, even when one side in the lawsuit is very powerful.

So, while jury duty is a hassle, the idea of not having the protections of the jury system would be far worse.

Of course, that said, as a state legislator, I continue to be approached by people raising questions about the system by which people are selected for jury duty. People, from time to time - usually after they just got another jury duty notice - tell me that they frequently get called for jury duty. Typically, they also point out people they know who hardly ever (or never) get called.

Now, you do not have to serve jury duty if you have already served in the past three years. But, you can, in fact, serve jury duty again, if you were just called. The law, statutes section 51-217a(a), says that

A person shall be excused from jury service during the jury year commencing September 1, 1999, and each jury year thereafter, upon request of that person, if during the next three preceding jury years such person appeared in a court for jury service and was not excused from such jury service.

So, on the one hand, there is not a problem.

But, let me pose what I think are two fair premises. First, most people would rather that they did not get a second jury duty notice if they just served. So I think few people would object if their recent service made it unlikely that they would be called for jury duty in the near future.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, I think that the fairness of the system is best preserved if everyone who is eligible for jury duty eventually does have to serve. Then, it truly is something that we all have to do.

So, I am thinking about trying to get legislation brought up in the legislature's Judiciary Committee (of which I am a member) in the next regular legislative session to say that, in jury selection process, you cannot be called for jury duty if you already served and there are still eligible people who have not been called. Likewise, if you have been called twice, you should not be called again ahead of someone who has only been called once.

There might be some things that would have to be adjusted in this idea to ensure that the pool of people from which juries are drawn is representative of the state's population, but this seems like a sound, efficient, common sense thing to do.

For more information on how juries are selected, here is a report from the Office of Legislative Research that you might find informative.

A bill to make information from "black box" recorders in cars more private.

Most people know about the "black boxes" that are installed on airplanes. They are designed to provide key information to safety investigators of what was happening on an airplane leading up to an accident. (They are called "black boxes", because of their color after they have survived a fire.)

What many people do not know is that many newer cars have something similar installed. There is nothing like the "cockpit voice recorder" that records what pilots are saying. Airplanes actually have two "black boxes" - a voice recorder and an instrumentation data recorder. It is the second one that is similar to the new devices in many cars.

These devices are defined, in legislation approved in the Judiciary Committee today as...

"Event data recorder" means a device installed in a passenger motor vehicle, as defined in section 14-1 of the general statutes, that (A) records (i) the speed at which the motor vehicle is traveling, (ii) the direction in which the motor vehicle is traveling, (iii) steering performance data, (iv) brake performance data, including, but not limited to, whether the brakes were applied before an accident, (v) the usage of the operator's seat belt, (vi) engine speed, or (vii) throttle position, or (B) is capable of transmitting data concerning an accident in which the motor vehicle is involved to a central communications system; and (2) "lessee" means an individual who leases a passenger motor vehicle pursuant to a written lease for such individual's personal use for a period greater than three months.

This legislation, Senate Bill 974, (click here for the text of the bill) is designed to address a concern many people have had that the information recorded by these devices might be retrieved by someone might access this data - like an insurance company after an accident - and that this would violate the privacy of the car owner.

The legislation specifically allows law enforcement to have access to this information through the usually warrant process. The legislation does not prevent that. What it does do is to make it clear that the car owner owns the information in these data recorders, and other private individuals and companies have to ask permission to use it.

Given this, it made sense to me that I should vote in support of it in the Judiciary Committee today.

Judiciary Committee chair volunteers to be tasered in hearing.

I am in the Judiciary Committee hearing on this snowy day at the Capitol. The Committee is holding a hearing on, among other things, a couple of bills to regulate the use of tasers.

A representative of a company that manufactures tasers was testifying about these devices, when Rep. Micheal Lawlor, House Chair of the Committee, asked if the gentleman would use a taser on Lawlor, himself, to demonstrate their safety. The gentleman agreed.

It certainly did not look or sound like a pleasant experience, but Lawlor went through with it. I do not think I have ever heard of this happening at the Capitol.

Mike Lawlor has a reputation has a very intelligent and fair legislator. This kind of thing earns him a lot of respect. Whatever position he takes on how legal these devices should be, he will not be advocating for it without putting himself on the business end of one of them.

At the Capitol today: doctors and insurance companies, Supreme Court and higher education.

Like most days this time of year, it was a busy day at the Capitol. I decided to take a few moments after getting home and eating dinner to write a few words about the events today at the Capitol. I cannot say that I will have the time to write a daily report every day, but I will try to as much as possible.

I am a member of both the Public Health Committee and the Judiciary Committee. Both had public hearings at the same time. Since I have not perfected the art of being in two places at once, I had to alternate between the two.

The Public Health Committee hearing was on a long list of bills. One of them was a bill HB5308 to address a problem many health professionals (doctors, dentists, etc.) have said that are having with insurance companies having arbitrary policies on payments. Here is what HB5308 says:

That chapter 700c of the general statutes be amended to (1) require that contracts between managed care organizations or preferred provider networks and physicians include provisions that: (A) Provide an explanation of the physician payment methodology, the time periods for physician payments, the information to be relied on to calculate payments and adjustments and the process to be relied on to resolve disputes concerning physician payments; and (B) require that managed care organizations or preferred provider networks provide to each participating physician a complete copy of all current procedural terminology codes and all current reimbursements for such codes that determine the physician's reimbursement for the entire contract period; and (2) prohibit provisions in such contracts that allow managed care organizations or preferred provider networks to unilaterally change any term or provision of the agreed-upon contract.

We heard from both health professionals, who support the bill, and at least one insurance company - Anthem - testified against the bill. Anther bill, HB6841, is similar to HB5308, except that it creates a task force to study doing what HB5308 would do. Because the co-chairs (the House chair and the Senate chair) of the Public Health Committee decided to draft HB6841 in official legal form, it looks more likely that the committee will vote on that bill.

The Judiciary Committee held a hearing on very significant issue. At issue was the incident last year when William Sullivan, former Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, prevented a court decision from being released because he thought it might be embarrassing to another member of the Supreme Court, Peter Zarella, who Justice Sullivan knew Gov. Rell was about to name as his successor.

The fact that Sullivan resigned suddenly from office at the end the last year's legislative session, combined with the "hold" placed on this particular decision of the court, made the co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee suspicious that Sullivan and perhaps others wanted to ram the Zarella nomination through a legislative confirmation vote before legislators had time to find out whether they thought he would be a good choice. In other words, did the Chief Justice try to prevent the legislature from exercising its responsibility to oversee the choices of who gets on the Supreme Court?

Ironically, the court decision that was held out of the public eye was a decision about whether certain administrative functions of the Court system should be exempt from public disclosure under the state's Freedom of Information Act.

Sullivan appeared apologetic for what he had done, and denied that he did it to help Zarella win the vote for Chief Justice in the legislature. But he also said that he kept the public from seeing the Court's decision in order to keep Zarella from being embarrassed during the time that Zarella was being considered for Chief Justice by the legislature.

Whatever happened, Zarella was forced withdraw his nomination and Gov. Rell has since named a different person - Chase Rogers - to be her new choice for Chief Justice.

Finally, the Appropriations Committee, which I am not a member of, has been holding hearings on Gov. Rell's proposed budget. The public portions of the hearings are held in the evenings, and today's hearing included funding for the state's public colleges and universities. I mention this because a New Britain resident, known for his blog "spazeboy", testified in support of funding for community colleges. He is a student at Tunxis Community College. He was very articulate and raised good points.