Looney’s Report Card Signed

Marty Looney doesn’t get to be king, but he just finished his first session in a job that turned out almost as fun for a policy wonk — president of the State Senate.

Looney (at right in photo with Alder Sal DeCola Thursday at the State Street Bridge), who represents New Haven, brought in his report card from that first session to an interview on WNHH’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”

Click on the above audio file to hear the entire show, which also touched on the first GOP presidential debate as well as the legacy of Connecticut’s former party lever. (Looney argues that its disappearance has on balance benefited the state.)

Looney created the report card back in January. He was about to begin his first legislative session as Senate president, the pinnacle of a state legislative career that began 35 years ago with his first election as state representative in 1980. Looney listed his top priorities for legislation to pass; click here to read that original interview with the 10 goals listed.

As the top-ranking senator, he would oversee what bills get raised, line up coalition votes, negotiate with minority Republicans and the governor — a job that leaves few excuses for failure. But one that allows a person gleefully immersed in the minutiae of both policy and politics the ultimate opportunity.

While the popular saying holds that it’s good to be king, for Looney, it was also good to be president. He detailed in the interview how nine of the 10 proposals listed in his report card became law this year.

Some of them he and other New Haveners had pushed for years, without success:

• A law that now gives citizens the ability to sue cops who arrest them or prevent them for the non-crime of recording their public actions with their cameras, for instance.
• Another that caps how much urban-dwellers must pay in car taxes, so that it will no longer cost up to seven times as much in taxes to own the same car in Hartford or New Haven as it does to own it in Greenwich.
• And a new system for distributing PILOT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) money from the state to cities like New Haven with lots of tax-exempt property. Starting next year New Haven will receive an estimated $15 million more than in the past.

Other proposals that passed into law will eliminate ​“teaser” rates on electric bills and limit ​“fixed fees” that punished consumers for conserving energy; limit (and in some cases eliminate) ​“facility fees” that added surcharges to patients of private practices that were bought by hospitals; remove local prosecutors from investigating shootings by cops; outfit more cops statewide with body cameras.

Looney was asked about unintended consequences of the latter law. Two tech researchers enumerated, in this Atlantic article, for instance, how criminal justice reformers might be disappointed with the results of body cameras, which show the view that police have of an incident (looking at an alleged perpetrator) more than the view of the officers actually wearing the recording devices. Looney responded that he agrees that body cams alone don’t solve the problem of holding officers (and members of the public) more accountable for their actions, but argued that they still will add one more tool to help make them happen — along with, for instance, citizens who now have more legal protection in photographing cops.

The one goal Looney failed to accomplish this session: new protections for victims of domestic violence.

Looney proposed finding ways to ensure that temporary restraining orders (TROs) get served promptly on alleged abusers (some don’t get served at all), perhaps by having cops rather than marshals serve them; and requiring TRO targets to relinquish firearms. The latter proposal tied up yup the whole bill, Looney said: Gun rights proponents raised fears that someone who doesn’t deserve to lose a gun will have to relinquish it. Those proponents argued that existing statutes prevent gun-owners from keeping their weapons if they’ve been abusing a partner. Looney argued that the current process takes a while, and that int he case of TROs, immediate action is required.

With nine out of ten goals achieved, Looney did leave the studio with a signed report card. Meanwhile, he began setting goals for 2016. One issue he wants to get started on, he said, is a quest for low-income people to receive lawyers not only in criminal cases, but also in civil cases. Click on the sound file at the top of the file to hear him explain why.