Sen. Joe Markley Says Legislature Is Simply Rubber Stamp On Hospital Veto [Courant Capitol Watch]

Article as it appeared in the Hartford Courant’s Capitol Watch Blog

The state legislature took no action to override any of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s eight vetoes during a special session Monday, and Sen. Joseph Markley says lawmakers are not doing their job.

Markley was particularly concerned about a veto regarding hospitals that specifically impacted Waterbury Hospital and Bristol Hospital.

He is concerned that neither the House nor the Senate debated the issue Monday, but instead held short sessions – lasting minutes – before adjourning without overriding or discussing any vetoes.

“I feel like today, as a legislature, effectively we punted,” Markley told reporters in the Capitol press room. “We didn’t hold up our end. We didn’t try to become part of the conversation or part of the solution. We decided to stay on the sidelines.”

“It is a rubber stamp,” Markley, a Republican, said of the Democratic-controlled legislature. ”It is a refusal of the legislature to act like an equal branch of government. Every time we do that, we weaken our position. We’re the ones that are elected to represent the people most directly, and so if we fail, we fail the population of Connecticut.”

But House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, a Democrat, told Capitol Watch in an interview that the narrow purpose of Monday’s session was to decide only whether the vetoes should be overridden. It was not a forum, he said, to discuss broader hospital issues on the merits. That can be done, he said, during the next regular session that starts in February. And there was no overwhelming desire in his 99-member caucus to override any of the vetoes, he said.

Bristol Hospital spent 15 months and more than $700,000 in an attempt to determine whether to partner with a non-profit or for-profit hospital before deciding on the for-profit model to strengthen the hospital, said Whit Betts, a Republican legislator.

“What’s the purpose of a veto session if we don’t take up issues like this?” Betts asked. “When you have the veto session, what is our role when you have an issue like this? Isn’t it our responsibility to try to come up with a constructive alternative?”

Unions at Waterbury Hospital raised objections to a for-profit company operating the hospital, and Malloy sided with the unions, officials said.

“We have no discussion of it. We have no hearings on it,” Markley said. ”At no point is the legislature standing up and looking at it ourselves.”

“To my mind, we didn’t think it through to begin with, and now we’re refusing to think it through again,” Markley said. “At a certain point, I’m not interested in waiting to hear what the governor comes up with, which may be good or may be bad. … We’re just standing by, waiting for the governor’s orders.”