CT Progressive

A Public Defender brought to my attention a list of 130 “obsolete laws” that the Governor wants stripped out of the State Statutes. Gideon highlights one in particular (second from the last in Rell’s list), saying:

If you’re too lazy to click on the link, I’ll tell you what it is: the deportation parole statute. The statute essentially says that if someone is not a citizen and has a final order of deportation, then the DOC shall refer that inmate to parole for release to INS for eventual deportation.

The purpose of this statute is clear, and in my opinion, pretty useful. If an individual is going to get deported anyway, then why should the State pay for the full period of incarceration? Eliminating this bill would ensure that every inmate who could (and probably should) get deported, will instead be housed at correctional facilities in the State, at expense to the taxpayers. Where are the savings in this? Doesn’t this increase costs? Under the statute (when actually enforced), an inmate serving a sentence of 20 years could potentially cost the state only 10 years of incarceration. Now, there would be no potential savings at all. Either someone mistakenly included this statute on the list or there’s some ulterior motive not having to do with saving money.

I decided it would be worthwhile to see which of Rell’s proposed changes are serious, and which changes are actually removing obsolete laws from the books. Part one is below. I’m working backwards from the end of the list available here.

• 53-313 to 53-315 - Prohibits “bucket shop” traders from operating in the state. See here for a lengthy description of what a bucket shop is, but in short, it’s a kind of investment firm that engages in trading practices that range from abnormally leveraged to fraudulent. Seems like an odd thing to allow.
• 53-316 - Requires any broker of stocks or commodities (with a long list of food commodities) to provide their customers with a statement containing:
  

  the names of the parties from whom such property was bought or to whom it was sold, as the case may be, the time when, the place where and the price at which the same was either bought or sold

  Any company that fails to do once earns a fine; failure to do so twice loses them their corporate charter.

  With the current food safety issues swirling around the news, this seems like a really dangerous idea.

• 54-125d - covered above the fold.
• 46b-121m - Requires the courts to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of various aspects of the juvenile justice system.
  

  The evaluation shall identify the types of programs that are effective and not effective in reducing criminal offending in a cost-beneficial way.

  Why take that out?

• 29-251a - Requires the Commissioner of Public Safety to cross-check regulations against the State Building Code and State Fire Safety Code.
• 22a-162 - Allows the DEP to set regulations on electromagnetic fields in accordance with IEEE recommendations, but also exempts cell phones, consumer products, and scientific or medical tools from those regulations. It’s unclear to me whether repealing this statute would allow the DEP to do more (such as regulating harmful consumer products) or less (by revoking their authority to base regulations on the IEEE standards.)
• 19a-212 - Allows towns to drain foul-smelling swamps.
• 17a-116b - Established a committee that worked to place “minority and difficult to place children” in adoptive homes, and reported to the Assembly every two years. Committee members were not paid anything for their work.
• 17a-91a - Requires DCF to report to the Assembly on the number of children in their care.
• 17a-21 - Requires hospitals to report on the number of children who were admitted and treated for pyschiatric care.
• 17a-6c - Requires DCF to report to the Assembly on the number of children who have been arrested, and the number of arrested children that have escaped from custody.
• 17a-6b - Establishes duties for the Connecticut Juvenile Training School advisory group, and requires the Juvenile Training School to give a report to the Assembly on their activities.
• 16a-22d - Requires the sellers of petroleum products, pipeline owners, and petroleum terminal owner to register with the state.
• 16-32g - Required electric companies or electricity distribution companies in the state to submit a plan for wire, pole, and fixture maintenance to the Department of Public Utility Control. Also gives the DPUC the power to order those companies to submit new plans as they deem necessary.

• 53-210 - Makes it a crime to stay on a “party line” telephone system in order to prevent an emergency call from being made.
• 16-256 - Requires those printing and distributing phone books to print a warning about the “party line” law above.
• 51-181d - Sets up a separate “truancy docket” in courthouses.
• 32-200 - In 1990, there was an idea that Stamford really needed a Convention Center. Repealing this act would formalize the consensus that this Convention Center is not going to happen.
• 32-96 - Establishes the Small Business Advisory Council.
• 32-6i - Establishes the Connecticut Economic Information System Steering Committee.
• 32-1g - Establishes a “Connecticut competitiveness index” that ranks the state’s business climate in comparison to other states, and reports on that ranking to the Governor and Assembly.
• 30-98 - Prohibits giving alcohol to prisoners. Kudos go to Rell for doing some constituent service for some non-voters, I guess.
• 27-107 - Allows the State police to regulate traffic at the Veterans’ Home in Rocky Hill.
• 27-4 - “The inactive National Guard shall be organized and maintained as provided by the laws of the United States relating to the inactive National Guard.” The Inactive National Guard still exists. I’m not clear on what repealing this statute would do — whether it’s a substantive change or not.
• 26-185 - Prevents the use of trawls in a certain part of the Poquonock River to catch fish.
• 26-180 - Prevents net fishing in Milford Harbor from August through October.
• 26-122 - Prevents weekday ice fishing in “Cranberry Pond [...] in the town of Granby” and all ice fishing in “Cream Hill Lake in the town of Cornwall or from Lake Quonnipaug in the town of Guilford.”
• 26-121 - Allows people to take two kinds of fish from the Saugatuck River in December without a permit.
• 22a-473 - Banned exploratory drilling for oil or gas until certain regulations were adopted by the state DEP. Significant or not depending on whether those regulations were actually adopted (and a repeal may allow the DEP to loosen the regulations if they were enacted).
• 22a-212 - Funds 10% of municipal or regional government agencies costs in preparing a solid waste management plan. For regional groups, it covers 10% for each town included, up to 70% total. There is no date limit on this grant, so this seems to be a small cut to any town or regional planning agency that would have applied for this money.
• 19a-225 - Prevented businesses that turned either garbage or fish into oil or fertilizer from operating in Waterford, East Lyme, Old Lyme, or Stonington. Also prevented frozen fish filets from being produced, but only in the town of Stonington.
• 19a-224 - Prevented stinky fish or fertilizer fumes from being let into the air in New London Harbor at any time from June to September. Also limited those fumes to between midnight and 3am for the rest of the year.
• 22a-166, 22a-167 - The Mid-Atlantic States Air Pollution Control Compact. Actually a really good idea, but has been repealed by other States in the compact. I can’t find whether or not this would still be in effect here (if Federal enabling legislation expired, etc.)

• 53-212a - Prohibits “fluoroscopic x-ray shoe-fitting devices.”
• 52-207 - “Defense based on Sunday contract.” It used to be illegal to make a contract on a Sunday, it appears.
• 51-278c - Applied only to a particular Chief State’s Attorney’s term of office from the 1980s.
• 51-164v. - Allowed paperwork with an old court’s name to be used in the court which replaced it.
• subsection (b) of section 10-29a - Dictating the number and recipients of proclamations for various state-recognized holidays (Flag Day, Arbor Day, Nathan Hale Day, Leif Erikson Day, etc).
• 32-23u - Consolidated a number of loan and grant funds into one big fund (”The Connecticut Growth Fund”) in 1988.
• 27-140bb, 27-140cc, 27-140dd - Established a Commission to study “Vietnam Herbicides” (i.e. Agent Orange and similar), which made its final report in 1987.
• 27-46a - Directed that the money obtained from the sale of State armories before 1975 go into the General Fund.
• 23-24a - Passed in 1974, this required a survey of state park lands to be done before 1984.
• 23-16a - A statute that phased out long-term campsite leasing at shoreline state parks. Long-term leases are apparently no longer available at those sites.
• 22a-272a - Directed that a certain amount of funds from the CRRA’s bonds go towards waste processing facilities… in 1989.
• 22a-241a - Directed the DEP to revise its solid-wate management plan in 1991.
• 22a-219e - Gave a grant in 1990 to towns that paid into a Tipping Fee Fund prior to that date.
• 22a-219c - Gave a grant in 1988 and 1999 to towns that had waste facilities running in 1987.
• 22a-6i - Required the DEP to provide information to permit applicants between 1994 and 1996.
• 22-410 - Allowed the Department of Agriculture to give free money to the breeders of winning race horses.
• 22-203aa, 22-203bb, 22-203cc - This statute made the state a participant in the Northeast Dairy Compact. The Federal law authorizing the compact expired in 2001.
• 19a-202b - A statute that directed the State to make a one-time payment to towns in 2000.
• 19a-125 - Established an Adolescent Health Council which gave a final report to the Assembly in 1994.
• 16-281a - Statute transferred certain powers and duties from the DPUC to the Department of Transportation. Those duties are now in the DOT chapter.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 2:37 pm and is filed under State Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.