Gov. Jodi Rell
Still in the Driver's Seat
Photo credit: Governor's Press Office
Posted 8/3/10
Republican Gov. Jodi Rell has about five months left in office, but she is not going quietly into the night. This week she vetoed, as promised, a piece of legislation lawmakers approved in a special session July 30, trying to show she is still in the driver’s seat.
The measure was supposed to be a “fix” for the state’s election reform law, often known as the Citizens Election Program (CEP), which provides public funds for campaign financing in Connecticut. The controversial law remains in the midst of a court challenge, and lawmakers were trying to address court rulings that struck down portions of the law, while saving the overall program.
In the process, the Democrat-controlled legislature chose to boost the total of state grants available to gubernatorial candidates from the existing $3million limit to $6million. Rell warned in advance that she opposed that increase, vowing a “swift and certain veto” if it was approved.
On August 2, Rell made good on that threat. She vetoed the bill and called on lawmakers to try anew to amend the campaign reform law—perhaps this week.
“I am disappointed that the Legislature saw fit to potentially add $6 million in public spending on gubernatorial races at a time when our economy continues to be weak,” said Rell. “They have taken a program intended to remove the taint of special interests and corruption from political campaigns and turned it into a welfare program for politicians,” the Governor claimed.
State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney (D-New Haven) reacted defiantly to Rell’s veto message, saying he believes the legislature can and will override her rejection of the bill. He charged that Rell was trying to “manipulate things to create a partisan political advantage” and called her veto message a high-sounding missive with the hidden goal of giving Rell “a political upper hand.”
Looney said doubling the state grants for gubernatorial candidates was a legislative effort to answer the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against so-called “trigger provisions” that provides public financing candidates extra money if wealthy candidates, funding their own campaigns, spend a ton of dough. He said creating “a larger basic grant” would “maintain the spirit of the law” and level the playing field among rich and poor candidates.
Rell said she could not “in good conscience” endorse the higher funding limits for gubernatorial contenders because she believes the money would “likely be used by candidates to bombard each other—and the public—with a series of negative television and radio messages from now until November.”
Though she seems to be trying to “will” a ceiling on campaign spending by taking a tough stance on higher state grants, Rell conceded “the 2010 gubernatorial election will be the most expensive ever, and that amount spent will become the floor to an undoubtedly higher ceiling for the 2014 election.”
The Governor said the Democrat-controlled legislature’s insistence on “fixing” the campaign law with higher grant limits included—despite her clear warning of a veto, amounted to another politically-motivated waste of time on a very important issue.
Rell noted she had called for a special session to correct the campaign financing law as far back as December 15, 2009, but said Democrats claimed they were still “working on solutions.” She said Democratic inaction persisted throughout the 2010 legislative session, “evidence of a lack of leadership and commitment” in Rell’s view.
Looney fired back claiming Democrats did “the prudent thing” by waiting, because the Appeals Court ruling on Connecticut’s campaign law was far different from the original federal District Court decision on the law. He said a rush to fix the law last December could have caused “the entire (public financing) system to implode” close to Election Day.
Okay, so now what? Rell wants the legislature to return this week “to enact a more fiscally prudent response to the Court’s decision—one that does not include increasing the size of the (public financing) grants.”
Looney said Democrats believe in their original “fix” and want to try to override Rell’s veto. He said that effort might occur this week, but with summer vacations and other legislator commitments in play, he did not know when enough Senators and Representatives could be mustered for a new special session.