Connecticut Lawmakers; 213

Bill Holloway is CPD the original. Connecticut law makers vote both a top death penalty. Lawyer with a nursing home. But you can start. The state's congressional delegation on gays in the military. And lawmakers back election reform. I'm Bob Douglas. Welcome to this week's edition of Connecticut lawmakers. The state House of Representatives this week voted for a tougher death penalty law following some emotional debate in the state House of Representatives. But now that the vote has been taken the fight for a so-called workable death penalty bill is far from over. I was on violence and killings. The state House approved a death penalty bill that would make it easier to hold executions.

The issue is does that execution disturb the general population in general terms from committing the offenses which all of us agree should not be occurring in our society. I think the evidence is clear that that is not what happens. We have a study a number of years ago out of Harvard and I stand to be corrected. There was a 60 year study which seemed to indicate that in fact when the state when the state under the guise of official action. Takes alive. The fact there is a blip. That in fact. Violent crimes go up and in fact homicides go up. Why does that occur. That occurs because. There are those number of unstable individuals. In our society. Who sort of justify to themselves this and granted a twisted way. That their actions are somehow sanctioned. Somehow sanctioned by the state because the state is doing. It Connecticut on murder is not punishable by the death penalty. In

fact we have a statute that defines capital felony as only 8 particular varieties of murder. Very limited categories. The first is a murder of a local police officer murder of a fireman murder of a correctional officer while in the performance of their duties. And incidentally if the death penalty does have a deterrent. If this amendment were adopted and a prison guard were killed by one already under a sentence of life imprisonment. Without benefit of parole. The only penalty that a court could give would be a consecutive sentence of life imprisonment without benefit of parole. So there clearly would be no deterrent in that case. That's one area of capital felony. A second is murder for hire. Again very difficult to prove. Make no mistake about it my colleagues how we vote today is going to decide whether or not more or less people are put to death under the authority of the state of Connecticut. And make no mistake about it. That

if you are in favor of the amendment it does not mean that are in favor of crime. It does not mean that you condone violence and it does not mean that you don't believe that certain people should be removed from society forever. When I ask myself how would I vote on this amendment. I first said. Would it bring back if there was a death penalty the victim and if it would bring back a victim in a second I would vote for the death penalty. But it doesn't. And we all know that. And then I ask myself will it prevent a death will it prevent a victim from becoming a victim. From somebody dying. And the evidence that's out there is that it will not and I never thought that I would stand in this chamber today. And take that kind of position. On the death penalty. But then I asked myself a simple question. What does

life in prison mean. In the state of Connecticut. All I can say for some people in my community. Life imprisonment means a step up. For mean shelter. It means a place that they can have three meals a day. So for some people. Life imprisonment means a step up. Because they can't find a job. Because they can't find the kind of things they need to be successful in this society. So life imprisonment for some people. Will mean that it's a step up. But I think it sends the wrong kind of message. Mr. Speaker. It sends a message. That if you do live in prison. What does that really mean in our judicial system. Again it means that we can

have three square meals. We can have clothing. We have a place to rest our head. We have a place to lay. Is that the kind of message that we want to send to people who. Commit. Violent criminal crimes in this society. You know every day. Someone in my community calls me and says Representative Newton. I know this. Every year you vote not to make the death penalty accessible. Well we're tired of you voting right then. For some people in our society. Really don't care about life imprisonment or care about the death penalty. But for us to wipe it off the books in town. I think it does a disservice to our community. In 1970 the wife and mother of this family was brutally murdered in the family home. She was discovered by her children

coming home from school. That man was sentenced to death. He is still in prison in the state of Connecticut. The family came to my office several weeks ago because they found out by accident. That this man was being released on a weekend. To go where he chose to go anywhere in the state of Connecticut. They did not feel that was right and I don't feel that was right. This family has lived in fear of this man. Since 1970. This man is not a model prisoner. He has been transferred to maximum security prison. Since 1970. Twenty six thousand dollars a year. What have we achieved the state of Connecticut. Who has been helped. Who continues to live in fear. It is certainly not his prisoner. He

leaves on weekends. It is the family. I don't think it's fair as I did this morning Mr. Speaker. To watch. Young people with babies get on buses and go to the inner cities of Waterbury at 6:30 in the morning to go to daycare centers. I don't think it's fair that. When they get the different sections of that city that they have to duck their heads. On public transportation. I don't think that's fair. I also don't think it's fair that our churches in our inner cities are now turning around. Having communion services and other services during the daytime because it's not fair for them to be there at night because a bullet might fly through. A window. And hurt. A person. I also don't think it's fair. That we asked our taxpayers in our state. To keep some incorrigibles who have done this not once but maybe twice and may

have an opportunity to do it again whether it's in segregation or in general population. To kill. Again. This is very serious. It's unfortunate that we have to deal with these issues with folks folks we have to deal with these issues. Someone who was dear. To my family. My brother. Was gunned down. In the touchpoint housing project. Was shot in his forehead and he died in the arms of my mother. My mother was sentenced basically. To a life of hopelessness despair. And agony. Like I was where is this killer today. Out in the streets enjoying a life. His life and taking another life. That experience not only destroyed. My family. It

shaped the views of what I saw the. Unfair system. It shaped. It helped me become a police officer because I wanted to catch the murderer of my brother who today is in Northwich cemetery in the city of Harford and my mother has not received any justice. Just like many mothers and fathers in this state. Who have to turn on the TV to see these murderers. Burning prisons. While at the same time enjoying low cost cigarettes and the amenities of a country club life in our you know correctional institute in addition to this I was a correctional officer and I want to share another experience. Because in 1968. A police officer by the name of Harvey Young was killed in the city of Hartford and chattering tears and I had as a correctional officer assigned the duty to guard.

The individual that killed him. Let me share you something with you. This individual. Who was on death row. Told me. Point blank to my face. If I do if I had the opportunity to kill off young I shoot him a few more extra times. Officer Young an overlooked terrorist after being shot. Twice by this individual begged for mercy for mercy that his life be spared. And what followed was two more rounds into his body and this individual. Was giving the opportunity to live. Where is the justice. I rise in opposition to this bill. Because of thirteen and a half years of putting my life on the line in the streets of Hartford which the night after I leave

this chamber. I have to put on a uniform and patrol in Norfolk the city of Hartford. I see the carnage the murders the agony and the tears in our community. And yet when we see the penal institutions up at the corrections we see the laughter and the joy. Because these assassins and cold blooded murderers are given the opportunity to enjoy a life of. Getting up to have a job in the morning recreation in the afternoon. Three square meals while people on the streets are dying and starving. Mr. Speaker my distinguished colleagues how much more bloodshed on our streets and how much more laughter. Have we have to witness in our courtrooms. When individuals like the murder of Trooper Bagshaw and murders

of other law enforcement police officers and other innocent citizens continue to enjoy a long healthy life in our penal institutions. I'm tired of going to funerals in my district. I'm tired of going to funerals for police officers because they're sad. Because the real victims. Not only the families but are the community. Capital punishment is as old as the human civilization has been around for years. Heretics who are stoned to death. Romans crucified people the English carried it on. Colonials brought it with them. They tempered it some when they wrote the Constitution. They had in there that they would accept capital punishment but also limited its application. They wrote in the fifth amendment that no person shall be held to answer for a capital crime. That's what we're talking about today. A capital crime one in which a death penalty can be found without the then indictment that no one shall be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb. You can't be tried twice.

And that no one shall be deprived of life without the due process of law. We can talk all we want about the mistakes and so on represented goes on and I've been through this time and again we talk about the fictions that maybe. Other people have said what if. I'm a student or this representative Golisano and opposition. Hasn't shown me those cases. We talked around it many times. TV once in a while picks up something and says mistakes were made here. And it gains a lot of. Appeal. People look at mistake. Not having been proved ladies and gentlemen. Not having been proved the final bill which will include changing executions from electrocution to lethal injections passed by an 88 to 57 margin short of the one votes needed to

override an expected detail by the governor. The bill now goes to the state senate circumstance. The nursing home industry here in Connecticut is concerned over cuts in the governor's proposed budget. Lloyd Wimbish has this report. Medicaid funding to provide long term care for the elderly is one of the most expensive state programs and one of the governor's biggest cost saving measures would have a major impact on the nursing home industry. The impact would be you know first of all in the last three years there was about a 100 million dollars per year that was cut out of the nursing home budget last year. The nursing home actual increases in expenses expenses were about 2 percent. 3 percent tax on top of that would actually mean there would be a reduction of revenue as we have to lay off staff. And which ultimately would have would have would affect the quality of care. The Elm Hill nursing center and Rocky Hill is one of the 18 facilities in Connecticut owned by Brian Foley. He is the president of the Connecticut Association of health care facilities

full access nursing home operators are upset with one of the governor's major proposals. It would raise $40 billion dollars by increasing the tax on nursing home revenue from 1.7 5 percent to 3 percent. There's been another proposal to tax nursing home gross revenues at 3 percent. This is a $40 billion item to the budget that is unrelated to nursing homes. And we feel that it shouldn't be in the nursing home budget. It could have been put on hotels or sin taxes or anywhere else just as it could have been put in nursing homes. And in fact with the climate on a national level I was specially with the Clinton administration trying to control health care costs adding 3 percent or $40 billion to the health care nursing home budget at this point. Just contrary to everything that's going on at a national level. The one grid ministration wants to save $20 billion by restructuring rates but Foleo says other measures could be used to reduce the financial impact on nursing homes. With the new projection of the two point eight percent increase there is a gap of about $20

billion. We think we can work it out with the administration by finding savings in the system like Chief financing which is financing that can be provided for nursing homes through the state of Connecticut which will reduce the cost of both the nursing home in the state of Connecticut. The governor also wants to limit the number of new nursing home beds. It would force more elderly to be cared for at home and at the same time slow down the dramatic rise in state Medicaid funding for nursing home care. It would save 18 million dollars by limiting the construction of new nursing homes. Our position in the association is that anyone that met the criteria of the regulations last year which was they were supposed to have their foundations in the ground and their financing in place and some other criteria should be allowed to go forward. And of the 7200 beds that's only about 700 of the beds that were we're talking about. However of those 700 beds there are some owners of those facilities that have been working with the administration to actually sell the the beds back to the state. And while the administration is trying to reduce the number of beds in nursing homes

there is another proposal in the budget that would expand home services for the elderly for our senior citizens. I am proposing a 19 million dollar expansion of our home health care and assisted living services to enable more of our senior citizens to remain independent and in the dignity of their homes rather than being confined to nursing homes at far greater cost to themselves and the state. We're really excited about that in the home care industry. We think that more that can be done to promote home care the better off a lot of folks will be particularly the senior citizens that will give them greater options to be able to stay in their home. And the funding to do so hopefully through the state 93 year old Virginia Donnelley lives of the Smith Tower elderly housing complex in Hartford. She has

been a home care patient for nearly seven years. Pearl Smith is one of the home health aides who visits her twice a day seven days a week. The nurse Jessica Chatfield also stops by two or three times a month. The U.S. home care agency has some 350 patients across Connecticut and 92 percent of our patient population of the frail elderly at home and the majority of them receive nursing services. You know part time intermit and skilled nursing to monitor medications monitor their health status report to the physician. They also receive home health aide services someone to come in and help them with their personal care. Homemaker services household management supporters of health care programs for the elderly you say it has a number of advantages that includes along the patients to be a lot more independent where they can retain their independence and autonomy. Staying in the environment they're most familiar with the most comfortable and they're able to

retain control over their lives. They're able to. Pick and choose basically what services they want. The governor may not get the legislature to go along with all of his recommendations dealing with nursing homes but it appears there will be more programs dealing with home services for the elderly in the future in Rocky Hill. Lloyd Wimbish for Connecticut lawmakers from Washington the ongoing debate over gays in the military and the views of some members of Connecticut's congressional delegation. They call it the glue that holds military groups together. Unit cohesion. And it has emerged as the central issue in President Clinton's plan to lift the ban on gays in the military. Experts said the first Senate hearings on the proposal this week held widely different views one citing two recent surveys of military views on homosexuality. Seventy five percent believe gays serving openly in the army would be very disruptive to discipline. Eighty one percent think there would be violence against homosexuals if it didn't

happen. This indicates to me that if you did that you would have this severe disruption within these groups who we've been talking about. I don't think that there's any reason why with proper leadership and training as well as training of the other members of the group as we've done to deal with problems caused by the integration of women and blacks that this you cannot achieve the cohesion in fact I know we already do a psychiatric expert said how unit cohesion holds up will depend on each individual soldier if his sexual identity is the primary thing that someone is going to present to the other three men in his tank crew to the other men in his infantry squad rather than the identity of a soldier it's going to make a cohesion and in cooperation awfully difficult. The problem with that in making policy obviously is the uniqueness of every individual It depends on how it both on how

each homosexual soldier conducts himself or herself. And of course I'm to some extent on how the others in the unit respond to that homosexuality. One senator pointed out there are clear parallels to the current debate an argument that angered a Connecticut lawmaker who opposes lifting the ban. It was once thought that black and white soldiers could not serve together. In fact in 1945 testimony was delivered before this committee stating that one of the surest ways to destroy the efficiency of the army was to integrate blacks and whites and then south to black individuals to compare what happened with blacks in the military. Back in the 40s and the sexual habits of individuals I think that says it right there. I think it's a very disservice to African-Americans. I see no correlation and the president has apparently also backed away from that position to a certain degree saying that he would like to segregate the gays. What do you think about that's against segregation and that we're not doing well with any person of color. Put it that way.

And President Clinton said at last week's news conference the courts would likely allow the military to limit the duty assignments of homosexuals but no one we talked to on the Connecticut delegation likes the idea. Fundamentally I don't think the practice time it should be necessary. Women for example were never allowed to fly fighter missions. They distinguished themselves in the Persian Gulf War. I think women in submarines may be a problem. I think we ought to think that through. So there are situations in which we had to think through the implications of gender differences and preference differences. I don't think status alone ought to determine whether or not a person can serve our country. I think they ought to be able to serve anywhere then either if they perform their duties and do not infringe upon the rights of others and they all have the right to serve. I mean that's my view. It's not the government's business whether someone is gay or not. It wasn't a question that was asked in World War One and World War Two. We had gays lose their lives defending this country. It's outrageous that someone can be in the service 16 17 years

and then it's learned that that individual is gay and then they are out even though they had an exemplary record during their entire time of service. Besides lawmakers on Capitol Hill two other groups will examine the president's proposal to lift the ban on gays in the military. A Pentagon Committee is set to begin its inquiry within days. And last Friday Defense Secretary Les Aspin ordered an independent study for balance. It will all be weighed by President Clinton who plans to make a final decision on the volatile issue sometime after July 15th. In Washington Kathleen Koch for Connecticut lawmakers a legislative committee has made it easier for persons to run for statewide office and for Congress. All of this in the name of election year reform the legislature's administration and elections committee has moved out of Gaza that would allow candidates for statewide office for Congress to petition on a ballot if they fail to get 20 percent of the delegates at a party convention. The bill was seen as a

step to reform the state's election process. The bill will allow that first statewide and congressional races that the candidate who does not receive the 20 percent of delegates at a convention can nevertheless go forward and put their name on the ballot. I think what it does is open up the nominating process in a way that we have not done for the last 35 years. And I thought it was a very historic step forward. I know there were some reservations in terms of the state representatives and state senators exempting themselves. But you don't see that as a major detriment as far as the bill is concerned over the past 10 12 years. What we have seen time and time again is at the state level that's where the real abuse has occurred. The problem that we see here is that good candidates who ought to have an opportunity to take their case to the voters and voters who ought to have an opportunity to listen to those candidates are deprived of that opportunity because of this arbitrary threshold at the statewide level. So this will go a tremendously long way towards opening up the system and allowing that I think some

people felt that we should also include the general assembly races but I guess I feel like 80 percent of the problem is in the bigger races. And if we can get that passed this year then maybe later on we can make further changes. Does the bipartisan vote now bode well as far as you're concerned in terms of what may happen on the floor and either the House or the Senate. This is not yet clear sailing is it. Certainly not. I mean this bill has come up time and time again and has never passed. But I think that a 19 to nothing vote with strong Republican Democrat support strong Senate and House support means that this is the best chance ever to make this change to open up the process. And I also think that the 1992 elections which were a high watermark of participation of people really owning the process of people understanding that they wanted to have a say also is a is a something that means that this is the year that this is an idea whose time has come. Sure is a step in the right direction. I've been advocating direct primaries since I've been here. It's been a long long haul it's not the bill that I would really like but at least it's a step in the

right direction. It's opening up the process to most candidates for office. Republicans offered an amendment that would also include state representatives and state senators by the fact that that did not pass and that helped the bill's passage in the end. Yes. Yes there there are some people who were reluctant to support the bill if legislators were included. They claimed that the problem with the process now has not been the party leaders dominating the nominating process for State House and State Senate but the party leaders dominate the process for the major offices and they exclude an awful lot of people. We have to go back only a few years to when former United States Senate candidate and congressman was denied his right to the primary ballot and Toby Moffett three years before that we saw the speaker of the house Ernie abate. He was denied his 20 percent. Having been through conventions like

that myself I know that there are threats there intimidation goes on and it just is not healthy for the process. The election reform measure now goes to the State House of Representatives word faces its first test following a unanimous committee vote of support. And that's this week's edition of Connecticut lawmakers. I'm Bob Douglas. And we do thank you for joining