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Looney: POTSS again.
New Haven’s Marty Looney unanimously won a sixth two-year term presiding over a State Senate with a souped-up supermajority.
Senate Dems voted unanimously this past Thursday to have Looney serve as president pro tempore (the person who really runs the chamber, even though the lieutenant governor formally serves as president and can cast tie-breaking votes). Looney began serving in the role in 2015, after a six-term stint as majority leader.
He has a strong hand to play in the coming session: Democrats increased their supermajority by one seat to 25 – 11 over the GOP in last Tuesday’s elections. The partly will also have more than a two-thirds majority in the House (where one race remains undecided).
Looney told the Independent Monday that top priorities for the coming session include increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates, because low rates are leading many doctors to turn away patients; and investing more heavily in early childhood education.
“We have so many children who are unprepared for kindergarten,” Looney said. “We will have another cohort of kids 15 years from now who are disengaged from society” without the increased investment.
Looney noted that Democrats have not had this large a legislative majority since 1986 when Connecticut did away with the party lever, which led to broad swings in party makeup depending on how gubernatorial or presidential candidates fare in elections. Democrats were tied with Republicans at 18 senators apiece after the 2016 election; the Democrats have gradually increased their numbers since then.