Paul Bass Photo
If Marty Looney delivers in the state legislative session that began Wednesday, New Haveners will pay the same car taxes as Greenwich hedge-fund managers, and hospitals will need a government OK to charge “facilities fees.”
Looney (pictured) Wednesday stepped into the legislature’s most powerful position: Senate president. (Click here to read a call to action he delivered in opening remarks.)
As the New Haven lawmaker begins his 35th year at the Capitol (six terms as a state representative, now entering his 11th term as senator), Looney laid out his top goals for the upcoming session during a new year’s interview at Whole G Bakery Cafe.
Looney has dozens of items on his to-do list; here are 10 of the top ones. Follow along, and then we’ll return after the session ends on June 3 to see how Looney fared.
Tax Fairness
This year the legislature meets in a full session, to pass a two-year budget. Looney vowed to bring renewed focus to a perennial quest: to fix what cities like New Haven consider built-in inequities that benefit wealthier suburbs, beginning with:
1. Standardizing the car tax. People in New Haven pay almost four times the amount of taxes (a 41.55 mill rate) that people in Greenwich pay for the same car (10.969). That’s because each town sets its own mill rate for automobiles, and Greenwich has lots more rich people owning expensive homes (and a lot less tax-exempt property on the rolls). Looney said he will push to fix this inequity in one of two ways. One proposal: Set a single statewide car tax, have the state collect it, then have the state send the proceeds back to cities. Greenwich would get back the same amount of money it collects now, but Greenwich car owners would pay more, while New Haveners would pay less.
Some towns have objected in the past that they fear the state would hold onto that money in tight budget years. Looney proposed a second plan to address that far in part: Set a minimum statewide mill rate for cars, at the lowest current one charged by towns like Greenwich. Allow municipalities to continue to collect that mill rate. Then have the state set a statewide mill rate to collect, and then redistribute, the balance (as in the first plan). This proposal would exempt the first $4,000 of a car’s assessed value.
2. Fix PILOT. For years cities like New Haven (and now inner-ring suburbs as well) have suffered from declining state support for the Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program, which was designed to reimburse communities for tax revenue lost on tax-exempt hospitals and universities and state property. The PILOT law authorizes the legislature to send 77 percent of lost revenue back to cities and towns. In practice, it has been sending back only 33 percent of the money lost on hospitals and colleges, 22 percent lost on state-owned property. That’s one reason New Haven struggles each year to avoid tax increases without also slashing public services. Looney last year floated a fix: Set up three “tiers” of communities based on how much of their property is tax-exempt. Then guarantee minimum levels of reimbursement for each tier, ensuring that the hardest-hit cities, like New Haven, can count of receiving well more than that 40 percent. The bill did not pass; nor did a different proposal by House Speaker Brendan Sharkey. This year Looney and Sharkey have agreed to push for Looney’s bill.
Looney with his communications chief, New Haven’s Adam Joseph.
Criminal Justice
3. Remove local prosecutors from investigations of killings by police. Last year the legislature gave the chief state’s attorney permission to name a special prosecutor to investigate cases in which a police officer has killed a civilian. Looney said he plans to push this year to make that process mandatory — to require that a prosecutor outside the same judicial district as the killing in question handle the investigation. “There is a perceived conflict when the police are being investigated by the prosecutors they have worked with on a daily basis,” Looney argued. “I’ve been thinking about that” since an East Haven cop killed New Havener Malik Jones after a high-speech chase into Fair Haven in 1997; the local prosecutor cleared the cop of wrongdoing.
4. Make cops liable for civil damages if they arrest civilians for photographing or video-recording their public actions. Looney has been pushing this bill since East Haven cops arrested Father Jim Manship for recording them harassing a Latino shop owner; and after a New Haven assistant police chief ordered the arrest (and destruction of evidence!) of a man named Luis Luna who recorded an arrest on College Street. Looney’s bill passed in the Senate a couple of times but stalled in the House. He said he’ll raise it again. Meanwhile, he said that since he introduced the bill, chiefs have reported that their orders are getting the message about respecting the public’s right to record their actions. (Click here for a recent counterexample of a New Haven cop escaping punishment after knocking a camera out of a citizen’s hand, despite an internal affairs conclusion that she had violated the department’s camera policy.)
5. Outfit cops with body-cameras — and study the results. Some police departments, like New Haven’s, are considering following the lead of Branford’s in outfitting cops with body cameras, to protect both officers and citizens from unsupported allegations in controversial encounters. Looney is proposing that the state fund three departments — from a larger city, a mid-sized community, and a small town — then study the experiments in order to craft a best-practices policy. Among the questions to be studied: If a camera is turned off, would that turn the presumption of guilt against the officer? When must officers keep cameras on? For instance, officers probably would not choose to conduct interviews with confidential sources on camera.
6. Protect victims of domestic violence by finding ways to ensure that temporary restraining officers get served promptly on alleged abusers (some don’t get served at all), perhaps by having cops rather than marshals serve them; and requiring TRO targets to relinquish firearms.
Medical & Electric Bills
7. Regulate hospital “facility fees.” Hospitals have come under fire for adding these new fees to customers’ bills when the hospitals buy private physician practices. (Read about that here and here.) The hospitals argue that they are passing along network costs of doing business. Critics say hospitals are making patients pay extra for the same services they’re receiving from the same doctors they previously saw at the same facilities. Looney said he’d like the see the state have the power to review and approve or reject the fees.
8. Require hospital and medical bills to be written so that patients can understand them.
9. Eliminate “teaser” rates on electric bills. Some companies are luring consumers with contracts that begin with lower payments then balloon later on. Looney said the approach is hoodwinking unsuspecting consumers, then gouging them. He proposed eliminating these variable-rate plans.
10. Fixing “fixed fees.” United Illuminating and Connecticut Light & Power have come under fire for in effect punishing consumers for conserving energy: They’re making up for lost revenue by jacking up flat “fixed fees” on monthly bills. Looney proposed setting a ceiling on those fees. If the utilities can prove they need to bring in more revenue, they theoretically can do that by raising the per-killowat charges, under Looney’s plan; that way consumers would still have an incentive to conserve energy. (Read more about the issue here.)