Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill has notified state lawmakers that they are to meet in special session at 10 a.m. on December 29. However, it’s unlikely lawmakers will be taking any action on that day.
Connecticut lawmakers had petitioned Merrill for the special session. They say they needed to fix the state’s Medicare Savings Program to prevent 113,000 elderly and disabled state residents from losing health coverage due to an oversight in the budget they passed in October.
But Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy doubts that lawmakers will take any action on December 29.
“After this big kafuffle over whether they could come in before Christmas or before New Year’s, I think they announced yesterday that they are going to gavel in but nobody has to be there and then there will be another day that they come in after the first of the year.”
Some state legislative leaders have said they’d prefer to wait to fix the program until mid-January so they can also deal with Connecticut’s budget deficit. They say by then the state’s quarterly income tax receipts and some of the holiday sales tax receipts will be in. The Connecticut budget is projected to be $208 million in deficit for the fiscal year that ends June 30.
