A legislative “rat” is a term for a specific favor that makes its way into legislation without public vetting. How did one end up in Connecticut’s budget this session?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “In chaos at CT Capitol, two waste haulers found favors,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Mark’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Mark. This is a fascinating expose of some of the unsavory ways in which the sausage is made at the state capitol. First, could you explain what a rat is and why lawmakers often don't want to take credit?
MP: Yes, at the Connecticut capitol, rat is a term applied to legislative language that appears in another bill without any public vetting or, quite often, any even public mention, and it's usually a narrowly tailored favor for someone or some interest so that, in a nutshell, is what we call a
rat.
WSHU: And now what happened in the final days of this year's legislative session with two haulers, two waste haulers, got a favor, and no one seems to want to take credit for it. Could you just explain what the favor is and how it happened?
MP: Well, it's funny. There is, I had a temptation to use a quotation attributed to Sun Tzu, who is credited with writing the Art of War, and the line is, “in the midst of chaos, there also is opportunity”. It does get to the nature of how these things happen. So let's talk about what the favor was, and then how it got in. So the favor, quite frankly, is there's a lawyer who has two clients in the waste hauling business. One is called Country Holdings, and they own an old transfer station which was also the site of a trash to energy plant that's been gone for years, and there's all kinds of environmental violations there. And they cannot get a permit to operate this thing until that's resolved, and they have been in negotiations with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, from what I can tell from the records, for it looks like a year. The other client is called Enviro Express, and they have a contract to operate a transfer station in Torrington.
And this gets very complicated, but I'm going to try to keep it simple. The Torrington transfer station was one of the assets of something called MIRA, the Materials Innovation Resource Authority, which used to run the state's biggest trash energy plant, which handled 1/3 of all the state solid waste in Hartford, in the south meadows of Hartford. And that thing has been closed for a few years. So this group MIRA was winding down, and they were shedding their various other assets that still had value, including a couple of transfer stations. So the Torrington issue was, who was going to take control of that transfer station, which is still necessary to process waste in the northwest corner of Connecticut. The MIRA dissolution authority, they were negotiating with public officials up in the Northwest Hills about maybe creating a new authority. In the end, they ended up selling it to another private waste hauler called USA. And they're a big family owned company in Connecticut. And the USA contract was basically submarined by this rat. What the rat did with Torrington, it transferred ownership of the operation permit, though not the possession, not the actual ownership of the property to this new Northwest Hills resource authority.
WSHU: Which has not been created yet.
MP: Which is really just a name in the bill. It doesn't, yes. And then so the Wallingford issue, that portion of the rat directed the Department of Energy Environmental Protection to issue a temporary operating permit without any of the normal reviews. I mean, the reviews for these things are extensive. They look at engineering, they look at the impact on the host community, regarding odor, traffic, noise, you know, all that stuff, and they also review the finances of the applicant. So this was a pretty extraordinary thing to slip in and the way it occurred. Now let's talk about how it happened.
WSHU: This is an advertisement for lobbyists and how lobbyists get their work done. So go right ahead, please.
MP: So there's something called a budget implementer. It's basically the big bill that essentially is the budget, but it has language that also implements the budget, which requires explanation. So the good thing about how the Connecticut General Assembly works is there's a requirement that that main budget bill be available for public review for at least 12 hours. That's called the 12 hour rule. Sometimes some of those 12 hours are before the sun comes up, because the staff might finish it and put it in the computer system at three or four in the morning. And that's pretty much what happened this year. I think it was four in the morning, because they could not begin the budget debate till four in the afternoon. So that part is sort of above board, more or less. But then, you know, they note, okay, you got to do some corrections, some revisions. Some are technical, some are not. And that amendment, there's no 12 hour rule. That amendment was 65 pages that drops just as the debate is beginning, and in that amendment is this language about the Wallingford transfer station permit and then the permit for Torrington.
WSHU: During the debate that was raised, questions were asked. What were the answers?
MP: Well, and there was no great answer. And in fact, you know, Representative Maria Horn, who, by the way, is a very well respected member of the General Assembly. She's the co-chair of the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. It was left to her to bring out this amendment on the floor of the House, and it became pretty clear she was not fully apprised of everything that was in that 65 page amendment. So the Republicans started asking some very sharp questions. And it was, again, it was clear that Representative Horn, whom the Republicans are quick to say, she's very bright, she's very fair to deal with and but she was kind of stuck with a dirty job, and it turned out to be an embarrassment for Representative Horn.
WSHU: And this is a must pass bill, because this is the budget bill, and there was pressure to get it done before the session ended.
MP: So that's a great point. The surest bet at the Capitol on passing something is if you can get it into this budget implementer bill, because that is, you're absolutely right. This is the one bill all year that we know will pass, because you need a budget in place. And that's why it's an attractive target to try to get these other things in. Sometimes there's really nothing at all nefarious or secret about it. You might have a bill that was fully vetted, subject to public hearing, public input, perhaps even past one chamber, but time was running out. So you stick those bills into this implementer that you know is going to pass, and that always, that always happens. And then there's also some things that are pretty routine on that is, you know, wide support for so it's a messy process, but it is something that most of it, it's, you know, arguably, good public policy. It's the way you have to get it done when time is running short.
The thing that was unusual about this, and the thing that I tried to track, is the origins of the rat that provided the favors to Wallingford and Torrington interest that was written by a lawyer who represents both those clients, Joe Mazzarella. He works for a big law firm called McCarter and English, and in fairness to Mr. Mazzarella, when I called him, he was pretty straightforward, he said yes, the language is mine. I said, Well, how did you get it into the budget? He said, Well, I sent it to the chiefs of staff for the House and the Senate Democratic majorities. And I said, Well, you just sent it without notice? And he said, Well, you know, I mean, there were people interested in these things. There were conversations, but that gets very fuzzy. And the thing that's interesting is none of the caucus leaders will admit to having known what this did. They suggest it was not flagged for their attention by staff. And that's unusual, by the way. From some other years, two years ago, there was a another interesting rat that I wrote about, because my interest in this as a reporter is it's an opportunity to explore and explain how when you're doing the final strokes of putting the budget together, it's pretty opaque and it's not terribly accountable. And two years ago, there was language put in a single sentence that effectively blocked the construction of a huge distribution center in Middlebury, Connecticut that was going to go up in a neighborhood where there's a state lawmaker who lived and he didn't like it, and his neighbors didn't like it, and it overruled Home Rule, which is not the typical Republican approach.
WSHU: As a matter of fact, one of the things they have against the big housing bill that was passed this year was that it was eroding Home Rule. And here it is, a Republican lawmaker is getting the state to override. But they took credit for that.
MP: Yes. But I will give people credit that two years ago, when I went to all the various players, the leaders of all four legislative caucuses, the governor's office, they all acknowledged to me being aware of it. They pointed out where it came from. Vinny Candelora, the House Republican leader, said, Yes, this was something one of his members asked for. They put it in. So again, you can say it was an abuse of the system, but at least there was eventually transparency. When I approached them, I was able to pin it down. This time, not so much.
WSHU: Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Mark.
MP: Thank you.
