SEN. DEBICELLA:

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I'll be brief. I was one of the two no votes in the June regular session, and will be again today. I wanted to just very briefly explain why.

It is not because being against clean contracting standards, which there are many very admirable parts to this bill, but it is about Section 16.

And Section 16, in my opinion, is not about clean contracting. It is about anti-privatization. It essentially sets up a five-stage process in order for the State of Connecticut to actually privatize some of its services.

There's an underlying logic to this, in making privatization more difficult, that says that somehow privatization is involved with us having ethical problems in our contracting system, and I don't believe that's true.

I believe that having privatization as a real option saves the taxpayers money. And having that as a viable option is something that we want to have.

I believe Section 16 will take away privatization as a viable option by setting up this five-stage process that will be very, very easy to kill a privatization deal by any number of people, whether that be the unions or the courts or the contracting standards board. There's any number of steps that it has to go through.

And at the end of the day, the part of this bill that is important is the oversight. The reason why we've had problems with clean contracting isn't because of privatization. It is because of a lack of oversight.

We should not pass this bill, in my opinion, today with Section 16 in it, but rather a slimmed down version of it, without that anti-privatization section in it.

So I will be voting against this bill today, Mr. President, and I thank you.

SEN. MCKINNEY:

Thank you, Mr. President. I thank Senator Slossberg for her answers and for her efforts on this legislation.

Mr. President, my remarks in support of this will be brief, as they were on the last night of session. Obviously, this contracting reform is something very important to the State of Connecticut. It's something that we learned through very difficult circumstances that was necessary.

But in past years, the issue had been very politicized, in fact forcing the Governor to veto this bill, I believe, on three separate occasions.

We have before us a bill that has been worked out as a compromise that the Governor will support. I'm sure it's not everything that some want, and it probably goes a little bit farther than others.

It's not a perfect bill, but, on balance, I do believe it's the best bill we are going to see regarding contract reform, and therefore urge my colleagues to support it. Thank you."

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

From the transcript of the Connecticut Senate - June 5, 2007:

"SEN. DEBICELLA:

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, there's an old saying, fake it until you make it. And I think that is the theme of this General Assembly and definitely the theme of this bill. This is the second bill we are voting on, Mr. President, that has no bearing in reality.

. . . 

And right now, 94% of the people in the State of Connecticut are covered by health insurance. And this bill, through expending about $ 900 million by the second year, hopes to expand that, probably by about three to four percentage points.

So if we can assume that maybe we'll get from 94% coverage to 97% coverage, well, guess what, Mr. President, that is great for those 3% of the people, and I applaud my friends on the other side of the aisle for going for it.

But what about the other 97% of us? The answer, Mr. President, is we'll be paying for it.

. . .

Mr. President, I don't believe this is the right way to go about it. This bill ignores the main healthcare issue that we have, which is costs that are spiraling out of control..."

From the debate on a bill to allow children of immigrants who attend Connecticut high schools for four years and then graduate to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities - transcript of the Connecticut Senate - June 1, 2007:

SEN. DEBICELLA:

Thank you, Mr. President. Good afternoon. Today, I rise in opposition to this bill, because although Senator Harris has done a great job explaining why somebody might be in favor of this, I actually don't think he has asked the right question about this bill.

And the question is what are our priorities? What are our priorities as a society and, Mr. President, what are the priorities of the Democratic Party in bringing this forward?

Specifically, Mr. President, we are talking about 200 students here. And we are talking about giving a special benefit to them that is equal to about $ 13,000 a year for a student going to UConn or about $ 4,000 for a student going to the CSU system.

The fiscal impact to that will be over $ 3 million a year in subsidies to illegal immigrants. And the question, Mr. President, is that the right priority for us as a society and is that the right priority for higher education?

Because as we are giving these special benefits to people who have broken the law, as we give these special benefits to illegal immigrants, we are not, Mr. President, fully funding our student aid for legal residents here in Connecticut.

We have a $ 45 million gap in our CICSG and CAPCS program, which is the financial aid for legal residents going to private or public universities of over $ 45 million.

But instead of doing that, instead of going to help out the 111,000 that Senator Harris mentions, we're giving special benefits to 200 whose families who broke the law.

And so, Mr. President, today we're going to be talking a lot about priorities and what are priorities as a society would be and, Mr. President, I think will be very revealing to what the priorities of the Democratic Party are as well.

Mr. President, today we're going to have several amendments later on, but right now I wanted to talk about the underlying facts about this bill and that this bill is wrong for three reasons.

First, it's unfair to Connecticut residents who have children who are going to college. Second, Mr. President, it's unfair to legal immigrants, the people who have followed the law to come to this country.

And third, Mr. President, it is a reward for illegal behavior that I don't believe we wish to sanction in the State of Connecticut.

Let me address each of those. First, I think everybody knows right now how hard it is to pay for college. College costs are skyrocketing, and our middle class is getting squeezed.

Families today are struggling if they have two or three kids in college. And the State of Connecticut has tried to help. We have two programs, as I mentioned, that give student aid to legal residents, whether you are a U. S. citizen or someone with a green card who has come here legally.

That program is under-funded by $ 45 million, and people are struggling right now out there. People in my district tell me how tough it is to make ends meet and how tough it is if they have a couple of kids in college to pay all the bills.

But today, Mr. President, we're not talking about funding those programs. We're talking about giving a special benefit to a group of 200 people whose families chose to break the law. This is not fair to the legal residents of this State of Connecticut who need help paying for higher education.

Second, Mr. President, it's unfair for legal immigrants who came to this country, who followed the law, and are now going to be punished with this bill.

For example, if you came to this country legally and you went through the process, but you live one mile over the border in New York State or in Massachusetts, you will pay $ 21,000 a year to go to UConn.

But if you broke the law and if your family has been here for 20 years and have not applied for legal residency, you'll pay $ 8,000.

If you don't break the law, $ 21,000, because you live one mile over the border. You do break the law, it'll only cost you $ 8,000. This is inherently unfair, Mr. President.

My family and my wife's family are all immigrants. My mother-in-law and father-in-law came over here from Argentina, and it took them three years. It took them a long time to work through the process to first get their green card and eventually their citizenship, but they followed the process.

And we are going to say to families who have come over here illegally, if you live just one mile outside of our borders, you have to pay full tuition. If you've broken the law, no problem, we will give you a special benefit. That is inherently unfair.

We need to welcome legal immigration to this country. Senator Harris is right. This country is aging, and we do need more legal immigrants. My wife is a Latina, and we all know that there is a lot of immigration coming in from Latin America right now, and we should welcome that. That is a good thing for our society.

But we want that to be legal. We want that to be people who follow the process who are willing to come here and are willing to follow the laws of our nation.

And indeed, right now at the federal level there's a compromise being worked out. A compromise that would actually give a lot of people guest worker status, which once they get guest worker status, would make them legal residents and eligible for in-state tuition.

And therefore, Mr. President, if that compromise were to pass, this bill now rewards the worst of the worst offenders. This bill will reward those who choose not to sign up for a guest worker program for those who choose to stay illegal.

This bill fundamentally makes the assumption that illegal immigration is okay, and that is not right. We need to encourage legal immigration, Mr. President, and discourage illegal immigration.

And that is the third reason, Mr. President, of why I rise to oppose this bill is that we as a nation, I believe, want to discourage illegal immigration.

I believe that we want to say welcome to all those who wish to follow the laws as we have for two centuries. But to those who choose to break the law, who choose to come here illegally, we should not be giving incentives for them to do so.

And because this bill inherently prioritizes those who are illegal immigrants over those who are legal, we are saying please break the law. Connecticut welcomes you if you break the law. That is not the right message we want to be sending.

So, Mr. President, although I will be introducing several amendments later on, I want to have some debate on the underlying bill first.

I do rise to oppose this for the reasons that this is unfair to Connecticut residents, unfair to legal immigrants, and encourages illegal immigrants to come to Connecticut, and I urge the defeat of this bill. Thank you, Mr. President.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

From the debate about a bill that would require that some employers give sick days to their workers - transcript of the Connecticut Senate, May 29, 2007:

SEN. DEBICELLA:

. . .

Mr. President, that being said, I raise in opposition to this bill, because it does hurt workers. This bill, though I believe the intentions are good, is in actualities indecent and inhumane, because it is indecent of us to destroy jobs for working-class people in Connecticut, and it is inhumane of us to sit here and claim that we are trying to help workers, while, at the same time, taking actions that are eliminating working-class and middle-class jobs in Connecticut.

Let me talk a little bit about how this happens, because Senator Gomes asked, well, how do we actually destroy jobs by just giving sick days? It seems like a very nice thing to do.

Workers have 6-1/2 days of sick days per year if they're full time or prorated if they are part time. Let me give you a real life example of how this would work.

If you take a company with 50 employees, and you are going to give each of those employees 6-1/2 days of sick time, that is over 300 days of sick time that employer now has to make up for that year.

That means they have to get another employee to cover that person's shift, possibly with overtime. All of a sudden, this bill, though well intentioned, starts to cost business money, just in replacing the shifts of those sick workers.

Then think about the costs of coordination. Think about the increased administrative costs of actually not only tracking the six days, but having to schedule the workers to overlap on those sick days.

Being the only state in the nation that does this puts us at a competitive disadvantage, because guess what? For that company, where we just gave 300 sick days, we've just eliminated at least one job from that group.

Congratulations. We can now go to that family and say, guess what? We're fighting fro the workers of Connecticut, but you don't have a job, and your family will have to go without.

That's not humane. That is not decent. The other possibilities of what could happen with this bill might be less drastic. Let's take one obvious one. If we mandate sick time at 6-1/2 days, guess what companies in Connecticut will do?

They will take away 6-1/2 days of vacation time to maintain the amount of time that workers have off. It's an obvious thing that people in business will do to maintain their workforce.

Again, claiming that we're helping workers, we're taking away their vacation time. The negative repercussions of this bill will either make business less competitive in Connecticut or will hurt working-class people.

Finally, Mr. President, the reason I oppose this bill is because not only is this part of the [inaudible] 5,000 cuts, but Senator Gomes proves my point in listing out the other economies that have this.

The United States, with the exception of San Francisco, has not adopted this. We have not chosen this a s policy. The counties that have are countries of Old Europe, countries like France, which enjoys an 11% unemployment rate.

I don't believe that the State of Connecticut wants to end up like the Old Europe countries, where there are massive, working-class unemployed. We do not want to end up a state of only the rich and the poor.

We want a vibrant working and middle class in Connecticut. If we continue to believe that we in this building know better than the free market, we will continue to destroy the $ 40,000, $ 50,000, $ 60,000 jobs out there that maintain a vibrant middle class.

So, Mr. President, although I believe this is well-intentioned, for the sake of the working and middle class in Connecticut, to keep jobs in Connecticut, and hopefully continue some job creation, I oppose this bill. Thank you.