| Given that we are the beginning of
the legislative session, I wanted to take this opportunity
to tell you about some of the legislation that I have
introduced this year. This year, I have introduced fifty-eight
bills, which is the most I have introduced since joining
the Senate in January 2007. A substantial amount of the
legislation represents ideas that I have received from
my constituents. The remainder are ideas that I have for
making life better for people in our state.
Here are four legislative proposals that I am asking
the General Assembly to consider passing this year:
• SB 352, An Act Concerning a Mandatory Life
Sentence for Repeat Violent Offenders. This bill
is my “Three Strikes and “You’re Out”
proposal. As you know, I have been a major proponent
of enacting a law that would give prosecutors the option
to pursue a life sentence for three time violent criminals.
I believe that we need to give prosecutors this tool
in order to strengthen our criminal laws.
• SB 273, An Act Concerning the Licensure
of Trash Haulers would create licensing and financial
oversight requirements for trash hauling companies.
Consumers are hurt when the few “bad apples”
in any industry abuse the system. Unfortunately, this
has happened with a small number of trash haulers. This
bill is intended to create oversight of this industry
in order to help prevent any future fraudulent activity
that ultimately hurts consumers.
• SB 588, An Act Concerning Public Service
Companies’ Executive Officer Salaries would
prohibit public utilities from using rates paid by consumers
to pay for exorbitant executive pay increases. The bill
would limit any executive pay increase to be funded
by consumer rates to the increase in the rate of inflation.
• SB 362, An Act Concerning Equal Pay For
Equal Work would strengthen our state laws prohibiting
employers from paying employees less because of their
gender. Studies continue to show that women are paid
less than men for performing similar work in many different
industries. There is federal legislation pending to
strengthen the federal laws in this regard. My proposal
is intended to strengthen Connecticut law on this issue.
As I hope you can see from these bills, my goal is
to try to make life better for the people I represent
and for others throughout the state. I hope that you
will agree that these proposals could help people. Also,
I noted earlier that many of my ideas come from you.
So I would encourage you to contact me with ideas that
you have. If I agree with you, I would be happy to submit
legislation on the proposal. Although it is too late
to do that for this year’s session, I encourage
you to keep that in mind for next year.
You can track the progress of my legislative proposals
by accessing the legislature’s website at www.cga.ct.gov
and using the quick search function at the top of the
page. Also, I encourage you to contact me to discuss
these, and other, legislative proposals under consideration
this year. I can be reached at my legislative office
in Hartford at 860-240-8800, or via e-mail to Sam.Caligiuri@cga.ct.gov.
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