HARTFORD, Conn. — Facing a likely Republican filibuster, House Speaker Matt Ritter said the chamber will not vote on a bill legalizing marijuana before the legislative session ends at midnight on Wednesday.
Instead, Ritter told reporters, the legislature will convene a special session to consider the bill sometime in the next three weeks, before the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
“It’s going to be voted on ... and it’s going to pass,” Ritter said Wednesday afternoon. “We’re not going to force it through tonight and have an awkward moment in the chamber.”
Ritter said the measure is politically popular and putting off the vote by a week or two only ratchets up the pressure on Republicans.
“They don’t want to do it today, fine. Pick another day and time in June,” he added. “We control when we do the bill.”
The legislature has to convene in a special session because an important bill that implements the budget is not ready. Ritter said the budget bill and marijuana legalization could be done on the same day.
Asked if Democratic lawmakers have plans to raise other bills during the special session, Ritter said that’s a risk the GOP faces. “The danger in filibustering and not letting people vote is that the Senate president and I and the House majority leader and the Senate majority leader can relitigate whatever we want to relitigate,’' he said. “I’m not sure who thinks its a good strategy to put is back into special session but now that the opportunity is there, we’ll take full advantage of it.”
The marijuana legalization measure cleared the state Senate early Tuesday. But later that day, House Republican leader Vincent Candelora called for an investigation into the bill, saying it was “tainted” because of a narrow provision that would have benefitted only one entity.
The provision was removed in the state Senate at the demand of Gov. Ned Lamont, whose administration wrote most of the 297-page bill but not the provision.
Candelora said the House should not consider the bill before the regular legislative session ends at midnight, and he threatened a filibuster, which would have killed the bill as time expires.
If that happened, the process would have needed to start over from scratch, and the state Senate — which passed the legalization of recreational marijuana for adults over 21 by a 19 to 17 vote — would have needed to vote once again.
Ritter said earlier Wednesday the GOP’s threat to talk the bill to death would weigh in his decision about when to call the bill.
“It’s one thing to have an honest, robust debate on a complicated topic,” he said Wednesday morning. “The concern in my caucus is the four or five people that never want to stop and that goes into your calculation. If you had 36 people speak for 10 minutes, ask good questions — not the same questions — because they want to learn about the bill, that is an honest debate. The concern on my end is six people who want to go for nine hours each.”
Asked if the Democrats would consider amending the bill to address Republican concerns, House Majority Leader Jason Rojas said: “We had a lot of productive conversations with our colleagues across the aisle [and] we were certainly considering the changes they were suggesting to us.”
“I know they’re concerned about how late the bill came out. I would share my concern about how late they chose to come to the table with some of the ideas they have about a bill that’s been out for six months,” Rojas said. “Even with that ... I’m still willing to listen and consider some of the changes they’d like to make.”
