HARTFORD, CT —Less than a week after a two-day special session for the state House and Senate, Gov. Ned Lamont has signed three of the four bills the legislature passed. The fourth, a comprehensive housing bill that was a revised version of the one he vetoed earlier this year, has not been transmitted to him yet, but he will sign it as soon as it is, according to his office.
Lamont and a group of child advocates and elected officials held a signing ceremony Wednesday for House Bill 8004, a wide-ranging bill that passed the legislature along mostly party lines. Among other things, the bill an omnibus bill that among other things addresses children’s behavioral health, establishes standard self-employment expense deductions for Temporary Family Assistance participants and establishes a month $.05 telephone fee that supports a firefighters cancer relief fund.
The bill also controversially establishes limits on taking people into custody who are on courthouse grounds for civil offenses, prohibits law enforcement personnel from carrying out their duties wearing masks on courthouse grounds, and limits public agencies from giving out people’s non-public agency information.
The bill signing focused on the child health aspects of the bill.
“We know for so many families that making appointments outside of school, when maybe you have two jobs, two working parents, siblings that are helping to care for a child, having to have that access point right in school to mental health services, medical services, dental services are so critical to ensuring that children can get vaccinations, preventative care, treatment, whatever it might be, in real time,” Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said.
State Sen Ceci Maher, D-Wilton, said the bill was designed to work on prevention, early intervention and treatment.
“When we look at what this represents, it will review crisis centers, increase insurance coverage for young adults and look into new opportunities for success through updated care,” she said. “This makes sure we can take effective programs further into Connecticut to expand our behavioral health care availability.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney of New Haven agreed.
“We hear all the time it’s becoming a more urgent problem as families struggle to access care and patients suffer due to a gap limiting their care,” he said. “This bill will give us a better view of what’s best in the services available to state residents and review our current systems to make sure critical services remain accessible.”
In signing the bill, Lamont said he had heard from legislators, state mental health staff and advocates that the bill should be a priority.
But he also heard from students, he said, that increased confidential services were critical. At a visit to Enfield High School announcing American Rescue Plan Act funding, he said he had spoken to a student – “A big guy, looked like a tackle for the football team” – about how he would like to spend the money. The student replied that he would spend it on confidential counseling services for himself and a lot of others who otherwise didn’t know where to turn.
“That’s the type of story that makes us remember that this is not a short-term issue, this is not a COVID issue,” he said. “This is a deep issue that is particularly acute in this day and age.”
This article first appeared on CT News Junkie and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.