By Mark Pazniokas

Following a now-familiar script, the General Assembly today split along partisan lines to approve another of the dozen or so collective bargaining agreements or arbitration awards that could come before lawmakers in 2019.

Once rare, legislative votes on labor deals are the new normal. One of the Republican victories in a budget agreement struck two years ago is a requirement that all labor deals come to votes in the House and Senate. In the past, they took effect in the absence of a vote to reject.

By votes of 84-62 in the House and 19-17 in the Senate, legislators approved a contract that accepts six tax attorneys in the Department of Revenue Services as union members and grants them general wage increases of 3.5 percent in each of the next two years.

“We simply can’t afford it,” said House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby.

By Mark Pazniokas

New Britain — Franklin Delano Roosevelt won passage of 15 laws and outlined significant portions of the New Deal in his first hundred days in office, a marking period that has since bedeviled presidents and governors. Gov. Ned Lamont isn’t comparing himself to FDR, but he nonetheless invited a 100-day evaluation today.

Lamont and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz reunited with policy leaders from their transition team in a ballroom at Central Connecticut State University, where Lamont taught as an adjunct professor after selling his cable-television company. His press office billed the event as a roundtable review of the administration’s accomplishments over its first hundred days.

The table wasn’t round, the review perfunctory.

“I just think we wanted to say what we tried to do in this first hundred days, how we tried to change the tone in the Capitol, how we tried to change our working relationship — labor, business, the diversity of our administration,” Lamont said. “It was a state that was a little bit fractured. I’m trying to bring people together. I think we made a start on that in the first hundred days.”

By Mark Pazniokas and Keith M. Phaneuf

Gov. Ned Lamont and Republicans crystallized two things today about the contentious issue of returning highway tolls to Connecticut after an absence of 35 years: Lamont cannot yet definitively answer important questions about the pricing, location and frequency of tolls — and it wouldn’t matter to the GOP, even if he could.

In back-to-back news conferences, the gulf between the governor and Republican minority could not have been greater, reinforcing that if Lamont succeeds in winning authorization to establish tolls on Route 15 and Interstates 84, 91 and 95, Republicans are resolved to brand them as the product of a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in the General Assembly.

Lamont and the Democratic co-chairs of the legislature’s Transportation Committee today tried to reframe the issue in terms of specific rush-hour commutes, assuming 4.4 cents a mile with discounts for state drivers: from New Haven to Hartford on 91, $1.72; from Stamford to New Haven on 95, $1.80; from Danbury to Waterbury on 84, $1.28.

The governor complained that Republicans, who have been assisted by a grassroots campaign and conservative talk radio hosts in mobilizing public opinion against a proposal he rolled out in February, have created the impression he wants a tolling gantry at the end of every street.

Hartford — Legislation allowing terminally ill patients to obtain a doctor’s help to end their lives has failed to advance in the General Assembly, according to the bill’s supporters.

The legislature’s public health committee, which held an impassioned public hearing on the topic last month, will not vote on the bill before its Wednesday deadline.

“We just didn’t have the votes,” Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chair of the committee said.

“It was close — as close as we’ve ever gotten,” Steinberg said. “Obviously it’s an issue that has strong passions on both sides.”